Cool inside, hot outside.

Pen&Ink and watercolor on Laloran Sketchbook 5.5” x 5.5”

Kerrytown is a colorful neighborhood in Ann Arbor, Michigan. When I saw that view while I was sipping a spicy maya chocolate, I immediately took my little sketchbook to put that turquoise and orange-ish walls on paper. I sketched that person outside before he moved. He left few minutes later. It rained hard and it was hot and humid. I was indoors and although the interior was well illuminated, the exterior was brighter. So I went all in with shadowing the interior with purple, one of my favorite mix of ultramarine and alizarin crimson. I painted first the colors of the interior and finishing with a glaze of purple. I have done this the opposite way, first the shadow glaze and then colors, but in this last way, the colors in the sketch don’t look unified. I had plenty of wash and used a big brush size 10 to cover uniformly the shadowed areas and carefully leave alone the areas I intended to let brighter. My chocolate was delicious, so the company, so my sketch! Ha!