Sunday, July 12, 2009

Barcelona: Scenic Vintage Monorail Ride...and a Miracle


This is a painted, 'street view' sketch of a vintage monorail ride at a turn-of-the-20th century amusement park on top of Tibidabo Mountain overlooking Barcelona, Spain. I did this drawing as a submission to an on-going project called The Virtual Paintout: a monthly artistic challenge in which participants are given a city to explore and paint using the incredibly cool street view feature of Google Maps.
After much searching and wandering, I honed in on this amusement park with its atypical structures and interesting views. With an artist's eye I circled, looking high and low and back and forth, for a suitable angle from which to base my composition. Little did I know that-through these actions-I was to be the recipient of a random glimpse of auspicious coincidence, revealed to me in the most capricious manner: a million to one chance discovery of a bonafide Christian 'miracle', more obvious than twelve pizza Jesuses, IMHO and with all due respect.
Click on my drawing and you will 'see' what I am referring to:
the figure of Christ descending from the heavens!
Grant you, I have drawn this figure in the sky myself; but those that know me will tell you that I am not prone to chicanery or religious make-believe. When I do a drawing from a photograph, I usually go to great lengths to portray the scene with a modicum of accuracy-at least as much as my skill level will allow.
So...here is the Google Maps image in which this 'miracle' has manifested itself and upon which my rendering is based:

If you would like to see this in Google Maps for yourself, the address is 48 Cami de Vallvidrera al Tibidabo, Barcelona, Espana. In the boundless realm of possibility, there is this one street, one spot, and one direction where this phenomenon exhibits itself and even though I suspect that any miracle begins and ends on this side of the boundless veil...what can I say: I was impressed.
Long live serendipity.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Everyday Matters Challenge #18: Draw the View from the Window of...



This drawing is inspired by a photograph I took out the window of our hotel room in Lucca, Italy when we traveled there in 2005. It continually seems like just yesterday.
Using a set of woodless graphite pencils which are smooth as silk, I transported myself back to that exquisite traveler's moment when one wakes up in yet another new place and gazes out at the crisp scene so full of promise, wondering what's down that path and around that far bend.