Waiting for Earle

Reflections on a Sailboat, 7 x 10", watercolour, August 22, 2010, SOLD

Another Paint the Town painting.  These boats are all one sailboat that I sketched as it swung back and forth on its mooring.  There was only the one sailboat there that day but I wanted to do something more interesting that just a portrait of that boat.  This is the result. 

This one is from Paint the Town and there is yet one photo to come.  (I know that I said last night that there was only one photo left but I forgot about this one)  I also painted another one of sailboats sailing down the Annapolis Basin toward Digby but neglected to photograph it.  If you are the owner of that one (you would have bought it on Sunday at Paint the Town) I would love to hear from you.  Especially if you have not framed it yet and are willing to email me a digital picture.

Meanwhile,  we have battened down the hatches here in Digby County.  The eye of Hurricane Earle is expected to pass very close to us tomorrow morning.  The weather office says that it will likely all be over by noon tomorrow so we shall see how right they are.  Last year's Hurricane excitement was provided by Hurricane Bill which passed over here quickly as well.  I was driving to Cape Breton that day and ended racing the hurricane up the length of the province.  I am glad that I do not have to do that again!  I remember the colour of the sky.  When the rain was just beginning as I got on the road outside of Annapolis Royal the deeply overcast sky was an odd green shade. 

If you want to know what is happening here tomorrow you can always tune into CBC radio from anywhere in the world.  They livestream their broadcasts on the CBC website and this includes the Halifax station.  It sounds like there will be local radio all morning.  During Hurricane Bill they did a good job of keeping us informed of what was going on (when I could hear the radio over the din of the water on the roof of the car!) 

Glare over Granville, 7 x 10", watercolour, August 22, 2010

And this is the last Paint the Town painting.  With the dark clouds in the background I thought it a suitable picture to end with tonight. 

Paint the Town Volunteers Rock!

Here is the second to last painting from Paint the Town.  I am saving the last one for tomorrow's post, when I can talk about the impending hurricane Earle or lack thereof...  (we should be so lucky!)

                                    Go Fly a Kite, watercolour, 7 x 10", watercolour

This one actually acquired a bid as it was being picked up by a friendly Paint the Town volunteer.  These wonderful people walk or ride their bikes around town, transporting fresh paintings in pizza boxes.  They converge on the Legion where they deliver the brand new works of art into the hands of yet more volunteers who hang the paintings and prepare them for bidding. 

This event could not happen without these volunteers.  They put a fabulous effort into making this event a success.  I find it humbling that a town of 500 people can pull together over 100 volunteers to make this event so remarkable.  Hats off to the people of Annapolis Royal!!

(Oh, about the painting...  this shows the waterfront boardwalk of Annapolis Royal.  There were lots of people walking along the board walk that day, including one child with a kite.  I thought that such a nice day needed more kites, so I added some!)

More from Paint the Town

Cafe Compose, 10 x 14", watercolour

This shows the rear of a lovely restaurant in Annapolis.  It was the last of the paintings that I did on that Saturday.  After I finished the painting and delivered it to the Legion for auction, Robert and I had a lovely meal there.  It was a real treat to rest out of the sun and relax after a long day spent painting.

Morning Marsh, 5 x 7", watercolour, SOLD

This one was the first from Sunday.  I struggled a bit with it. The light was changing quickly and I was painting tighter than I wanted to.  I eventually got it so it said what I wanted it to say and then moved on to the wharf where I spent the rest of the day.  I finished this one at 9:30 in the morning and wrapped up at 5 pm with another one of a similar subject, but handled more loosely. 

Church Reflections, 10 x 7", watercolour, SOLD

When I arrived at the wharf the reflections were picture perfect and mirror like.  The tide was just reaching full so a breeze sprang up quickly and spread bright stripes of blue ripple across the water.  There were artists everywhere painting the river, the boats and the people around them.  From where I was working I could see Wayne Boucher and David Lacey and was lucky enough to meet many lovely new painting aquaintances as well. 

Please forgive the clips visible in the last two photos.  That is what comes of operating a camera while the right brain is fully engaged!

Market Figures

Here is the next installment of paintings from Paint the Town last weekend.  I started out in the Farmer's Market and the biggest difference between the market and the places where I most often paint is the people.  There are people everywhere, especially this past week as it was a beautiful saturday in the middle of August.  People were at the market to socialize, buy blueberries, peaches and fresh tomatoes to eat with basil and fresh french bread.  Oh, the bread at that market is fabulous! 

Enough about food...

