A Floral Shop Portrait from Paris, France

by Jennifer Skopp

On a recent trip to Paris, Jennifer Skopp saw this flower shop on Rue Cler. This is a street that is closed to traffic, so Parisians could do their shopping. Apparently, vehicles are allowed only to deliver the food or merchandise to the stores. There were narrow black poles that were topped with a sphere that ran parallel to the street. Jennifer saw similar poles on other streets in Paris. She learned that their purpose is to prevent people from parking in those spots and included them in the “Watercolor Store Portrait.”

This pretty scene inspired Jennifer to create a painting of this colorful shopfront. The awning is a bright turquoise and the name of the shop, Cler Fleurs, appears on the awning in white letters.  She chose to show a side view of the store, where the front is also clearly visible. There were six rows of different kinds of flowers in large planters, in front of the store, that started near the top of the window and gradually made their way to the ground level.  There were also four planters with flowers sitting on the ground, a few feet in front of the large group.

The building that houses Cler Fleurs and the surrounding buildings is white. When Jennifer was working on this “Store Portrait,” she decided to leave out the windows and other details of the buildings in the background, to keep the viewer’s attention on the flower shop. The day Jennifer photographed this shop was a cloudy day. She painted this Store Portrait as if it was a sunny day, by making one side of the store brighter than the other side and by painting shadows where she imagined they would appear on a sunny day. Jennifer painted the flowers brighter than they were in the photo and increased the amount of brightly colored flowers in the Store Portrait.