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.

11 comments:

Autumn Leaves said...

I love the deep greens you've used, combined with the browns in your version. It is so lovely. I would love to hear more about how you were able to maneuver around Google maps so well. I played with it for hours and had a really difficult coming up with an image that I really liked! Your final image is simply superb!

R K said...

Thanks for your nice comment. I found this image by entering "amusement parks barcelona" into the Google Maps search box, then I cruised around from there.

Autumn Leaves said...

Thank you for that info. I'll try to remember that for next month. Barcelona has some beautiful and unusual architecture by a guy...last name starts with an 'M' I think...has wonderful colors and wavy lines and tons of texture. (You can see some photos in Google Images, searching for Barcelona, Spain.) I really wanted to do something from one his buildings but had no clue how to find them. I kept searching by dropping that little guy around and came up with nothing pretty. What I ended up with is embarassing. Sigh...

R K said...

I believe you are talking about Antoni Gaudi.

Debra Keirce said...

Great job, great painting!

Anonymous said...

Great fun, isn't it. I did a Barcelona one - it's in my Flickr, but it wasn't a success. I've taken the little man for a walk and got a better view of the same piazza (placa). I still have to draw it and it is next on my list. Probably leave it too late (like the Florence one),

caseytoussaint said...

I haven't been to your blog in a while, and I see how much I've missed. Your work gets stronger all the time - this one is wonderful!

gma said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog. I came here and saw the image in the sky(Was it originally an airplane?)
I sent an eMail to you about painting things we are unaware of. Strange.
Maybe jesus is in a tortilla.
:-)

R K said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sharon said...

Love the greens in this and the slightly (!) wonky perspective of the building. And Jesus, arising from the fog! Wish he was around these days. We could use someone like him involved in the health care debate...

R K said...

Gemma, the figure floating in my sketch is an actual rendering of a Jesus figure floating in the Google Map image as evident in the screen capture. There is a cathedral above the amusement park with this figure on its spire. Through a glitch in the transferring of the image (I guess), the towering Jesus got dislodged from his position. What I find interesting is that this figure is the only thing that is displaced.
Take a look, it's wild.