On to people.  There being lots of them that is what I tried to paint.  But they kept moving.  This one below is from a hurried pencil sketch of a father who kept carrying his little girl around the market.  She could not have been any more than 3.  As they kept moving back and forth around the market I was able to almost capture them.

Dad and Tot, 7 x 5", watercolour, plein air

So after trying to paint moving targets for a while, I moved to a "captive" model.  Mark, the saxophosist, plays every Saturday for the market crowd. 

Sax on Saturday, 10 x 7", SOLD

The musician viewed this over my shoulder as I was finishing it up and told me that he approved.  He especially liked that I captured the silver colour of the bell of the sax.  It seems that his is a silver saxophone, which he said most people do not notice.  After I painted this sketch of him I decided that a musician needs an audience so I did a larger painting using the same drawing as my reference (as he had packed up for lunch) and painted the following:

Market Music, 10 x 14", watercolour

The only problem with recycling a sketch is that sometimes I realize after the fact that there is something wrong with the initial sketch.  In this case, I had messed up the dimensions of his figure a bit in that he is not quite so lean and lanky in truth as he looks in the painting.  Though I painted him with the build of an NBA player, that was my own unintentional fabrication. 

Part of why I wanted to focus on people that morning was so that I can get better at painting them.  As long as I learn from the mistakes that I make and do not repeat them, I will be happy to carry on making new ones!  (As long as I learn from them, too!)

Plein air painting now on ebay

Fishing Boats, plein air, 7 x 10 inches, August 2009, watercolor

Here is an older work, from last August, that has SOLD on ebay.

Lessons from Cape Breton

Englishtown Channel, 7 x 10, watercolour, plein air Aug 28 09

So I went to Cape Breton for a week of painting classes with top notch instructors.  All of them are painters famous in their own right as well as being very good at sharing their knowledge.  I really learned a lot.  Then I came home with my head bursting full of new painting techniques and ideas,  and life got in the way of painting for a while.  But now I am back at it and here is some of what came of my trip.  The last day of classes was spent painting out of doors (that's what plein air means, for you non-painting people)  at the Englishtown wharf.  It is a lovely spot.   

I painted the above sketch very quickly, just to get an idea of how to tackle the far shore of the channel and the water.   Owing to the brisk wind and clouds over head the water was a fair bit darker than I am used to painting successfully.  I have always had trouble, making dark water look murky, and this water was crystal clear.  I wanted to do it justice. I was reasonably pleased with this sketch.   I did feel that the composition was a little boring.  The ferry terminal and the power poles leading out to it are a bit hard to understand if one does not know the area, so I wanted to find something more interesting and simpler to make into a painting.  So then I painted the sketch below.  

Englishtown Channel #2, 7 x 10, watercolour, plein air Aug 28 09

In this one (above) I am happy with how the hills in the background fade away, also with the shape of the cloud shadows on the far hills.  The remainder of it could be better.   The instructor, Chris Gorey, suggested to me that I include some purple in the shadows on the hills.  So when I got home to my studio and finally got time to paint, I started experimenting.  I tried using purple shadows a few times and eventually came up with something suitable to share.  (see #5 below)  I think I also fixed some of the compositional problems that were present in #2, above.  I do feel that the contrast between the hills and the sky is a bit too strong.  The hills could be a bit lighter and the undersides of the clouds could be darker.  

Englishtown Channel #5, 10 x 14", studio, Sept 22 2009

As it was the hills and the sky and the marriage of the two that was bothering me,  I decided to focus on the far hillside as I had done in my first sketch.

Englishtown Channel #6, 7 x 10", studio, Sept 25 2009

I really learned something painting the clouds in this one.  I painted the dark underbellies of the clouds first instead of after around the white parts.  I found that this worked really well.  (though the photo I notice is a bit washed out, I will try to come back and fix it with a new photo soon)  In the end, the undersides were still too light, but now I felt like I was making progress!  I incorporated some purple in the hill shadows and it worked okay.  In fact I am more happy with this version of the hills than in the version which follows below.

Englishtown Channel #7, 7 x 10", studio, Sept 27, 2009

It might seem that I am going too far with this subject but every now and then my scientific side speaks up and says "what if I did the same painting but changed this one thing?"   So I tried to repeat #6 but make the clouds darker.  Again, I painted the shadows first, and this time I painted a bit of blue around the white shapes of the clouds.  I am most pleased with this sky of any of the ones in this series.

