Thinking I was painting a picture of a dog, it was pointed out to me by two family members (who shall remain nameless) that it more resembled a sheep.
So I decided to use the Polling Feature that appears as a button just above the box in which I am typing these words to try and settle the matter.
woof, or baah
Filed under Animal psychology, Painting
Gazing out to sea she stood alone at the rail as the ship sped down the fjord, when she became aware of a man feeding French fries to the gulls; a situation that would force a change of plan for the moment at least, or so she thought.
Filed under Birds, Books and Short Stories, Painting
Olivetti Tropic – modded
I have plenty of bird pictures, however, and recently many of hawks. While not strictly endangered, I do think raptors are not having an easy time of it. Not far from here a landowner cut down 10 acres of old forest so he could grow hay. There was a hue and cry about it, but the saddest part for me was knowing that the birds and other wildlife just lost another chunk of habitat. A naturalist said that those woods were home to a number of owls, just for instance.
As much as I enjoy photography, and while I don’t want to get into a debate about whether or not it is or isn’t art, I love drawing and painting in another way. When you take a picture of something it is easy to forget what you really saw there. When you draw something, it really sinks into the mind. Yesterday I painted this picture of a hawk that I photographed just a few days before. I feel like I really got to know this bird better by painting it.
Red Tailed Hawk at Swan Lake
Filed under Birds, Painting, Photography, Typewriters
I stole the title of this from a great old movie with Paul Newman and Orson Welles called The Long Hot Summer. But now we know for certain that 2015 is the hottest of all summers, globally speaking. Fortunately Canada has about half the freshwater on the planet, and we got to sample a fair bit of it this summer. For example, you can raft down this river and drink the water as you’re floating along. It tastes especially good going down class 1 rapids in 29C heat.
drink this, it’s delicious
Not all the rivers are like this, some are smaller and have swimming holes that we always hit when we pass through town.
heading to the old swimmin’ hole
While out traveling around BC and enjoying the waters we found some out of the way antique shops with old and interesting typewriters, too. This was the best of the lot:
3 bank portable Underwood
This little old gem was sitting on an Olympia Sm3, but sadly was too expensive for my budget.
While away I managed to do a few watercolour sketches.
lake at Marble Canyon
The lake beside this one, Pavilion Lake, has extremely rare freshwater coral growing in it.
in the ferry lineup
The above sketch is of an oyster operation. However, due to the warmth of the ocean water hereabouts, the local oysters developed a toxic bacterial infection and cannot be consumed raw.
visitor centre, Clearwater BC
At the risk of turning it into another world-beauty-spot-ruined-by-tourists I will reveal that the above sketch and the wild river of drinking water is in the aptly named Clearwater, BC. Please do not go there, this is for information only!
Filed under Painting, Photography, Travel, Typewriters
After the Mothers Day paint in I didn’t do any art for a week, until today. This afternoon I went out to a national historic site, Fort Rodd Hill, and sketched in the warm sun for two hours. The painting board was 12″ x 16″ and I spent about 2 hours, which means I covered 96 sq. in. per hour. At the Mothers Day paint in event I worked on a 9″ x 12″ board for about 4 hours, covering 27 sq. in. per hour. So today I worked 3.55 times faster than last week, and I think the result was as good or better. They say ‘haste makes waste’ but I say sometimes it doesn’t pay to work too slowly. Procrastination also has benefits, too.
Fisgard Light from Fort Rodd Hill, Victoria – 96 sq in/hr
Mothers Day – 27 sq in/hr
Filed under Painting
the final warm up sketch
I got one good sketching day in last week before the big day Sunday, Mothers Day. I sat in a glade of trees on the grounds of the oldest school in the Province of BC – the Academy of the Sisters of St. Ann. The sister came here via Cape Horn to found schools and also the first hospital, which was across the street from the grounds of the school. The city has surrounded the grounds on three sides but the south side gives onto the park. Now it’s an oasis even more than ever, as huge modern towers full of condos and hotel rooms have sprouted up all over. As I finished up an old fellow suddenly appeared on the rock wall in front of me, puffing on a smoke – then I quickly sketched him in and he was gone. I think the human interest makes the sketch.
Today was the paint in, and we arrived early and got a good start. We didn’t stray very far from the starting point, finding a quiet parking lot where we spent four peaceful but intense hours doing our artwork. Before I finished I decided the sketch needed human interest, so I added a street person pushing a shopping cart across the parking lot. Then we started to clean up, and I no sooner stood up from my stool than a street person came along pushing a shopping cart. It’s a common enough sight, but I was still blown away by this happening right after I made up just such a person, as if the painting had summoned them from wherever they were going and compelled them to cross in front of us just as in the sketch.
