Celebrate Hillsboro 2014

Celebrate Hillsboro is an all day festival to show off what the city has to offer. There will be everything from music and art to classic cars and health information.

I’ll be in the arts village on the Courthouse Lawn demonstrating mixed media mapmaking.

What I’ll be working on

I started out by going to Google Maps and grabbing a screen shot of the city. I opened that file in Photoshop and traced out the roads, buildings and trees. I printed out these maps to use in different ways.

I used transfer paper to trace this onto watercolor paper. I’ll be using tube watercolors on one, watercolor pencils on another. I also printed it out on cover weight paper and colored it a couple of different ways with pens and pencils. I’ll be printing those out and making cards and envelopes.

Painterly approach

This is a more abstract painting I did of the whole city of Hillsboro. The buildings are not literal, and I only depicted some of the roads. In this one I was more interested in showing the contrast between the dense suburban area and the agricultural land that surrounds it. It’s one of the things I like about living here. I have the city amenities and I can drive/cycle a couple of miles and get into lovely countryside. I’m also fond of the green parks and trees that thread through the area.

Come visit

The festival is 9 AM – 4 PM Saturday July 19. It’s located on E. Main Street in Downtown Hillsboro OR between 1st and 5th. Lots of fun things to do.

You can see the whole schedule on the City of Hillsboro website. Use the links on the left side to explore the offerings.