For now I am going to move on to something new, hopefully applying more lessons from Cape Breton.  Stay tuned for the results!  As always, I welcome comments.

Paint the Town 2009

Work on the motorcycle painting is on hold for the moment while I take part in some out door painting events. 

Here are the paintings that I did today (Saturday) at Paint the Town in Annapolis Royal NS.  

I had planned to paint tomorrow as well but there is this little disturbance brewing offour south east coast called Hurricane Bill which has forced a change of plans.   

These paintings are available for silent auction at the Legion in Annapolis Royal tomorrow, unless they sold today.  If you are near the area, go check it out!

Sparkle, 7 x 10", my favourite from today!

(all are watercolour)

There is more than one way to paint a boat!, 10 x 7"

Private Collection

Scallop Boat, 10 x 14"

Private Collection

Juxtaposition, 10 x 14"

Private Collection

Is it Clearing?, 7 x 10"

Private Collection

Gone Fishin', 7 x 10

Private Collection

Fog on the basin, 7 x 10"

Private Collection

A full painting day

Boats in the Morning I, 5 x 7", watercolour, $ 98

Today I painted the boats of Digby Wharf.  I started at 7 am and finished up after 5 pm.  It was a gorgeous day, lots of sun, a nice breeze for the sailboats and lots of people about.

Boats in the Morning I, 5 x 7", watercolour, $98

Boats in the Morning IV, watercolour, 7 x 10", $185

Boats in the Morning III, 5 x 7", watercolour, $98

O'Neil's (unfinished)  

I ran out of steam here and decided that I would do a better job of finishing this one at home later.  I will post it again when it is done.  

So I feel that I had a successful painting day.   I will likely paint some more tomorrow and if you should be near the Heritage Center in Digby stop by there in the afternoon and there you will see these paintings and more.

Less than perfect painting day

Day one of Digby Scallop Days

The weather conditions were great.  There was gorgeous fog clearing as I drove into town at 8:30am.  When I got to the wharf these boats were highlit by the sunshine while the wharf behind them was muted by the fog hanging just off shore.  The fog allowed me to play peekaboo with thewharf for an hour and a half as it moved in and out.  Finally the fog burned off around 10:30.  All this made for great painting conditions. 

But by 10:30 I had discovered that I was having technical problems with one of the types of paper that I use.  So of the 4 paintings that I started this is the only one that is acceptable for people to see!  

Marina in Fog, 7 x 10", watercolour

I may do somemore to this here at home in the studio.  To me the black of the right most boat is too dark compared to the rest of the painting, so I need to do something about that.  There are some posts and some rigging that I could add and I think that would help.

 I did have some fun this morning,  messing around on the back of the paintings that failed, testing different ways of painting water but they do not make for finished "art".   However, the reason I paint out of doors ("plein air" if you want to talk artist-speak) is to learn to better portray my subjects.  To learn to see what things look like when there is no camera in the way.  Even though cameras are a wonderful tool for artists they do create distortions and in some ways get in the way of responding directly to the subject at hand.  So even though I have not much finished "art" for the day it was still a good painting day.

Day Two of Digby Scallop Days will not see me painting as I have other commitments but I will be downtown most of the day on Saturday and Sunday.  

Weirs, fishing sheds and more

Weir Nets, 7 x 10", watercolour, Private Collection

Tidal BoatWorks, 7 X 10", watercolour, $125

Campobello Lighthouse, 7 x 10", watercolour, $285

This is the daisy picture (5 x 7") from St Andrews Artist's by the Sea that I had not previously posted.  It is held in someone's private collection.  You can see in this photo where the paint was still wet in places.

Sailboats. watercolour, 10 x 14", Private Collection

Kids on the Beach, 5 x 7", watercolour, Private Collection

This is another one from St Andrews that I had overlooked when posting previously.

Artist by the Sea, Saturday's paintings

These are all but two of the paintings that I did on Saturday (july 11).  One of the missing is a picture of daisies, the other is the picture with 3 sailboats from my post last week.  

Daisies by the Sea, 5 x 7", watercolour, $60

Painting Buddy,watercolour, 14 x 10"

This one is the last that I painted on Saturday.  It is not for sale, as it is a picture of my sister while she was painting.

View from Centennial Gardens, 5 x 7", watercolour, Private Collection

Rowing, 5 x 7", watercolour, Private Collection

High and Dry, 10 x 7", watercolour, Private Collection

watercolour, 5 x 7", Private Collection

watercolour, 5 x 7", Private Collection

Sailboat, 10 x 7", watercolour, Private Collection