A Fantastic Morning in Porto

A Fantastic Morning in Porto
Originally uploaded by randubnick.

Here's another little glimpse of Porto. It was a fantastic morning indeed, but the title also refers to the fact that I have colorized the image and taken liberties with the color. This image began as a quick photo that I took early one morning of a little street in the Foz in Porto during my very first visit. Tonight I cropped the photo to get this image. I liked the view of the street with its patterns and shapes, but I decided to enhance the color just a bit. Lots of the buildings in Porto are muted pastel colors, and in the Foz, faded with time. I decided to brighten the color, to get an idea of what this might have looked like when the colors were new. I opened the image in Painter IX and used transparent digital pastel. First, I used slightly brighter colors that were already in the image. Then I pushed the gray towards muted violet, and added just a bit of bright pink on one building. I used just a touch of bright pink on the foliage above the wall, so the suggestion of bougainvillea is part of the fantasy. This image is not true to the colors of the original photo, but it is certainly true to the excitement of finally being in Portugal.