The challenge for this week’s Documented Life Project was to do something “Monochromatic: use shades, tints and hues of one color.”

While I was in New York, on one of my walks, I became fascinated with the designs on the ironworks on the fences and balconies and windows of so many of the old buildings. So I began taking pictures of ones I liked to use for future creative inspiration. Every time I was out my eyes were drawn to the abundance of iron design because it’s just not something you see much of where I live. I showed my pictures to Melinda and we decided to each use them as inspiration for this challenge.

Jan:
When I first saw this set of windows, I knew I wanted to use them in a challenge. For my monochromatic challenge, I chose to draw the ironwork from one window and include the brickwork. The grandkids insisted the color I worked with should be shades of red. My medium of choice was my red and pink gelatos used as watercolor paint.Melinda:
I chose two pictures for my page. I really liked this fence, and I liked the variations of color on the windows.I started off drawing the fence and also drew the window panes for my background. Using mom’s gelatos I colored the “window panes” in different shades of blue. I drew the lines in blue with water color pencil then soften them with a wet brush. At first I wanted my fence to pop out in a bright white color, so I painted it with gesso and outlined it with black sharpie pen. After starting at it a long time trying to figure out what to do next, I decided I didn’t like it white. I colored over it with a light blue water color pencil.

I had a very difficult time finishing this page. I couldn’t figure out what to add to it after the window and the fence. Everything I thought of just made it look cluttered or covered up too much of what I had already done.

Even after looking at a bunch of quotes, I was still not figuring out what to do.

I began thinking about the water that inspired the guy to do the different colors of window panes, and the word that kept coming to mind was “perspective.” Perspective means “a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view” and “true understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion.” When you have an understanding of what is important in life, it changes you. That is something I have definitely learned over the years. So I decided to keep my page simple in order to highlight the shades on the window panes and not cover them up so much.

Ninja Boy:
Six year old Ninja Boy thought what we were doing looked like fun and wanted to participate. I let him look through my photos and choose one he wanted to draw. He liked this one:He decided to make a monochromatic drawing using pencil. I love his attention to details.