Umbrellas, watercolor and gouache on paper by Leora Wenger, 2013
In continuation of a series of watercolors related to Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, here is my latest that I am calling: Umbrellas. I took at least ten photos of this watercolor painting in different light until I picked one that was closest to the image. It still had a little too much blue, so in Photoshop I slightly decreased the balance of blue. The idea of the painting was to emphasize the color of the umbrellas and the wetness of the day. The people are just busy.
The brighter less opaque colors in the watercolor on this page are done in gouache. I posted a detail of this painting last week on Google+. Go ahead and Plus One my watercolor Google+ posting, if you like.
Welcome to JPiX, the Jewish Photo Blogger Carnival, winter 2014 edition. Hope you will enjoy the tour of Jewish-inspired photos from around the world. Today we are visiting Israel, Crimea, California and Highland Park, New Jersey. Featured are a funeral and a wedding; sushi and bread; snow, sunsets and koi. I like to start with Batya, because if it weren’t for her, this carnival would not exist. If you like an image, please visit the post and leave a comment for the photographer. Comments welcome on this post as well, of course.
Batya
Leah
Lorri
Devo
Mason
Sharon
Toby
Cosmic X
Leora
If you want to submit to a future edition of JPiX Jewish Photo Blogger Carnival, the form is on the JPiX page. The next edition will probably be in June or July 2014. If anyone would like to volunteer to host (a brave proposition because you need to be good with a photo editor), you can let me know by comment or by the JPiX form.
This female cardinal in my backyard was the first photograph I took in 2014. Note she is duller than her brightly colored male mate – she has one streak of red feathers to display. What was your first 2014 photograph?
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve done a review. I was considering doing a 2013 review, but perhaps that will have to wait until right before 2015. Come back on Sunday, and I will have up a new edition of JPiX. I also have a post of an umbrellas watercolor that I plan to show next week. I’m almost finished with another house illustration. I’ve been collecting illustrations of #trees on Pinterest – let me know if you find some good ones. I’m also in search of good illustrations for blog Subscribe buttons or links.
I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of losing a child. Phyllis continues to write after her son Sam has died; in this post, she talks about “the terrible vacuum of grief.“
I am continuing my work on house illustrations. Last week I showed you a sketch I had done of a Highland Park house. Above is my Illustrator version of an illustration of this home. I originally made all the windows black, and then I decided to switch the windows above to a blue gradient, so it looks like a sky reflection. The illustration is made of a collection of shapes placed in many layers in Illustrator.
One of the features of a good flat design illustration is eliminating details and only depicting what is most important to view. This process of what to include and what to leave out is not an easy one.
My long term plan is to depict at least three homes in this manner. Here is another house illustration – I sketched the above drawing by hand using pencil and then a ink pen (then I scanned it into the computer). If you know Highland Park, I welcome you to walk around and look at the homes to see if you can find these. But I won’t identify them directly.
I also plan to do some flat design bushes and trees as elements in between the homes. The lamppost in the top illustration makes a fine detail for this purpose as well. I’ve been collecting various illustrations in Pinterest so I can refer to those illustrations for ideas.
This morning I was playing around with the Live Trace tool in Illustrator, and I created the above line art drawing from the original sketch.
This process of creating a suburban street scene with houses and trees is taking longer than I anticipated.
The last time I started working on houses, roofs, and illustrated street scenes I got as far as this roof with second floor and then that was it for quite a while. I’m now tackling the projects of depicting a few houses in a row in a flat design illustration. So far, I photographed a few houses, searched for old photographs I had taken and decided it was easier to take new ones, did one or two pen illustrations from my house photographs, and started an illustration of one house in Adobe Illustrator.
I also pinned a fair number of house illustrations to Pinterest. I noticed the successful illustrations follow less is more … a few accents in color can go a long way.
After I do a few houses, I plan to work on illustrated trees, bushes and other elements you might find in an old-fashioned borough like Highland Park. I’m hoping I can find a way to do clouds that don’t look like everyone else’s clouds. Stay tuned for more houses, roofs, illustrations and my artistic endeavors in those areas.
