Building Investigation 11

Lanecove Fish Market

watercolor, micron pens on blick board

6" x 5 1/2"

The Lanecove Fish Market piece was the eleventh sustained investigation of a series of 15 and I chose to "investigate" buildings from my childhood in Sydney that held meaning to me. There was a mall in Lanecove that my mom used to love because it had a really nice public library that was associated with it and it had pretty convenient parking for city standards. In the mall there was a fish market and I have forgotten what it was called, so I had no real image to base this piece off of, so I created it as I remembered it, dark, small and very neat. There was always a wide selection of tropical fish and crabs proudly arranged in ice and I distinctly remember my mom always trying to talk to the Italian and Greek fishmongers. She used to ask them "where they were from originally" a question she commonly asks as she has lived in 5 countries around the world and fascinated in language, but these particular guys never received the question very well and it forever tarnished our relationship. This never bothered my mother and we continued to use Lanecove as our main fish store. I was frusturated at the end of my last piece because I was basing so much of the value off of how close I could get my recreation to the real building, the real building being the famous and celebrated Sydney Harbour Bridge. So I wanted to step away and base the value of this piece back on my own creativity as I think I was getting to close to just straight up recreating images too closely.

I wanted to continue with the same elements I have been focusing on lately, people, lines and bright color, however I had to leave out the blue sky in this piece as the actual fish market was inside a mall. I started by sketching this one out as just a brainstorming idea and the then really liked it and drew it 3 more times, trying to piece it out. I then started with watercolor layers, which I also have stayed away from this investigation as the only times I've used water color in this series I haven't liked it. I drew heavy inspiration from a piece I did last year, Il Mercato, for the 2d investigation. I finished with adding lots of detail with my trusty micron pens, trying to imitate the style of Quintin Blake, Roald Dahl's illustrator.

A challenge I faced in this piece was that I had nothing to really base it off of but I think that really worked toward my advantage, and I'm proud of how it turned out. I was unsure of how I should deal with the blank walls but I think I got too busy in my last project and I wanted to keep this one more calm and calculated. I hate using rulers, and there was always something gritty and whimsical about the fish market and I tried to accentuate that with the wobbly lines, a key aspect in this entire series.