New York Blues: A Visual Analysis

The final project of the semester pushed for creativity. Delving into my artistic past proved to be a challenge, as it’s been about three years since I last picked up a pencil for fun. The process began with the search for inspiration; at first a window scene and then a simplistic everyday design. For this project, I completed two paintings, but will only discuss the one I presented, which I call “New York Blues”.
The first attempt at a painting rendered a window with a flower box. The image was nice, but not what I wanted for this project. It was inspired by an image of an old Spanish house, my desire to travel and spring time. However, I wanted to stray away from my usual painting style, limit detail and work freehand. In all of my past projects, I found an image or took a picture, and then painted what I saw after creating an intricate sketch to be copied. This often led to a more stressful painting experience because I sought accurate representations of …show more content…
The buildings lack detail and much differentiation. The buildings are randomly arranged, mixed between tall and short rectangular buildings for the visual effect of layering to indicate a multitude of buildings are present and simple perspective. The buildings are also just lines, stemming from a singular off-centered black line providing the base. As mentioned this design isn’t groundbreaking, as it was inspired by other simple designs of the city. What does differ is the lack of specialization amongst the building, in most cases the scene would be more indicative of the location. I chose to not draw in the big NYC monuments. The monuments would add a specificity to the building that I didn't want included. Although, the image does indicate New York, New York, I like the idea of just seeing the buildings for what they are and looking at this with out a landmark or particular street in