There’s a spot on Interstate 5 when you’re heading northbound into downtown Seattle. The Space Needle shows up next to the Smith Tower and appears as if it’s right downtown amongst all the other buildings.
I discovered this view one day when I was stuck in traffic on the morning commute and became obsessed with getting a good photo of it. So many things had to be synchronized just right, the morning light, traffic had to be backed up at just that point with no trucks blocking the view, and there’s only a second to click off a couple of shots.
This took me about a year and a half and several hundred shots to finally capture the view and get an image I could work with.
I love taking digital photos and playing with them in some graphic tools on my PC to render it into a manipulated drawing. Then I go in and free hand it to add or erase. When it looks the way I want I print it out and use colored pencils or markers or paint it using watercolors. Then I take a photo of the painting or scan it depending on the image size and turn it back into a digital format so I can do the final touch up one the colors, contrast, shadows, and saturation etc.
Needle and Towers was done with a little bit of all of the above techniques. I’m going to have it printed on canvas so I can hang it on a wall in my dining area. Can't wait to see how it turns out.
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