The Virtual Paintout in April - my contributioncoloured pencils on Saunders Waterford HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell
This is my interpretation of the landscape which can be viewed from the street in front of 35 Lugar Diseminado la Degollada, Tejeda, on Gran Canaria in the Canary islands - it's quite something! I liked it because it's got that combination of the weird contours you can get with volcanic geomorphology and the acid greens often seen where cultivation occurs.
I think this is also the view of what is left of the central cone of the extinct volcano which is Gran Canaria. The location is close to the centre of the island and the view is towards the very centre.
What I like about the The Virtual Paintout and using Google Maps Streetview to find a view to draw is it is almost exactly like what I do in real life.The Canary Islands are located off the coast of Western Sahara and Morocco, Africa. The Islands are located on a volcanic hotspot, away from plate boundaries. The island chain is approximately linear with a rough decrease in age of the volcanism is recognized from east to west.
Volcano Live
Being a geographer from way back I almost always study maps before trying to find new views. Given I can read contours I can often find good places to draw just from studying the map. Not always though. Many is the time I've got there only to find that trees completely obscure the view!
When I'm using Streetview I start by studying the map and then try various locations. I then spend ages going backwards and forwards trying to find the 'perfect' perspective. Just like I do in real life when I'm sketching plein air and hauling ` sketching stool and backpack backwards and forwards as I try to find where to put the stool down!
It all feels very familiar! :)
How is it for you?
3 comments:
We’ve picked almost the same location for the Virtual Paintout – except mine is from GC210 http://charlenebrownpainting.blogspot.com/2010/04/virtual-paintout-in-canry-islands.html, quite a bit further back. If I’d noticed this possibility, we would have been painting from the exact same location!
Your description of finding locations reminds me of my experience in the Prague railway station not long after Czechoslovakia split up. I was trying to buy a ticket to Slovakia, and found that nobody was about to volunteer any information about this now-foreign country. As they were pretty unhelpful about suggesting a ‘beautiful place in the Tatras mountains,’ I eventually picked Poprad Tatry, because it looked good on a relief map in the ticket office! And I was right – it was spectacular!
This is so weird! I noticed that we seemed to have been very close when I was looking at what had been posted on The Virtual Paintout just now.
Now if you had been painting in Prague back in October 1994 I could have seen you on the bridge over the Charles River!
A wonderful image, it is special for me as I have just read a great book on Spanish history. Cees Nooteboom wrote: "The volcano crowning the far island is like a monk seeking to blot out the memory of past violence".
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