More scenes of Westhaven neighborhood

 

I did a painting of this exact scene recently but it was a pile of rubbish in the foreground. Since then, the community garden people have planted a whole row of decorative flowers which grew quite well. A few of the old timers water them and the plants get sun all day here. I made sure to preserve the brightest possible reds and yellows, and maintain the white paper in order to make the flowers pop. The rest of the scene is done quick with neutral brown, green and yellow, while the fire hydrant anchors the composition. When I say something anchors the composition, it is an element that keeps your eye moving around the subject matter. Without the fire hydrant, the diagonal road element would be distracting and cause the eye to wander off the picture plane. Its actually a pretty unusual composition this painting, most of the elements of interest are lined up in a vertical row, but somehow it works.

Community flowers, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024

 

How many times have I painted this store? A lot, and from many different angles. This time, I am looking through the facade from a side view standing across the street. Getting the perspective right is always difficult, I hold my brush up to the scene to approximate the angle. Instead of fruit, there was a pile of boxes out front, but I wanted the painting to be a bit more inviting so made ambiguous red orange and green fruits instead. The red thing in the middle is a mailbox.

Fruiterie Cite perspective, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024