It was a day of learning

I painted this afternoon in Catherine Gibon's landscape class.  It was a beautiful day to paint.  About -8 C with a slight breeze.  It was cloudy when we started but every once in a while the sun would come out and light up the snow in glorious warm yellows and wonderful cool shadows.

I tried very unsuccessfully to capture the warm sun on the distant snow, the cool shadows in the foreground, the remains of the old dam and the waterfall.  It was too much to focus on and after two and a half hours I was cold and couldn't properly concentrate.  Cathy suggested that I work smaller than the 11" X 14" that I normally paint so that I don't have as much board to cover.  I also need to have one focal point and not three or four.  All in all it was a great day to be outside painting.

Grindstone Creek

It was a magnificent day to paint.  It was -8 C but there was almost no wind and the sun was warm.  Ten of us gathered at Hidden Valley Park and everyone had a great day.

I am still experimenting.  This was painted with Cyan, Magenta and Yellow with a touch of Burnt Sienna to help with the greys and of course White.  I had a lot of fun with this one.  I was attracted to the scene by the almost burnt sienna coloured grasses and grey trees against the yellows and warm blues in the snow.  I painted the snow and was told by the others to cease and desist because it was finished.  I may come back and do this one again with the grass and trees included but I will bow to the collective intelligence and leave this one for now.

I am feeling energized.  I love getting out and painting in the winter and it is a treat to have so many friends that feel the same way.

Hidden Valley Snow

It was a fantastic day to be outside doing anything and the bright warm sun on the snow made for some great painting opportunities.  It was about -3 C and very sunny.  In hindsight I should have looked for a scene with shadows on the snow however I did have fun with this.

This painting was done using only cyan, magenta, yellow and white.  I am having fun playing with these colours.  I am finding that I can mix a very broad range of very intense hues from these three.  Instead of fighting to prevent mud I am having to neutralize my mixtures to make them less intense and this is coming from someone who loves intense colour.

Still Here

Has it really been over a month since I posted.  I have been busy and painting but I have been struggling and haven't painted anything that I thought was worth posting.  I have been overworking everything and producing lots of mud.

I decided, this week, to shake things up a bit by changing up my palette. I did some research on the Cyan-Magenta-Yellow colour wheel and decided to play with it.  Having grown up with Red, Yellow and Blue as the primary colours I refused to believe that you could mix red from two other colours but guess what?  Magenta and a little yellow do indeed make red.  I also discovered that the new colours were all transparent so it was almost impossible to get mud.

This portrait was painted using only hansa yellow, phthalo blue, quin. magenta and white on a board toned with transparent iron oxide.  It is terrible because I spent more time scrubbing off than painting on and I used far too much white but it was fun and I learned a lot.  It will take some practice to get good blues by mixing cyan and magenta and good reds with yellow and magenta.  I will add reds and blues to my palette but I want to play with the very limited palette until I get to know them.  I may even go back to my original palette.  Who knows.

I also took my solo show at St James Anglican Church down this week.  Debbie is happy because some of her favourite paintings have returned home to our walls.  I ended up selling eight paintings so it was, in my opinion very successful.

Painting Snow

I have been having so much fun painting with oils. I use them mostly straight out of the tube because I love the texture.  It is the one thing that oils do better than any other medium.  I may however have to start using a medium to thin the paint because while it doesn't freeze it does get very thick.

While painting portraits in the Burlington Fine Art Association studio yesterday some of us discussed painting today.  What a great idea that turned out to be.  We headed down to Valley Inn Rd to paint some snow.  It was a fantastic day.  About -3 C with the sun occasionally peaking out through gaps in the clouds.  Five of us showed up to paint and I think that we are all happy with the results.  I know that I am.  This painting loses a lot in the photo because you can't see the texture but few oil paintings photograph well unless done professionally.  This painting has a couple of problems but I am excited about it despite them.
This is a view of Valley Inn Road where it crosses the bridge and then climbs up the bluff to York Road at the top.  The Valley Inn Hotel built about 1820 was just to the right of the bridge but it burned down in 1959.

Painting with Snow

Oh what fun this was.  I was at the Scout Camp and it was a bit slow at the nature centre so I got my paints out.  It was -12 C, had been snowing for about 24 hours and a light powdery snow was still falling all about me.  I was revelling in the fact that my paints weren't freezing and merrily working away when my paint started to get gritty.  I kept working but it was like there was sand in my paint and the texture on the painting was really odd.  I blamed the paint and it wasn't until I got inside and warm enough that I could relax and think it through that I realized that it was ice crystals from the snow falling on my palette that was the problem.   It is just as well that it isn't a very good painting because I am sure that the integrity of the painting will suffer from the water mixed in with the paint. I was quite literally painting with snow.

What a Day

I am feeling very very overwhelmed right now.  I cannot believe the support that I received from family, friends and artistic colleagues today.  I would especially like to thank Debbie for her support and her help in making my first ever solo show special.  I could not have done it without you.  I would also like to thank Rob and Margaret Roi for giving me the opportunity to show my work in such an amazing venue.