7"X5" Acrylic on board
7"X5" Acrylic on board
Rincon, Puerto Rico has the advantage of both Atlantic and Caribbean beaches. It is the most westerly point of the island and the coast which faces north-west provides excellent surfing while the beaches facing south-west, onto the Caribbean, are good for swimming and snorkeling.
I am told that the Tres Palmas beach has some great scuba-diving but we would usually head a little further south to the public swimming beach where the waves were sometimes a little choppy but perfectly safe.,
7"X5" Oil on board
At last the days are getting a little longer. This is a sight that often greets me as I get out of work and start for home
5"X7" Acrylic on board
Well we are nearly done with Fall. The reference photo was taken a couple of weeks ago but there are still leaves on some of the trees.
There is a big maple on the corner by our house that still has about 95% of its leaves, some of them are still green. It is always one of the last to drop and one reason why we end up doing much of our raking in the Spring. Last year the weather got really crummy before we could get any raking done. At least the boys have filled 25 bags already this year, we will probably fill as many again, one of the disadvantages of living on one of the leafiest corners in Canada.
7″X5″ Oil on panel
I live on a very leafy street and I love the deep shadows that the trees cast now that they are fully out.
The boulevard outside my house is about 10 feet wide and we have a corner lot so that is a lot of extra grass to mow. The regional municipality has recently outlawed herbicides so we are seeeing a lot more people out there battling the dandelions by hand. I have always avoided gratuitous poisons so it makes no difference to me. I usually spend a couple of weekends early in the year eradicating as many of the yellow devils as I can and after that I just mow them. I also have violets and forget-my-nots, grape-hyacinths and star-of-bethlehem but I just leave them alone (truth to tell, I mow around them if I can). Come August the weeds are about the only thing that is still green in my lawn.
I did actually mow it today, right after I did this.
4″X4″ Watercolour on paper
It was lovely to get out at lunchtime today to do some painting. The air was quite chill so I actually stayed in the car, I only had a half hour but I tried to make the most of it. The trees are filling out fast and so the nature of their shade is changing too. The landscape is changing so fast right now, like an infant, if you don’t pay attention all the time it would be easy to miss a vital milestone. I just noticed on the drive home that the blossoms are out, that kinda took me by surprise, I wasn’t expecting them until next week.
7″X5″ Watercolour on paper
Still very cold but going up to 7C with rain this weekend apparently.
In case anyone is interested, when I can’t work from life, I take a very low resolution picture with my cell phone, look at the thumbnails to see what composition seems most effective and then work something up from there. The ones I like best I may work up further at some point, although my painting a month resolution is already falling by the wayside. I have abandoned January for the time being beacuse I am very dissatisfied with it, and I don’t have much of February left. I am going to be in England for the latter part of the month and won’t be doing any larger paintings while I am there. I do hope to do some skething though and I will take my watercolour pochade with me.