Glowing Buildings on Rua da Atalaia

Acrylic,Oil & Pencil on canvas board, 11" x 14"

This week, now that I am back home, it seems like my vision has been ‘reset’ from being immersed in the warm August colours of the tundra for two weeks. Now, the rain forest and water surrounding me are fresh and amazing. My challenge this week has been to fit in painting, once again, with my work routine. So many ideas, so little time:

• I have setup a new still life in my studio (aaaaah, happy to be back in my studio),
• I am planning a larger landscape based on one of my Arctic field sketches,and
• I decided to take part in a challenge set by artist blogger, Bill Guffey at http://virtualpaintout.blogspot.com/

Mr. Guffey's Virtual PaintOut is a kind of sharing session for artists. Most of us appreciate an audience and there is nothing like a group of other artists to fan the flames of creativity.  His cool idea is to use Google Street View as the source of inspiration and this month, Portugal is the virtual destination. While I cruised around Lisbon riding piggy back on the little Google Street View man, I was quite taken with both the colourful buildings and the sunshine. But ouch, the view I chose to paint really forced me to dig deep into my perspective lessons from Picard’s drawing boot camp.

PS. if you are wondering about the three different mediums on this painting, I started it in acrylics, switched to oils when my buildings weren't glowing enough, and finished the lower balcony with a 7B pencil.  Even a size 0 brush wouldn't cut it for the grill work.