Sustained Investigation 2

The Walk to School

gouache, sharpie, oil sticks, oil pastels

15"x 19 1/2"

The Walk to School piece was the second sustained investigation of a series of 15 and I chose to "investigate" buildings from my childhood in Sydney that held meaning to me. The buildings that I drew here are some of the more memorable buildings that I walked past every single day going to school. Gourmet Pizza Pantry was an Italian pizza shop in a town filled with Italian pizza shops, I never once saw anyone go in or out of and it survived covid and it is still open to this day. Tab sports betting was just a regular old sports betting location but I remeber walking past at 8:45 and there was already people in the building smoken cigarettes and placing aimless bets on horses.

When crafting this piece I first made a super lose sketch of the buildings and then used gouache as a blue wash for the sky. Then I wrote the directions for getting to school, I wish I could have done this from memory but I had to use google maps to help a little. I used oil sticks for all the base colors and blended with my fingers and then used oil pastels for the harder lines and edges.

This project was a serious stroll down memory lane, I really wanted to have the directions from my house to school be incorporated into this project to build relevency. I also felt like it helped support the memory of the buildings. I'm not super pleased with how this turned out but I realeaized I kind of over-estimated what I could do with oil sticks, and you can't get very percise with them.