Feb. Paintout: S.F.

So, the Virtual Paintout for the month of February is the San Francisco bay area.  What a lot of opportunities there are there!  Bill Guffey (the genius mastermind behind Virtual Paintout) has drawn the boundaries from Santa Rosa in the north, to San Jose in the south and east to Antioch.  That is a lot of territory in which to find subjects to paint and draw! 

That being said, I knew exactly where to find my first location: 

48 Grattan St. in the city of San Franciso. 

This is where my husband and his two brothers and their mother lived.  The house is a three story “flat,” and the family lived on the third floor while his grandparents lived below them and were the owners.

I did the painting from Google street view showing how the house looks today.  But as a twist, I included a drawing from a snapshot of my husband and his family out in front of the house on Easter Sunday in 1952.  (There is actually more of the house next door showing in the snapshot, with its arches and columns.) 

My husband was amazed at the size of the trees on this street now.  When he was living there, the street had few trees and the ones that were there were quite small.  What a difference almost sixty years can make!