Gamla Stan

Painting of Gamla Stan, part of Stockholm, Sweden. I was looking for some city scene reference photos to practice perspective drawing, and this was suggested by a friend. Look at those colors! That place is beautiful. I hope I can visit someday.

I rather like the way it turned out. It took a long time – there’s a lot going on in the scene. When it’s blown up, I can second guess whether it’s “done”, but I’m trying not to get hung up on that kind of thing. It gets the idea across.

It was fun exploring these colors and shapes. In the process video, you can see that I used Procreate’s “drawing assist” tool to make some straight edges in the sketch layer. I didn’t keep that into the final painting because I’m not aiming for that perfect lines look. My hand is shaky, and that comes through in my work. I hope it’s improving as I practice, but I’m not going to cheat it.

My favorite parts here are discovering all the purples in the scene, layering blots of color to give texture to the snow, and getting those streaks of light projected onto the street. The bike is not great, and neither is whatever that red box thing is next to it.