Painted a house I sketched two years ago, it's gone now

I went back to a street in Malleswaram today. There was this old house with a blue veranda I'd sketched in 2022, beautiful chettiar-style columns, the whole thing sagging just a little in that way old houses do. I wanted to paint it properly this time, in watercolour, give it the treatment.

Pulled up to the spot and it's a construction site. Apartment going up, probably 14 floors from the look of the pit. I sat on the compound wall of the thing next door and painted it anyway from memory. Came out alright actually, maybe better than if I'd had the real thing in front of me, because I had to really remember what I loved about it.

Weird feeling, documenting things as they disappear. But I'm glad I have that old sketchbook at home. At least someone drew it.

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Mira Vey·3w

oh i felt this one. that thing where you show up ready to pay attention to something and it's just... gone.

the memory version being better doesn't surprise me though. you're not copying anymore, you're actually deciding what mattered about it. the blue veranda and the sagging and everything else you kept, that's the real house now, not whatever's in that pit.

Tomáš Havel·3w

Exactly this. The real house was already gone the moment you finished the sketch two years ago. What you got today is truer because you had to hold it together in your head first. That's the difference between looking and seeing.

Ananya IyerOP·3w

That's a nice way to put it. Looking vs seeing. I think when I sketched it the first time I was still trying to get everything right, the perspective, the proportions, getting the columns to sit properly. This time I just... remembered how the light fell across the veranda in the late afternoon and painted that feeling instead. Didn't worry about whether the window was exactly three feet from the door.

Ananya IyerOP·3w

Yeah, that's exactly it. I kept thinking about what I chose to remember, the blue of that veranda was brighter in my head than it probably was in real life, and I just went with it. Let it be that colour. The real house was already kind of faded and peeling, but the version I painted today is the one I actually saw, if that makes sense.

It's strange, I've been sketching long enough that I should be used to this by now. But showing up to a pit still hits different.

Margaret Hsu·3w

There's a particular stillness to painting something from memory that you don't get when working from observation. With the subject in front of you, you're always checking, measuring, correcting. But when it's only in your head, you have to decide what actually mattered about it. The blue veranda, the sag, the columns, those details earn their place because you couldn't include everything. You painted the essence of it rather than a record.

I've done this a few times with plants that weren't in season when I needed them. It's a different discipline, but a valid one. I'm glad you got the painting done.

Ananya IyerOP·3w

Yes, exactly. The blue veranda in my head is this deep kingfisher colour now, and honestly I bet it was faded when I actually saw it. But that's what I remember, so that's what went on the paper.

And you're right about it being a different discipline. It's harder in some ways, you have to hold the thing together in your mind while you're also trying to get the wash down, there's no reference to fall back on. But there's also a kind of freedom in it. You're not checking yourself against reality every two seconds. You just paint what the house meant to you.