Skye Lee Smith likes to paint memories.
Smith, a Broad Ripple artist, paints watercolors of Indianapolis homes and landmarks. While staying true to the architecture and lines of the buildings, she mixes that realism with a touch of nostalgia.
Memories of spaces are usually romanticized a bit, Smith said. People erase blemishes on the brick, forget scratches on the concrete, and remember the slightly greener grass.
So when Smith creates the images, she omits all the non-memorable details, sometimes making the sky a little lighter, or coloring flowers with more buds and blooms. When she paints a house, she captures the important things that homeowners remember, such as the tree in the front yard. When painting a landmark or historic building, she likes to change the lighting and focus on some features over others.
“I’m trying to paint it,” Smith said, “just as you remember it.”
The painting process
About four years ago, 29-year-old Smith bought her first house and decided to celebrate it by painting a watercolor of the outside.
She loved it, her husband thought it was cool and so did others after she posted it online.
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She began working nights on assignments almost immediately after returning home from her job as a teacher.
Since she started, she has been painting pictures for homeowners, real estate agents who wanted to give their clients a memorable welcome or parting gift, and sometimes for people who would like a painting of a place that is memorable to them, such as their wedding venue. She has also created paintings of landmarks and specific locations on TV shows that people can buy prints of on Etsy and Facebook.
In addition to prints, customers can also purchase various items with their work printed on them, such as water glasses or wood art.
About a year ago, Smith gave up teaching to devote herself full-time to her business.
Now she spends most of her days in her home office, sitting amidst unpacked goods and walls covered in inspirational quotes, some recycled from her former classrooms. One of the sticky notes on her desk read, “Be your favorite version of yourself.”
Her days consist mostly of going through her painting process: collecting images of the building, talking to the client, outlining the structures with a pencil and ruler (to keep the edges straight), over-inking those lines with a micro-ink pen, and then to to paint. Painting typically takes a few days because the watercolor paper needs to dry between each step to keep it from becoming a “sloppy mess,” Smith said.
Over the years she has developed ideas on what colors to use for wood and green, some tricks to paint more efficiently, such as B. painting the dark shadows and black windows last, and techniques for drawing and painting brick walls.
“It feels very intuitive,” Smith said of painting the middle section of the brick. “It’s less about accurately representing what’s happening in front of you and more about just the feel of that brick.”
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“Something a photograph can’t do‘
Smith said she loves painting houses because each one tells a story. When the customer asks for a painting of a childhood home, she likes to hear about the memories made in it. If the painting is for an elderly homeowner, she will want to know the meaning behind the flowers they have chosen.
“To learn why they chose these parts of their home is very special,” she said.
Part of capturing these houses is painting them to match a memory rather than directly copying a photograph.
Once she painted the house of a woman who took great pride in her landscaping. As her plants bloomed at different times of the year, Smith was able to create a painting with each rose, tulip, and daffodil in bloom.
“It’s something a photograph can’t do,” she said.
Smith’s client Amy Jones, a broker for @properties in Indianapolis, said she buys Smith’s paintings for her clients because the paintings are as individual and detailed as an architectural drawing.
Last year, Jones completed a real estate sale for a family who had just lost their mother. She commissioned two paintings of the house for the woman’s children and requested that the garage be a little bluer than it appeared in the submitted images due to the importance of the color.
“The kids were always like, ‘Mom, why did you paint the garage so blue? It’s abominable. It doesn’t add up,” Jones said of the family’s interactions. “But it was her mother’s favorite color.”
After the kids received the painting, they were over the moon and talked about how Smith even got the blue color right, Jones said.
“It was special to her,” she said, “because someone paid attention to that little detail.”
Indianapolis architecture
In addition to painting homes, Smith also seeks to embody Indianapolis architecture in her art.
Smith moved to Indianapolis to attend the Herron School of Art and Design at IUPUI and never left.
“I loved the city and it was just so beautiful,” she said. “I just wanted to stay there long.”
For her, part of this beauty comes from Indianapolis architecture: the artistic and eclectic styles of Fountain Square, the bungalow houses of Broad Ripple, and the streets with a mix of modern and classic styles. An example of this is Massachusetts Avenue, where the Athenaeum, a building designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016, can be found just blocks from FortyFive Degrees, a modern sushi restaurant and bar.
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“I just love the contrast between touring a historic building and a super hip bar,” she said. “It shows how different we all are in Indianapolis and how we can find joy in all of those places.”
To capture her love for this architecture, Smith began researching and painting various Indianapolis landmarks. Some of those she has painted include the Indianapolis Canal Walk, Union Station, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, the entrance to the Indianapolis Zoo, and Dancing Ann on Mass Ave. Last Thursday, she completed her paintings of the Vogue Theater and Rainbow Bridge, two recognizable buildings in her neighborhood.
Smith recently began working on additional plays in the Irvington area. She said she was drawn to the area for the Halloween festival, which will mark his 76th birthdayth Year this October and the “spookier undertone” of the architecture.
Some of the locations she has painted in this neighborhood are the Kyle Oak Tree, the Irvington Masonic Lodge and the Irvington Theatre, a plant shop. Her painting of the lodge is displayed in another shop in Irvington, and the plant shop displays the paintings of her premises in-house. She said she plans to finish more paintings around Halloween.
Smith’s husband Levi Smith said the two explored more of Irvington that they had not previously visited because she began painting and making connections in the area. They both fell in love with the city in college and Smith’s work over the past two years has allowed her and her husband to explore more of it.
“It makes me feel a little bit more connected to our communities,” he said, “and I know it applies to them in a bigger way.”
remember home
While Smith’s paintings capture the architecture and history of Indianapolis, that’s not why she started painting and continues to paint buildings.
Smith began painting with watercolors because of the reactions she saw to her first Facebook post. She continued her business because she wanted to transfer that feeling to other people and help them remember home, be it their house or their city.
Smith keeps the painting of her house on a bookshelf in her living room. One of Jones’ clients keeps Smith’s painting of his first home in his second home.
One of Smith’s pet projects was to paint a photograph of someone’s childhood home that had been destroyed in a fire. The person had never taken a full photograph of their home, so Smith constructed one by looking at several photos taken on the porch and in their yard. She was able to give them a lasting picture of their homeland.
“It’s hard when you don’t have a photo,” Smith said. “It was just cool that I could do that for her.”
For more information on Smith’s art, visit www.lovelyhomesbyskye.com or www.etsy.com/shop/LovelyHomesbySkye.
Contact IndyStar reporter Madison Smalstig at MSmalstig@gannett.com.