BY DORIS LUDTKE

What: David Zanley, 45, a Wyandotte resident.

What: An architect for the past 17 years with Yops & Wilkie in Wyandotte, Zanley has always been interested in art and drawing. Six years ago, he took up painting with watercolor as a hobby.

Why: “I enjoy it,” Zanley said. “As an architect, I was familiar with drawing techniques. I always wanted to make myself better with the artistic end of it.”

“It’s different from what I do at work, where the project is instigated by someone else and has a particular program and budget. In painting, there’s total freedom. I can interpret any way I want. It’s a way to express myself.”

Zanley added that his watercolor class is a nice place to go on Thursday evenings. He studies at the Paint Box in Lincoln Park with noted downriver artist and teacher Shirley Ciungan of Grosse Ile.

Background: Zanley grew up in Southgate, graduating from the former Shafer High School and Lawrence Institute of Technology. He received his masters degree in Architecture from the University of Minnesota.

As an architect, Zanley sketches and produces renderings daily. Six years ago, his wife, Joyce, gave him a series of painting classes with Ciungan as a Christmas gift.

“I liked it immediately,” Zanley said, adding that Ciungan teaches how to use, match and mix colors, and also a lot about technique and equipment. She sets up still lifes for her students to produce, but allows them to do whatever they want.

Zanley quite often paints from photographs that are given to him by friends, or that he finds in books or magazines. Some of his favorite paintings include a still life of clay pots on a shelf that he produced in one of his early classes; and two that hang in his office – a barn in Novi and an English village. Lately, he has begun to work on larger canvases. The most recent is a bridge in Rome, with St. Peter’s Basilica in the background.