Building Investigation 7

Batty View

micron pens, white ink pen, gouache, water color

4"x 8 1/2"

The Batty View piece was the seventh sustained investigation of a series of 15 and I chose to "investigate" buildings from my childhood in Sydney that held meaning to me. This isn't necessarily one building in focus like some of my last projects have been, rather the whole downtown of Sydney which we could see from the backyard of our house in Gladesville. The other thing we could see from our house was the fruit bats all taking flight at dusk from their various hideouts in the lush city. Often we would eat dinner watching the sun set on the city while the fruit bats all took off for their night of scavenging.

My dad was always amazed by the chaos and disorder caused by the bats, they were quite entertaining to watch but they were really bad flyers, unlike a group of birds. Sometimes they would land in the trees by our house and they would hit the trees so hard it would shake. I wanted to paint a skyline of the city but also highlight the chaos caused by the bats. I didn't just want to have chaos because during the day it was quite a peaceful view, so I contrasted this into one panorama style piece.

I procrastinated the hell out of this project and really didn't even know what medium or composition I was going to have until the night before it was due. I struggled trying to pick out what would by the "nighttime version" of colors that I had used on the left. I liked using watercolor and gouache together and I also liked experimenting by making two pieces into one.