A garden on a power pole

This week's project was transforming the telephone pole in front of the house on Yukon Street.  There is a lot of graffiti in the neighborhood and recently people have begun to take back the poles by painting them with designs and images.  I spent a lot of time thinking about what to paint on the pole. It's right in front of the house and so anything painted on it has to work with house as a background.


I decided to paint a garden of hollyhocks.  It took me three days to complete it.  Here's how it evolved.

I wanted a blue sky background so began by painting the pole blue with some white clouds.  Then the sketch of the flowers.  Even Harry got into the act with paintbrush.   first attempt was garish and floaty but we kept working on it.

On the second day I added more dark at the bottom to ground the pole and then made the flowers at the top smaller and added more buds.

On day three I refined the colors and attempted a bit of shading. The final touch was the flying bird.

There still needs to be more detail around the bottom but I think it's close to finished.  It's not exactly what I had pictured in my head but I think it's an improvement over the original ugly power pole.  If I get tired of it I can simply paint over it with a color to match the house--but for now I like the garden on the power pole.  Soon I'll take your on a tour of the other arty power poles in Fernwood.