Tag Archives: street scene

Inspired by the colorful street I painted this scene with lots of pinks, reds, and browns. Using a small amount of greens as accent color. When traveling, I love visiting cities where you can walk everywhere. That way, at the end of the day you are nice and relaxed from exhausting yourself from misreading your maps….it’s a good kind of exhaustion. I remember this day visiting San Francisco with my family. We walked to Chinatown from the North Beach area of San Francisco and when we turned the corner to walk down this street the festival of colors was so delightful to the eye! I had to paint it!  So I took lots of pictures and made mental notes or rather “sketches” in my head. This street scene feels like the vibe of that sunny day. I can remember the taste of the delicious chow mein and rice we enjoyed and the smells of the restaurants’ menu offerings. We stopped in a tea shop and sampled different teas. We learned about the health benefits of different teas and how to properly brew and steep  them. With our new knowledge of teas we found some beautiful and useful teapots to take home. With plenty of touristy shops to explore, we also found some interesting scarves and trinkets to indulge in.

There was something so festive, alive and dynamic of this street scene… Starting with the reds of the buildings, the hanging lanterns that reminded me of draped garland at Christmas time, and the continuous movement of people, trucks, cars, banners, and signage …all of it is so fun to try and capture on canvas. Simplifying the scene, with impressionistic loose brush work I depicted what I thought was most important to get the gist of the lively day. In this original oil painting I have captured the feeling of that particular day without over doing it with unnecessary details.