My idea was to capture the mood of a place I really enjoyed getting to know on my last vacation before Covid-19.

It is a tiny village in north Argentinian patagonia called Villa Meliquina, it was occupied recently and has around 200 permanent residents and an increasing amount of tourists passing by during the summer. Residents claim to be self-sufficient: all houses produce their own solar power and the city itself relies on wind power (it is veeeery windy by the lake), there is no police station or public office. And in the middle of the mostly empty self constructed wooden houses almost the same color of the dusty road and ochre bushes, there is a big colorful  firestation, that I learnt afterwards that was run by volunteer local residents for it is a dry area subject to fires. I took lots of pictures there and I wanted to paint the fire station ever since I came back. 

I selected three reference pictures, but I ended up using mostly two of them, because the beautiful yellow flowers seemed a bit too much information as the painting was taking shape. I managed to add some tiny yellow dots or stains, but without putting them on the forefront as I sketched initially.

 

The result was...

I was very pleased with it! It is so nice to make something interesting with a place you felt connected to. 

 

Thanks for another good exercise Camilla :)