Folsom – A Hundred Houses

While I was drawing this a man in a came out of the house, down the driveway, across the street and stood in front of me.
The man, who was in a black suit, with white shirt and red tie, looked down at me and said- ‘I was watching you out of the window for a while, well, me and my wife were, and we wondered what you are doing.’
‘I’m drawing your house,’ I said, ‘for a project I am doing, drawing 100 houses.’
Then I smiled.
The man smiled too.
The man continued talking to me, but my attention was diverted by his wife, who was standing at the end of their driveway, her hand at her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun, looking over at us.
‘We’re just on our way to church.’ the man said, ‘I wonder if you will be here when we get back.’
‘No,’ I told the man, putting my iPad down on the grass and standing up.
‘I think I am about to lose the sun, and with that goes all the bright colors.’
I smiled again and the man looked up over his shoulder to the sun in the sky.
‘You’re right,’ he said, pointing sky-ward, ‘there’s a big old cloud heading this way.’
I looked up at the sky, and he was right.
‘That cloud is about to gobble up the sun.’ I said.
The man then said have a good day, and I said the same to him, and he walked away.
‘It’s nothing important, honey,’ I heard him say to his wife when he reached the other side of the street, ‘It’s just some gentleman drawing a picture of our house.’

Today’s podcast- Unravel Juanita, about Juanita Nielsen who disappeared from Sydney’s Kings Cross in 1975, never to be seen again.

While I was drawing this a man in a car stopped in the middle of the street, right in front of me, leaned out of the window and said- ‘What colour would you paint that relief there up above the window on the right?’
I looked up at it.
‘I’d leave it white,’ I told him, ‘otherwise it might stand out too much.’
‘Originally it was brightly coloured so I want to paint it.’ he said.
‘Well, maybe paint it the colour of the doors and window sills.’
The man looked up toward the relief, and then back at me.
‘I really don’t know.’
‘There’s a website called kuler,’ I told him, ‘it’s an Adobe website, and you upload an image of your house and it will generate a palette of colours based on the house, and you could choose something from the palette to paint it.’
‘What was it called?’
‘Kuler,’ I said, spelling it out, ‘from Adobe, you know, the software company.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ he said, sitting there in the middle of the road, his car idling.
‘Where are you from?’ he called out to me.
I told him.
‘Thought so.’ he said, ‘My daughter’s just gone there.’
‘Nice.’ I said, ‘Where exactly?’
‘Sydney.’
‘What for?’ I asked him ‘Work?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘chasing a boy.’
Then he shook his head and laughed.
Then a woman came out of the house and got in the passenger side of the man’s car.
He turned to her.
‘She’s from Australia.’ he said.
‘Oh!’ said the woman, leaning forward.
‘Our daughter’s just gone there.’ she said, loudly.
‘I know,’ I called back, ‘she’s gone chasing a boy.’
We all laughed at that, and then we said bye and they drove off down the road and I looked at that relief above the right window and pondered what colour I would paint it.