A twist to virtual paintouts

A good thing about virtual paintouts is that you can go “exploring” other countries without having to do it physically.  However, sometimes I want to sketch interesting places or buildings and not necessarily streets, which is, well… Google’s Street View forte.  But I remembered seeing the Colosseum in Rome as the opening screen, so maybe “Street View” is not limited to streets.

So I searched online for traditional Japanese architecture.  I remember when in architecture school we were introduced to Japanese gardens and villas.  I stand behind the word “introduce”, because that is exactly what they taught us, a very brief lecture on Japanese gardens.  Oh, and it was as part of a design studio, not in History of Architecture.  That is a flaw the curriculum I studied in had; we barely touched oriental, middle-eastern or even  latin-american architecture.

But whatever… I found about Himeji Castle, regarded as the finest surviving example of 17th century Japanese architecture, and it happens that Google Street View works in it!  So I explored around the place and found a couple of interesting views.  It is a beautiful place.  I sketched it directly with Sennelier watercolors on a  9″x 6″ heavyweight paper sketchbook.  It’s not watercolor paper, but it behaves better than I expected.  I used a water brush for this, very convenient when painting watercolors in front of the computer (no water spill accidents).

I hope I keep finding interesting “street views” in the virtual paintouts from now on.

#sketching #waterbrush #Sennelier #Japan #virtualpaintout #architecture #bocetos #sketch #watercolours #watercolors #dibujo #drawing