Panaderyang May Hardin – a pencil and charcoal sketch.
When I brought the family van to a shop along Taft Avenue for minor repairs recently, I was happily surprised to spot this bakery across the road. Aside from having a place I could buy food from while waiting for my vehicle, I saw that the panaderya kept most of its open area as a garden.
I found it unbelievable that there was still a patch of land kept as a lush garden along a street as busy as Taft Avenue. The owners could have made more money using the space for something else: an extension of the bakery, a high rise condominium, or as a row of commercial spaces. Real estate prices in this area must make this lot worth quite a fortune already yet the owners chose to grow trees and shrubs beside their bakery. The lot really stood out for me as it provided a refreshing break from the almost endless array of greasy concrete walls, rusting roofs, unkept driveways, and trash everywhere that made the street for the most part an eyesore. The different shades of green from an assortment of leaves under the sun or in the shade just made the wait so much more bearable for me. Magenta bougainvillea flowers glistening against their dark green background were too irresistible not to draw that hot humid afternoon.
I usually find myself drawn to the most ordinary of objects or scenes when I search for subjects to paint. The bakery tucked in between commercial buildings may at first glance seem ordinary but as it continues to exist in the midst of dirty concrete, smog, the rush of buses, jeeps, other vehicles, and pedestrians too busy to notice, the juxtaposition creates a visual oasis for tired eyes and soul.
Panaderyang May Hardin – a pencil and charcoal sketch.
When I brought the family van to a shop along Taft Avenue for minor repairs recently, I was happily surprised to spot this bakery across the road. Aside from having a place I could buy food from while waiting for my vehicle, I saw that the panaderya kept most of its open area as a garden.
I found it unbelievable that there was still a patch of land kept as a lush garden along a street as busy as Taft Avenue. The owners could have made more money using the space for something else: an extension of the bakery, a high rise condominium, or as a row of commercial spaces. Real estate prices in this area must make this lot worth quite a fortune already yet the owners chose to grow trees and shrubs beside their bakery. The lot really stood out for me as it provided a refreshing break from the almost endless array of greasy concrete walls, rusting roofs, unkept driveways, and trash everywhere that made the street for the most part an eyesore. The different shades of green from an assortment of leaves under the sun or in the shade just made the wait so much more bearable for me. Magenta bougainvillea flowers glistening against their dark green background were too irresistible not to draw that hot humid afternoon.
I usually find myself drawn to the most ordinary of objects or scenes when I search for subjects to paint. The bakery tucked in between commercial buildings may at first glance seem ordinary but as it continues to exist in the midst of dirty concrete, smog, the rush of buses, jeeps, other vehicles, and pedestrians too busy to notice, the juxtaposition creates a visual oasis for tired eyes and soul.
