After my Tucson ink drawings I have now made a new Tucson series: city scenes on canvas board. They are colourful, exotic, relaxing, cozy city scenes featuring lots of cacti, barred window panes, inviting doorways and some botanical panoramas.
I showed you the base layers already in my last post about the Tucson ink drawings. And now it’s time to show you the next step: the first layer of the foreground.
MY NEW TUCSON SERIES ON CANVAS BOARD
Within this series I am trying to capture an urban desert feel. A place where human beings meet wild nature. Where they shelter themselves from the hot sun, the sand storms and the pressing heat. But also where at the same time desert plants flourish. The cacti climb through the barred windows. Agaves are larger than life. Potted succulents flower and on the outskirts of town large cacti stand in group formation surrounded by small, bright desert flowers.
TUCSON SERIES IN THE MAKING: TIME LAPSE
Video 1 and 2: Time lapses of the base layers
Video 3: Watch me paint two of them in real time.
INSPIRATION FOR MY NEW TUCSON SERIES
My friend Robert de Garde travels the whole wide world and makes the most wonderful pictures. His exotic city scenes of Tucson immediately caught my eye. I asked if I could paint his compositions. He agreed and here we are!
I made ink drawings to make the compostions ‘mine’. That means some depth is off, some plants and pots become enormously large compared to their window pane, but hey, this is The Fran Zone haha! After that I got to work with oil paint to really give them that colourful exotic look I was after.
SPECS OF MY NEW TUCSON SERIES
This Tucson series consists of 16 canvas boards that measure 24 x 30 cm. They come unframed ensuring you will have maximum opportunity to place them wherever you like.
A canvas board?
A canvas board is a piece of firm cardboard lined (or stretched) with cotton canvas. Canvas boards are very thin compared to stretch canvasses on wooden frames and wooden panels. Compared to paper, canvas boards have a heavier quality, so they can stand upward by themselves. This makes the artworks flexible: you don’t have to frame or hang them if you don’t want to. You can just place them on your cupboard or windowsill. And move them very easily.
I found these playful city scenes just perfect on small canvas boards.
THE NEXT STEP FOR MY TUCSON SERIES
The next step for my Tucson series is going to be more colour! I can’t wait to put all those lovely complex colours I mixed onto the canvas. I am working on them as we speak, so I will get back to you very shortly with the end results.
MORE CITY SCENES
If you like these Tucson city scenes in oil paint I’d strongly recommend the original Tucson ink drawings. You might also like the Gerona ink drawings and the ink Fruits in colour.