Illustration: Trinity Church reflected on Hancock Building

 

This was a longer term project... over 6 weeks. I am not sure how many hours but it was 40-50 maybe. I didn't realize until this was done that is part of a series of 3, really 5 that started in 1989. I original took a black and white photo of the reflection and then years later used it for a pen and ink drawing. In the drawing the reflected parts were all done with stipple work. I gave that drawing away. something I regret since I gave it to someone I no longer have any contact with. I don't even have a photo or photocopy of that drawing. Then I did a drawing of a crane reflected on the Hancock which was fast and easy. That encouraged me to to try a large one of the old John Hancock reflected in the new one. Then I sort of forgot I did all that until I came across the original photo and decided I should maybe redraw that illustration for myself. On a visit to Boston I took all new reference photos and then... forgot about it again! Finally I started but instead of a pen and ink I went full colour. 

This has about 20 layers, the window frames are on one, the interior lights we can see through the reflection are on another and then a couple for the sky etc. When It can time to paint the church I went window by window. Since each panel had 3-6 layers I had to merge them down as I went or maybe crash the iPad with literally 1000s of layers open. I would draw for a few hours and then look at the illustration overall and see I still have something like 87 window panes to do. I kept pugging away until finally it was done. 

Below is a closeup of the part of the drawing. A both complimentary and frustrating part of doing something like this is when I send it to anyone they think it's a photograph because they are almost always looking at it on a phone and never realize the work that went into it. The other image is the original 89 photograph. I could not get the exact angle matched up because there is a lot more stuff going on there now and that angle just wasn't available and other things were blocking the view. 

Illustration: rue de la Visitation 04

 

Another house on the the way to my gym/pool. This was not in the best shape for a long time and a few years ago fell victim to fire. After the fire there was a major renovation that kept most of the original details and restored it to perhaps more than its former glory. 

This was a rare case I didn't hate the drawing until the end when it was near finished. It came along much more smoothly, thought slowly. Lots of bricks. I think before the fire it was all painted pink! 

Illustration: rue Berthier

 

Another in my local house series. This one is also close to the gym as those are the houses I see most of the week. I think I like the brick houses, they look cool to me and I like the colour palette. 

Like a lot of there, the drawing looks much nicer than the real place. This building is cute but it is hidden by poles, electric line, meters... you name it. There really should a law against visual pollution blocking our appreciation of the places we see every day. 

Illustration: Carver Street, Provincetown, MA

 The last of these Provincetown drawings for a long while I think. I pass this house a lot from  where I stay to Commercial Street. I love the look but drawing it I saw there were a lot of signs of it having some maintenance issues. I didn't draw any of the trees etc around it to see more of the structure. 

Illustration: Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

 

I hard a hard time seeing this place completely as there was always work being done on it when I was in Provincetown. It's set far back from the street and now has houses on either side and trees blocking a clear view as well. On my early morning walk on my last day I passed it and the trucks were gone! So I took a few reference photos and this is the result. Even with the workers gone, the right side was not really visible so I searched from old illustrations and photos from when the church was clearly visible. 

Illustration: Lobster Pot restaurant Provincetown, MA

 Not quite head on like my other buildings but there was not a chance of even seeing the name of the place if I did that. I loved eating here for decades but since I can only afford to be in Provincetown off season, it closed when I am there now. I did not add too much shading to this one, for some reason I like it better a little simpler. 

Illustration: 85 Clinton Street

 

The family house, now sold. I wanted to honour the place in some way I could. So many memories there with my parents I will miss. Drawn in procreate. 

Illustration: 1600 ave Lartigue

 

This is a house that really sticks out on one of the alley/streets I pass when going to a friend's house. It used to have a slightly larger than life plaster statue of an old time'y soldier painted in bright colours in front of it. It seems to always be for sale, sold, then for sale again. Not sure why that is, the inside seems really nice and large, there is a good outdoor space and parking. It is pretty weird, not sure what "style" it's in. 

