Tag Archives: landscape

Changes

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Digital painting using "Brushes" app

There have been a lot of changes in my life recently, not the least of which has been my acquisition of an iPad. I have been trying to teach myself to use the various digital painting apps . I must admit I am having little success so far. Don't worry, I don't intend to abandon pencil and brush in favor of this new medium, but I do like to explore new tools and I must say that I have been having fun.




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February Landscape Abstract

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14"X11" oil on canvas

It is fun to work on a slightly larger scale, still not very big but four times the size of my usual. I also worked entirely from memory here. I tried to soak up the colours as I was driving and remember them.

I am not sure that this one is finished yet. I got a lot more texture into this than I am usually able to. I wanted to add texture into the foreground but it was getting too muddy, that's why I think I will come back later, when it has had a chance to dry. As usual, this was a lot more abstract to start with, but I found myself adding detail.
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Grand Union Canal

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7"X5" Acrylic on board

Anyone who has been following this blog may have noticed that I haven't posted anything for a couple of months.

Believing as I do in truth in advertising, I stopped calling this a "daily painting blog" some time ago, but I really did mean to continue with a "two or three times a week blog". I have been doing some sketching, and I am working on a linocut, but generally I am just uninspired, I really need to move in a new direction.

However, I did shoot a few pictures during my brief visit to London last month and I hope to take some paintings from them over the next couple of weeks, before I lose the mood.

The Grand Union Canal connects London and Birmingham. This section is somewhere in North Kensington, lots of houseboats along here, all apparently inhabited and in running order. It might be an interesting way to live in the heart of the city but I wonder what it is like in the winter. My sister lived in one about 40 years ago, I seem to remember that it was pretty damp.
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Solstice

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5.5"X3.5" Watercolour & ink in Moleskine

Not a very good photograph but I was too lazy to scan it (I have to take my laptop into the other room). This is really "Noon on the Common 158" or something, but I thought I would take advantage of the date to call it something else. I found a great spot with my back to the wall of RH1 (the main rehearsal studio, otherwise known as the Studio Theatre for a few weeks of the year). I think that this tree has figured in a few paintings and drawings over the past few years too.
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Noon on the Common Again

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11"X3.5" Watercolour pencil in moleskine

Another view that gets somewhat overdone due to the location of a strategically placed bench.
I remember having a conversation with a friend, someone that I had thought was fairly enlightened, who couldn't understand why the Common was so jealously guarded by the town. It seemed to him that, in a community surrounded by farmland, it was quite unnecessary and should be made available for development. I remarked at the time that people may once have felt that way about High Park in Toronto or Central Park in NY City, and that in a hundred years the people of Niagara-on-the-Lake would be glad that the Common had been protected.

That was about twenty years ago and suburban sprawl is already hemming in the town on the West. There is water to North and East so this pastoral haven to the South is a very precious thing. Long may it remain protected!
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Youngstown NY

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8"X5.5" Pen & Ink
An interesting day. I must have walked through half a dozen climate zones on my lunchtime walk. It went from cool and overcast to gale-force wind to blazing-hot sunshine to storm-laden clouds and back to sirocco-like hot wind again.

I have drawn and painted this scene several times already. That's what happens when there is a strategically placed, comfortable bench by the river on the Niagara Parkway.

By the time I had walked down here I only had about half an hour but I provided entertainment for some passing cyclists and helped them to avoid an extensive detour by pointing out that they were in fact on the right track to get back into Niagara-on-the-Lake. They were ready to go back the way they came, which might have taken them to Niagara Falls, about 10 miles!
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12 Mile Creek 2

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7"X5" Acrylic on board

I apologize for my lack of posts recently. My problem is partly that I have been coping with all sorts of "stuff" in my life and partly that my muse has deserted me, perhaps the two are related.

This one is rather a poor excuse for a paintng but at least I managed to achieve something. Actually I have been doing a fair amount of sketching but my scanner is in an awkward place and not as easy to use as it was, so I haven't bothered posting any of my sketches. I will try to get back into my routine soon but I think that it is time for a change, so it might be a new medium, format or subject. we shall see.
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Morning Walk

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7"X5" Acrylic on board


Still in Rincon, looking north-east on "Sandy Beach" at about 6:45 am. This is a surfing beach but not too many are here this early in the day.

With practice we learn to paint certain subjects. I have never been a big fan or the Bob Ross method, "this is how you paint a tree" but nonetheless we learn that certain conventions work in certain situations; one kind of brush, a certain mix of paint. Palm trees are almost entirely new to me and I am realizing that it might take me a while to learn how to paint them. So far they all seem to look like feather dusters.
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Trigger

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7"X5" Acrylic on board Having painted Maybelline in her favourite place I felt that I must paint Trigger in his. There is nothing he likes more than taking his b.a.l.l. to the b.e.a.c.h. Careful what you say because I suspect that he is learning to spell. The composition was possibly somewhat ill-concieved as it resulted in having to paint the centre of interest about half an inch high. I really must start to work a little larger but I need to find a good place to set up my easel.
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