Downtown Sculpture in Pink, London, Ontario, Canada

Here is a painting done awhile back when I was living in London Ontario, around the time when I would have just begun doing outdoor landscape (on-location) paintings. Ordinarily, as a rule I do not try to paint other artists' work, as is the case here, because the creative design would really belong to the artist, not me, the painter. However, what drew me to this scene was not just the sculpture but how it fit into the surroundings. The green stairs contrasted the reds in the sculpture, and the dull grey brick in the background (that awful concrete stuff they put up in the 70's) makes a good neutral contrast for the colours. I also liked the deep blue shadow you see in the middle structure. I may have discussed this a few times on occasion but it is worth going over again the concept of 'leaving white space'. In water-colour you can not overlap a lighter colour on top of a darker colour (unlike oil or acrylic where it is very easy to do), so to paint the delicate reds and greens in this painting which are lighter, I had to leave some white space when I painted the background. Then near the end I would have filled in the sculpture. On the other hand, you can start with the light colours and then paint the background around it, whichever you choose. But one could not have done this painting by laying down the background and then trying to put the pink and greens on top. 

Downtown Sculpture in Pink, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1997 (No. 0707)