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.

My Solo Show

I am very excited and very nervous.  I have been in many group shows but tomorrow we are hanging paintings for my very first solo show.  It is in St. James Anglican Church in Dundas and I will be presenting over thirty of my paintings.  The opening is on Sunday at 1 pm and the show will run for the month of December.

For more information about the show click on the invitation.

Primavera Farm

My first ever "plein air" painting was painted at Primavera Farm. There was an old oak tree that I would have liked to have painted at the time but artists parked their cars at the base of it.  I was elated when I was invited back so I went to paint the tree.  It was 3 C with a gusty wind and the best vantage point was from an open field.  I had to hold on to my paint box and my hands were pretty stiff when I finished but I managed a decent painting considering the conditions.

Scottsdale Farm

I met with five other Ontario Plein Air Society artists to paint at Scottsdale Farm northwest of Toronto.  It was another wonderful day.  About 13 C and Sunny with cloudy periods.  We painted from 11:00 until 3:30 PM.  This painting was done first.  The warm soft golden grass in the fields contrasted well with the cool green of the trees and the old fence.

The second painting was rushed and I was already exhausted so I am not happy enough with it to post it.