Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Butchart Gardens

The Sunken Garden

Watercolour and crayon

©2010 Charlene Brown

This is the ‘realistic’ starter painting for another Victoria landmark I intend to make into an abstract someday soon. I’ve made it a little unreal by telescoping the perspective and raising the viewpoint to include waterfalls, pools and fountains not actually visible from this terrace at the top of the ramp down to the sunken garden.

This spectacular garden, now a national historic site, was begun by Jenny Butchart in 1904, when she decided something needed to be done about the gaping hole left where limestone had been quarried for the family cement business. If you want to see what this wondrous place really looks like, click here.

I think I’ll do one more ‘realistic’ painting of some part of Victoria, then abstract all three and post the best one. Maybe I’ll ask you to guess which one it is…