A Little House Up North in Ink and Watercolor
If there’s one thing you can count on with an Up North house, it’s trees. Lots of trees. And when you’re trying to fit the house, garage, landscaping and what feels like an entire forest onto a 5×7-inch piece of paper, things get interesting.
This custom ink and watercolor house portrait was commissioned as a gift for my client’s parents who live up in Thompsonville, Michigan. The challenge was fitting all the important pieces into one small composition, including three large trees in front of the house, little garden areas with teeny tiny bushes and the detached garage. I trimmed back the bottoms of the foreground trees just enough to reveal more of the home’s second story while keeping the wooded setting that makes it feel so distinctly Up North.
There was also plenty of detail to squeeze in, from the shake siding and little light fixture over the front door to a second entrance tucked in back. I used more saturated colors, texture and ink details in the foreground, then softened the trees behind the house with looser, less defined washes. That little shift in detail helps create depth, so the house and landscaping stand out instead of getting swallowed by the forest.
Five by seven inches might not sound like much room, but apparently it’s enough for a house, a garage and approximately one million bushes and trees.
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