Detroit Still Life

Description

This is an original watercolor painting, 15" X 22" hot pressed high quality watercolor paper.

In this painting I was exploring balancing a traditional format with a more fanciful one. I initially painted a still life with symbols of a long life, of learning, and of death, among other things. I then drove around Detroit and took pictures of cityscapes where I found similar symbolic references. I combined the images that I felt complimented each other, and then I incorporated decorative dot patterns where I created fanciful birds, flowers, and water, among other things, to convey hope and rebirth.

This is a watercolor painting along with pen and ink on a high-quality hot pressed watercolor paper.

It should be noted that the colors in this picture are not completely true to the original, and the original is brighter and the white is a true white--it is not muted. This is another reason why I started doing the 6" X 6" pieces: I can scan the 6" X 6" images and get rid of any shadows.

Added on Sep 17, 2009