Virtual Painout November 2014: Luxembourg

I have been waiting for this location for a while now and here it is: this month, the Virtual Paintout is taking us to Luxembourg!!

Of course I had to participate again.

Choosing the reference view was slightly easier this time. After all I knew exactly where to look.

This place is located in Hesperange, one of the neighbouring communes of the capital.

I like it because of the view of the old castle over the restaurant.

I used exclusively watercolour pencils and added a few stronger lines in ballpoint pen to give it a bit more depth.

I was considering to move to this commune at some point

Check out the original image to compare.

Virtual Paintout April 2014: Liverpool

For this month's Virtual Paintout we got to stroll around the Beatles' hometown: Liverpool.

The greates challenge for me is always to choose a location to draw, so I usually don't take more than 10 minutes to decide.

I liked this view of a busy station and wanted to try to convey that feeling.

I wanted to do something radically different from my usual submissions, so I didn't plan anything and went straight to watercolour.

I then added some ink here and there to give a bit more definition to the drawing.

As a finishing touch, I added lyrics from a few Beatles' songs. How could I not?

Ghosts of Liverpool

Check out the original image to compare.

Virtual Paintout March 2014: Slovenia

This month's location for the Virtual Paintout is Slovenia.

I went straight for Ljubljana, so I wouldn't get lost wandering through the country.

I wanted to try something different this time and I thought it would be fun to distort the buildings a bit.

It's not quite a fisheye effect - I don't master that at all - but I think it's still fun like this.

You can check out the reference image on Google Streetview.

Virtual Paintout February 2014: Washington, DC

This month's location for the Virtual Paintout is Washington, DC.

A lot to see, and I tried to find an interesting angle of the White House, but I didn't see anything that I particularly wanted to draw.

After strolling virtually through the streets of the US capital, I found this statue that I liked. I think it was because of the light shining through the flag.

Here is the Google Streetview reference image.

I like how dynamic the memorial looks.

Virtual Paintout January 2014: Cape Cod

This month's Virtual Paintout location is Cape Cod.

I knew of it, or rather I had heard the name before, but I didn't actually know where it was until now.

Nor how pretty it is.

It looks like the perfect place to spend a summer near the beach.

Here is my submission.

You can check out the reference image on Google Streetview.

Virtual Paintout December 2013: Venice

This month's Virtual Paintout location was both wonderful and terrible, for how can one choose only one place to draw in Venice?

I remember last time I was there I couldn't put my camera down ; it's such an incredibly photogenic city.

So I decided to settle on a view of Campo Santa Margherita, the place I last saw a very good friend of mine.

It was a challenging image to draw from, for it is bustling with people, and I'm not really satisfied with the result:

What attracted me to this particular place was the children playing and running around, plus the beautiful old buildings all around.

The result, however, is very stiff and there are too many distractions, so after careful consiferation I decided to crop it before sending out my submission:

I think it looks a bit better this way.

I got a bit of feedback from more experienced sketchers and think that I definitely learned from this one.

Virtual Paintout November 2013 : Iceland

I stumbled upon this blog called The Virtual Paintout ages ago and have been wanting to participate ever since.

However, I somehow never got to do it until now.

The concept is very easy: every month a specific country or city is chosen and you have to use the Street View function on Google Maps to find a location which will be your reference for a drawing or painting.

Here is my submission for this month, Iceland :

And here is the link to the reference I took for my drawing: http://goo.gl/maps/YZPkn.