INDIANA DUNES

 Heading southwest, I charged into the Indiana Dunes National Park.  I headed straight to the visitors center and got a map.  It’s a very long park and I wanted to see the best place for me to go.  I was surprised to see there were houses here from the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair. So, I headed there. 

I parked and walked down the street taking photos of each house.

After a quick sketch of one of the houses, I headed south into Indiana towards Indianapolis.  I only made it as far as Lafayette.  I was tired.

DAY 21

 The prompt for today's #30daysketchbookchallenge is "Rooftops".

My plan was to paint the rooftops once the greens were dry.  But, I liked the way it looked like this.

VANILLA HOUSES #2

Here's the start of the second in the Vanilla Houses series. I put down a blue for the shadow areas and white for the light areas and blocked out the basic shapes. Lots of work still to do!

I prepped this panel of masonite with gesso and then a layer of acrylic gel medium mixed with pumice powder, the same as I would for a pastel board.

This answered the problem of no texture, but I don't know that I like it. It seems like it sucks up the paint! The glossy-ness is gone from the paints. I don't know how to explain it, but the paint goes down in a totally different manner then when painting on canvas.

VANILLA HOUSES

I've been thinking about this painting for a long time. I noticed these houses and the way the morning light hit them years ago while driving a truck. I had to paint them!

Getting a photograph was even a hassle. I had my husband take me up here in his pickup in the early morning. He was able to drive his truck over the curb and onto the grassy area since there is no place to pull over. I needed to stand up in the back of his pickup bed in order to get the high-angle that I would see the scene while driving the KW.

I took quite a few photos, so I will have lots of subject matter for this series.

This type of housing development really bothers me. I see the developers come in and take out every tree, bush and every other kind of living thing. Then, they start building these houses, which are all basically the same, with very little variations, side-by-side-by-side. So close together you can spit on your neighbors house! Giant boxes, no style, no trees....why would people want to live there?

Here is the first, acrylic on canvas, 18" by 24".

Anyway, I'm starting this new series, Vanilla Houses. So entitled because they are so bland, so similar, and almost always pastels and beiges.

[A series? Yikes, does that mean I have to do at least eight of these, too?]