This month's
Virtual Paintout is Gdansk, Poland, which has turned out to be a city full of wonderfully interesting and colorful vignettes. I'm extremely partial to cityscapes and great architecture right now, so my choices so far have ended revolving around some type of structure.
I thoroughly have enjoyed wandering through the streets with my watercolors and sharpie pen, hunting for a place to plop down and begin painting. I intend to paint perhaps one more scene before the end of the month; the next one might have more of an abstract feel to it, as my contribution last month did.
When I did these particular paintings, I took very little time in sketching and painting, forcing myself to concentrate on the shapes of the structures, the color and contrast that I could see or remember from the map street view. In doing this, I'm attempting to step out of my comfort zone. Since my usual style is abstract, when I want to paint something that leans more toward realism I feel the need to constantly check back with my reference.
As you can see, this particular view featured the most wonderful architecture:
I may end up painting this particular scene again, but in my usual style - which should end up really interesting!
And who knows - one or more of my "Virtual Paintout" works might end up with a rather interesting new look, as my interpretation of a building in St. Petersburg, Russia did just recently:
I'm picturing those buildings in purple and lime green right now... hmmm.....
