Towne Centre (Annapolis Travel Series)

Towne Centre (Annapolis Travel Series)

Towne Centre is located at 1906 Towne Centre Blvd, Annapolis, MD.


  • Music Video Created by Katherine Barnett (beatnikblends)
  • Song in video: Horizon Ending by Soft and Furious

Towne Centre is my first design for 2019 and the Annapolis Travel Series. I have a long story to tell about this one. Grab a cup of tea (green tea… lol) and read on if you’re interested.

Annapolis… such a beautiful town. I think it’s a mix of being a sea town and historic town. There were quite a few historical sites/statues downtown and I will be featuring two in this travel series. There was a section of the city which transports you to a sea town called Ego Alley. There were lots of boats, stores, and restaurants. The whole experience walking downtown was very calm and relaxing especially walking towards Ego Alley.

The Towne Centre was my second stop while visiting Annapolis. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do once I got to the Towne Centre. I figured in the very short time I had to plan this trip I would go there and see if there were any places that caught my eye design wise. I did see some photos online and knew this was a good place to visit. I’m so happy I visited this place. The area was so beautiful, felt serene. I felt like I was back in downtown Hartford and it was incredible. The area had almost the same aesthetic to it. The main building location in Towne Centre that housed several businesses was beautiful. I was thinking at the time that I needed to get a photo of this building. I was able to get a perfect center shot. The building is next to a traffic circle. All buildings nearby were perfect aligned with the circle and I just love the look. I must admit I’m not describing this well at all. I knew several years ago that being a writer is not my destiny. lol 🙂 Working with color is much more fun.

I noticed that brown is a heavily featured color downtown, along with blue. I thought I was seeing brown everywhere downtown. Brown was definitely showcased in quite a few buildings around the State Capitol and heading towards Ego Alley. Every album will have a theme and I definitely want to feature brown in each design for this travel series. It’s going to be a challenge because I don’t normally work with that color. I don’t like brown. But…. I love challenges when it comes to color and I absolutely love this design. Textures is always an issue but I found a nice balance testing out a new texture and blending it with my old finishing texture. Asphalt, sandstone, brushstroke, and colored edges were all part of the final texture. I like to push myself with color. I love this travel series so much already. I made several variations of this design. The thumbnail for this post is a personal favorite. The thumbnail version that’s on Youtube is the original version of this design. I’m thinking about posting each one on social media. I had a lot of designs on Google Plus and that’s going away soon. I’m thinking about posting on Instagram and Pinterest. There’s one version that has lots of purple and is more abstract. I love that one too… In the end, I really enjoyed making this design. I’m eager to work with brown again and explore more blends. It’s an endless adventure with color!

The abstract drawing… Well, that’s another long story. To keep it short and not sweet at all: I mentioned in the podcast that I had a meltdown before heading to Annapolis. I made the drawing during that time. I want to stay positive here and making that drawing is anything but positive but I wanted to use it because it’s all part of this travel series. As I said in the podcast, if I didn’t go through that meltdown, I wouldn’t have gone to Annapolis and I thought adding that darkness in a positive experience reflects the purpose of this travel series and it’s part of me. The light and the dark…

The hardest of part of making this design was the music video. It was difficult to say the least. The program I was using to speed up my videos stopped working. I tried using Sony Vegas and it doesn’t speed up the videos as much as I would like. I had Velocity on max and it still didn’t help me. I had to find another program to use. I ran into more problems while making this video. I rendered it 5 times because of an error that I couldn’t see in Sony Vegas so I had to edit out footage to fix the error. I am using an old version of Sony Vegas so that could be the reason why I run into problems with that program. It took me 3 days to complete the video. It was truly a headache at times. However… I love how the video looks. I wanted to add something different to the video. Test out different effects. Play around with the design more. Have it dance more with the beats. I want every video to be different from the last especially for my albums. I’m really happy overall with the design and music video. I’m going to continue this journey on Saturday with another design. Hopefully, I can meet my June 9th deadline. Souihaite moi bonne chance!

Katherine