Tag Archives: watercolour

Labour Day Weekend

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5.5"X3.5" Watercolour in Moleskine

I spent the long weekend in the traditional way, hanging out with friends at "the cottage". Not my cottage, but that of an old friend. Sunday was already starting to feel like Fall but I went for a swim anyway. I took my Moleskine and little watercolour set down to the lake with me and sketched this while I dried off enough to cycle back up the hill.
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Lunchtime

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5.5"X3.5" Watercolour in Moleskine

Another of my, previously unpublished, lunchtime sketches. This was a few weeks ago on the Niagara-on-the Lake Common. The April 28 storm took its toll on the trees here too. Many magnificent old specimens were uprooted or broken. Nature will repair itself though and I am less concerned about these than the many boulevard trees, like the one that fell on my house. These will have to wait until the city can find the money and the manpower to replace them.


River in March

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5.5"X3.5" Mixed media in Moleskine

I haven't been posting much recently. I haven't been painting much either, but I still draw and sketch most  days. I found some old watercolour sketches from the past couple of moths that I never posted, so I will try to put them up over the next few days.

I did this one in March and there was still very little sign of Spring at that time. We have had some massive storms, including one that brought down 800 trees belonging to the City of St Catharines alone, not counting those on private property. It was a city tree that came down on my house, puncturing the roof and breaking the porch as well as taking out 50 ft of fence and part of my shed! That, combined with my dryer belt breaking, my oven going on strike and my phone refusing to work properly for the past couple of weeks, has made my life complicated. Then there is work....
Anyway, I have lots of excuses for not painting, but it doesn't make me feel any better about it.

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Pittsburgh

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8"X5.5" Ink & wash on paper

I went down to Pittsburgh to visit a friend on the weekend. She lives in the Green Tree district, southwest of the city. Pittsburgh is all hills and she is on one of the highest points. This is the view from the front window.

I rather like Pittsburgh, despite the fact that I was always led to believe that it was one of those places, "First prize, a night in Pittsburgh, second prize, two nights in Pittsburgh". It certainly suffered when the steel industry collapsed, but it has hung on and cleaned up and attracted some diverse, cleaner industry. It has the Carnegie Museums and some nice parks and of course it has the three rivers (Allegheny, Monongahela and the Ohio). Also, although only four hours drive, Spring seems to be about a week ahead of here. So between the torrential rainstorms, we enjoyed some mild Spring weather.
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Palm Trees

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7.5"X5" Mixed media in Moleskine

This is actually the same tree from two different vantage points. The fist was painted at ground level, looking up slightly, the second from the porch, you can see the ocean (Atlantic) in the background.

Even before the events of last week, the people of Rincon were very aware of the various perils that Nature can inflict upon them. They have suffered from  devastating hurricanes and earthquakes within recorded history and there is a clearly marked Tsunami Zone in the downtown area. They are currently in the process of moving the schools out of the Tsunami zone, onto higher ground. There is discussion about "how high is high enough?" My sister likes to think that their house is "high enough" and she is probably right. It certainly seems like a pretty steep walk back up from the beach, even though it only takes a few minutes.
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January Sunset Abstract

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12"X9" Watercolour on paper

OK, bear with me. I know it has been a long time, I stopped calling myself a "Daily Painter" some time ago but I have really fallen off the waggon recently.

Life has kinda gotten in the way of my painting and I have also been feeling very dissatisfied with my "style", such as it is. I plan to ease myself back into it gently. First of all, I will try to post at least once per week. Secondly, I will be doing much more experimenting.

I have always wanted to be an abstract expressionist but I am pretty hopeless at it. I cheated shamelessly with this one, starting with a fuzzy photograph, taken from a moving vehicle, I blurred it further in Photoshop and cropped a bit that I liked. I then used this as my reference. I should have used better paper but I am too cheap to waste good paper on an experiment

I have doctored a few more photos that I will use the same way. I am hoping that this will get me back into the groove, because the thought of sitting down and painting another bowl of fruit is leaving me cold right now.
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