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Paris Rooftops

Another rooftop scene washed with black tea, though coffee might been more apt for Paris. I want to celebrate Paris's commitment to corrugated, slate-blue metal roofs, as explored by the titular cat in A Cat in Paris. 
I enjoyed painting in darker and lighter tones over the middle tea tint. In past projects I have used Micron fineliners under my wash work because their ink doesn't blur, but I often find their lines too even, which makes the drawing feel contrived, mindlessly consistent in the weight of the line rather than heedful of the weight of the objects. For this project I returned to a college technique of drawing with a sharpened dowel and black ink to create some of the beefier, sketchy lines around the outside of the buildings because I can vary the weight more with pressure.
Some details aren't explored with ink to give greater emphasis to others: a tree in the courtyard, smaller buildings in the background. 
As I drew, I kept recalling advice about how to define which lines should be drawn heavily and which should be drawn lightly in a complex drawing to give objects appropriate weight. According to the "ant line" rule, if an ant could crawl over a line in the subject and completely disappear from sight, then that line should be drawn more heavily than the others. The number of ants I imagined roving the many angles is somewhat unfair to the residents of these apartments



And just for fun, here are some photos of me in Paris a very, very long time ago.





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