Like most of these drawings, it hated this until I was in my second colouring/painting stage where I start adding shading to the solid colours I laid down first. Now.. I like it a lot. Mostly because I think the roof tiles do it for me. The reference photos were sort of a mess. This is a narrow space and getting all the house in one shot was out of the question so I took multiple photos and made a couple panoramas with limited success. 

Illustration: rue_de_la_visitation_03

 

This might be the last of the building drawings for a while. It's my least favourite so far and the least interesting to draw. If I come across something inspiring, I'll do another but while this is OK I would rather move on to some other stuff. Like the small scale of the houses so I am not sure I want to do "landmarks" or "architecturally important" structures. The sort of odd not quite maintained look of the ones I have done already is what drew me to them.

Illustration: Rue Atateken 01

 My friend Philip, another artist, used to live in this building. I don't know where he is now he moved out of the city and I only saw him once or twice on the street when he was in town after that. The place, to be honest is a mess. They have done just enough repairs to be kept from being condemned. It still has interesting features and the apartments insider are HUGE and with lots of original details present. 

Like always, I thought this was a total failure until about 10 hours in when it seemed to come together and work. I do the outlines first, then put in solid colours behind them and slowing fill in colour detail and shading. Last things added were the bush and light out front. 

Illustration: Coo Rouge MTL

 

One of my favourite restaurants for years. I was only a few blocks from house and I thought the food was good and they would occasionally have weird stuff like Kangaroo burgers. It closed down and I think moved to another location under another name but I am pretty sure that closed as well. Third in this series so far. I have to go for a few walks and find some new locations to draw. 

Illustration: rue de la visitation 02

 

This is the building almost directly across the street from the last building I drew. They are doing work on the street so there were no cars or trucks in front of it for once so I took some references to work from. I like this look! 

illustration: bâtiment - rue De la Visitation

 

I pass this building every time I got to the gym to work out or swim, so several times a week. I became obsessed with drawing it for some reason. I like the roof colours, the yellow and blue and how they go with the brickwork. It took a good 20 hours to finish using Procreate. I think hit has more layers than anything else I have done in Procreate. All the colours are separate and the ink works is broken up into operate areas as well. 

Illustration: Bay Window, rue Wolfe

 

This was originally going to be a Krita project, showing how decrepit the bay window is on this building. The brick was all redone but the window is rotting away. I even started painting it but then decided on another direction and did the drawing in Affinity Designer. Designer is a vector drawing program, not bit map, like Affinity Photo of Photoshop. With them you paint with pixels but vector is more like building an image with shapes - almost like using cut outs for each part. Every piece is its own layer and the image can be made as large or small are you like with no loss in quality. 

So this way of doing it didn't make it impossible to get that rotting look but it doesn't really lend itself to that so I kept some odd angles to the bay but for the most part made it look much more attractive than it is. There is a small tree in front I drew, then deleted because it took away from the facade. I really liked adding the shadows and I think they give it a very natural look I wasn't expecting in a vector drawing. 

Illustration: Commercial Union Assurance - Montreal

 

Another architectural drawing, this time a view of a street on the way to where a couple of good friends live. I wanted shading, unlike the last time when it just line work. It was the end of the day and I really liked the shadows and light on the buildings so I worked it into the line drawing with greys. 

It took awhile to draw this but it's not as precise as it looks are first. The farthest buildings pretty sloppy in fact, but it's more natural looking  that way. I also took out a TON of details I though were in the way like street signs and traffic lights. I think this part of my itch to do more "full" drawings and not isolated people or objects. 

illustration: bâtiment, Vieux Port Montreal

 

I love that I can draw in as little as five minute increments and get something done over a couple weeks with the iPad. I wanted to do something very "architectural" and I think this qualifies. I debated adding the  trees in front but Im glad I did. I also like the no shading all line look. 

illustration: John Hancock Boston

 This was more of a test as I have more complicated similar drawing planned soon. Done in Procreate and pretty quickly.