Victoria City Hall from the parking lot across the street
Yesterday I hit the road again, this time with my watercolour box in the pack. When I arrived at my destination, known only to my subconscious until I got there and looking out at the scene declared this to be the spot, I decided to use the watercolours, seeing as how I had them with me. This sounds like logic working here, but I assure you it wasn’t, simply randomness. Anyway, I settled down on my collapsible stool with the paint box on my lap, having dispensed with the tripod stand as being too much equipment, and proceeded to do two sketches. They are contiguous, the clue being the scrawny tree in each. The cruise ship season has begun, and there was an immense boat across the water at the dock. I’ll probably never set foot on one of these things, but they do make for good sketch subject matter.
seaview sketch 1
seaview sketch 2
A word on my paints: I’ve tried every available watercolour paint medium, from tubes to pans, and I have to say the best I’ve found is a fairly cheap German set of 24 round pans, called Angora. This set is half the price of the cheapest 12 half pan box of Cotman paints, which my testing proves are certainly no better paint. They cover well enough, and it’s easy to mix and blend colour right on the paint pods themselves. When some paints in the previous set ran out it was cheaper to buy an entire new box than try to fill the spaces with paint from tubes. The price of three tubes of watercolour paint is equal to this box of 24 colours.
Filed under Painting
Fountain Lake – Beacon Hill Park – Victoria
Yesterday’s outing produce this sketch of Fountain Lake in Beacon Hill Park. The lake was built in 1888 before the park was designed by Scottish landscape architect Blair. I find the abundance of green tones a huge challenge, obviously!
I was also prompted to pull out my Brother 750TR after reading about poet Les Murray and his very similar machine on oz.typewriter. But oz also had a post about typewriters used in the Fuhrer bunker, notably Adlers. I pulled out the Brother and gave it a short workout on the bench to see if there was ink left in the ribbon. Good enough. I carried it up stairs. Then I went to the living room and saw my Adler Tippa behind the couch. Which one to use? I set up the Adler on the table, fed in a piece of 9×12 sketch paper, the closest thing at hand, and just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Maybe the Brother tomorrow.
Filed under Painting, Poetry, Typewriters, Uncategorized
Home Made Camera Obscura
I’ve been thinking about how to improve my perspective – the sketches, not my life, but maybe both..hmmm. In the shop I found the old windshield I made for my long gone Kawasaki 1000 – a thin piece of lexan that I removed when I sold the bike and put the factory windshield back on it. I taped a 9×12 inch frame on it and using a Sharpie pen and one eye I traced what I saw on the table. Then I traced that with sketch paper. Next up, a sheet of carbon paper, and a 9×12 piece of cheapo practice canvas. Another tracing – it was like the ancient past of my life, always tracing things before the days of CAD drawing made architects have to work ten times faster just to keep in the same place. After that it was a mere case of applying paint. Well, the perspective was fairly real. I’m also experimenting with “Golden – Open” acrylic paint, which dries much slower than regular acrylic. It was good to be able to use up all the paint on the palette before it dried.
the finished sketch
Here’s how I did it. First the old windshield with tape. Then propping it on the edge of the table I outlined the scene with the black marker. The main difficulty here is holding the lexan up. Some kind of stand would be good for field use.
lexan with ink sketch
Then the ink sketch was traced onto tracing paper.
trace of a tracing
Then the paper tracing was traced onto the canvas support with carbon paper.
tracing onto the painting support (canvas) with carbon paper
Then on with the painting. I taped the cheapo canvas sheet onto a plastic backing with double sided scotch tape.
painting taped to a plastic signboard backing
Of course this sort of “camera obscura” works well at 9×12 and smaller. For larger works you’d need a really big piece of lexan!
old church on a corner
Yesterday I got out for an hour or two again with my paint box, and drove around in search of a site where I could set up and paint a suitable scene. I saw this old church in need of repair, parked the van and walked up and down the street looking for the right angle. There were some good places but I felt too exposed setting up there so I settled on the corner just because it seemed like a neutral place where nobody might stare at me from their front window. Having left it too late, as usual, I only had an hour so I rushed the sketch and it was terribly bad. I went home disgusted with my effort, but with a photo of the scene for reference. Later on I did a better sketch, after having first laid the whole thing out in pencil this time.
sketch 2
Sketch 2 was technically better but it didn’t do anything for me, so I decided to rework sketch 1. It needed a story, so I created one. I think this proves that when you have fun and relax a bit, better results follow.
sketch 1 – reworked with a story added
Filed under Painting
nathanguitars 