2011 Pen and Ink Project: The Victorian House (11-30-11)

I like our former neighbors, Judy and Louis H., and thinking about them, their 109-year-old Queen Anne style house in Southeast Portland, originally built by Oregon painter Eliza Barchus comes to mind.

These drawing are closer to sketches because I wanted to be as accurate as possible. While we were chatting one day, I took a few photographs of Judy on the front porch and of Louis standing inside the ornate front door. I then made light landmark points on the paper with a pencil, and carefully worked with my pen inlude lines where I wanted them. When the drawing was finished, I erased all the pencil marks.

Victorian House in Verviers (ca. 11-08)

For all the talk about houses, as this pretty much the focus of my new blog, I want to include a few photos of my absolute Best of Best, the ultimate reference of what I am looking for in a house: high style, and a moody personality, or, as my daughter Valérie would say, "gloomy, slightly impressive."
But there is no such thing on the West Coast...and if there ever was, it would be in a place like rotten part of Los Angeles or San Francisco, would have been abandoned, condemned and/or demolished...
This gem of a Victorian house is in my hometown in Belgium. Like the setting for a 19th century dark novel, it is precariously
set high on the side of a hill and accessed by a narrow dead-end cobblestone path bordered by the river; a tall spiked cast-iron fence secludes it from intruders. But the modern world has encroached: the freeway runs right over the top of the house.

The house's name is Béribou.