Aftermath of house fire across the alleyway

Several months ago, a house across the alley from the apartment building I live in caught fire. The fire started in the attached garage, and quickly went into the house; the building hadn't been lived in for some time, and was only used as a shop to work on race cars at the local track... as such, no one was hurt, but the paint and fuel throughout the building made the fire spread very quickly. Fire shot out the windows in a manner similar to a flamethrower; and it took a while for the firefighters to contain the blaze.

Here are some pictures my aunt took the morning after with her camera phone:



This last picture shows the damage to the neighbor's house caused by the flames... the houses are roughly 12 feet apart! Fortunately, the damage was only cosmetic; the damaged siding has since been replaced.


About a week ago, a crew from the city finally came by to demolish what was left of the house. They used a huge backhoe (the type that's normally used for large-scale demolition projects) to literally "punch" what was left of the building from above! As it was raining during the demolition, I couldn't get closer to take better shots of it, but you can get the idea from this picture:


Here are some pictures of the aftermath:


Now, you can barely tell that there was ever a house there... I wonder what they'll do with the lot now.


This was certainly one of the more interesting things to happen in this neighborhood in a long time. From the scare of the fire, to the relief the next day that no one was hurt, and then finally to the fascinating process of the demolition; it was an interesting experience to have a "front-row seat" to the story unfolding just behind my home.

Keep in mind, my awe over the events would not be such if someone had been hurt.

Queen of Chaos

A new illustration of Enyo I just finished last night:

For this illustration, I wanted to go with a slightly more "artsy" approach. Since I didn't like the angle her left leg was in in the original sketch, I decided to draw her whip in her hand, and use said whip to make a border for the image. I worked out well, I think. The entire illustration, like my previous piece "Fabulous Night," uses my method of doing all of the colors with watercolor paint and then going over everything with colored pencil.

The part that took the longest amount of time was designing her card. orz

"Fabulous Night"

During the time I had off from work, I was able to get this painting done:

This piece showcases a LOT of new techniques that I've picked up through my recent lessons... as a result, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Also, for my first time trying to draw the Moon, I think that turned out well too. It seems that I'm getting the hang of fashion, as well.

Materials used (and in order, too!) :
Bristol board
watercolor paints
markers (Prismacolor and Sharpie)
colored pencils (Prismacolor, and a couple of Rose-Art)
oil pastels

I don't know quite how Blogger will go about resizing the image, but on my DA account, I've added the option of downloading this in wallpaper size: This picture on DA

The painting was inspired by the song "Masquerade" by Kaya... the title of the painting actually refers to the secondary title of the song.