skype!

Made using skype live video feed. This is very interesting!

 L.Anne is an artist whom I have never met in person, yet here are two portraits of her:

And Darrell is someone who lives half a world away, whom I haven't seen in 20+ years, yet here he is:
 

Strange and wonderful world we live in.

I got it goin' on

portrait made from a facebook picture


new canvas stitched today and the stretcher it will go on


painting in its early stages


playing with my old digital camera
it has a setting called "M" - no idea what that means except that it does a long exposure, maybe 30 seconds... this taken in very dim light

re-enter

I like it better now

different wavelengths

A painting finished a few weeks ago. This was done by painting acrylic washes into the raw canvas and gradually working up the layers:

Levels
acrylic and drawing media on stitched canvas
34w x 32h



New one stitched. Going to gesso this one and try acrylic glazes.
Until now I've been using acrylics on raw canvas and liking the staining effects, but sometimes the colour is not as intense as I'd like. The gesso ground should help intensify the colour, and hopefully I can get the glazes to look good.

I've been practicing acrylic glazing over gesso with these little 12x12 stitched canvases:

Terrible lighting here! But anyway I've been playing around with colours and various brushing and wiping methods, and I'm really liking some of the results.



Another new one stitched, not stretched yet. The plan here is to work up a lovely subtle sky and intensify the lower coloured part, leaving the middle bit raw and unpainted. We'll see how that goes!

end of an era

The downtown studio is FINALLY completely empty and clean and whitewashed and ready to sublet!!



And since I am a nostalgic person, and since the light was just gorgeous, I took the last photos I am likely to take in this space...

portrait of the artist as a rock star... sort of

did I leave any imprint here?

The last studio task: wrapping 5 paintings for shipping. And with that, I am truly gone.

Ah, nostalgia, I love it.

sub-zero plein air

So I thought oil paint was basically useable in any temperature, but no:

Titanium White becomes very stiff and sticky (a bit like half-set epoxy), although other colours appear unaffected in -4C
My oil/solvent mixture takes on a viscosity similar to raw egg white, but returns to normal when back in the studio.
Frozen brushes begin to fall apart, losing many bristles when used to forcibly brush out epoxy-like white paint!

Returning home after this paintings session, I spent half an hour with a pair of tweezers, picking all the little hairs off my painting, haha.

3pm - ready to begin

3.45pm - light shifting fast


this is more-or-less what I was seeing

and this is what my hand and eye made of it - quite dissimilar in colour.

near the end, getting cold but still smiling!

coming and going

Hey, it worked! The power of optimism and envisioning the future:

I called my gallery here in town and asked if he'd like to show some of my older landscape paintings, and he said "sure" and so I brought 7 paintings (on 13 canvases, some di- and tri-ptychs) to the gallery today, thus creating a little more space in my storage area. How nice! Now I will envision people coming into the gallery and enjoying the paintings, and eventually buying each one.

Also in the last few days I have worked on this piece:

acrylic on stitched canvas - 16 pieces @ 12x12" each
Not quite finished but getting so close!

the future

Revelation: I am a serious studio pack rat.

We are in the final stages of the shift. Tonight we moved a U-haul's worth of shelving, cabinets, tables, and paintings. I have decided to donate or destroy any work that has not sold and that I don't want to keep, and I'm sure I will not have to buy art supplies for many years!

Envisioning the future: shelves and cabinets emptying as the paintings find new homes and the supplies are used up. These empty shelves and cabinets will then also find new homes, the studio will become spacious and I will avoid cluttering.

This is the idealized version of the future from here where I sit at 3am, exhausted but feeling optimistic.
:)

layout

growing

A small potential difference:

Stitching bits of photos into the canvas!

Also I have re-discovered the process of drawing with a ruling pen and ink. Add a little brushwork, and we come to this:

Not sure about the tree bit at the top here... trying to continue the tree branches in the photo, but I think it is screwing up the depth perception. Maybe need to just knock it back a bit, lessen the contrast of tree branches against sky - or maybe lose the trees altogether, white out. Well, I will let it sit for a bit before making irrevocable decisions.

Meanwhile: isn't this fun, though? I'm feeling pretty excited about the photo bits and loving the process of drawing again.

old becomes new

These are oil paintings which I began in 2010, then put away for a year. In the last couple of months I pulled them out again and finished them, since we are moving out of the downtown studio and I don't want to paint with oils here at the home studio.

The Excavators
34w x 37h


Afloat
93w x 31h
finished these with some oil pastel, really liking the effect of the drawing lines over painted surface.


A Time Of Multiples
25 x 25"


Deluge
34w x 64h


Resonance III
24w x 30h


Now just a few more loose ends to tie up and the downtown studio will be a thing of the past!

Urban Spaces series 3

Two more 11x14" in progress:





And three more finished:







I'm quite enjoying working with this photo-collage process!

Jim

Jim is the husband of a former studio-mate. He had not done a formal sitting before and was very happy with the result. Me, too! This portrait catches some of Jim's character - besides maintaining a business career he is a jazz singer, can be quite flamboyant, and is a very kind and intelligent man. It was fun getting to know him a bit better as he sat for me.

oil on canvas
16x16"

my palette

Isn't it interesting : I often have difficulty painting a man's portrait, but this one turned out quite nicely. I think Jim's personality has something to do with that. :)

Levels

mixed media on stitched canvas
78w x 39h

cows and paint

Plein air painting this afternoon - pulled off the road near a farm gate, and just after setting up to paint we were surrounded by a herd of cows! They were being moved from one pasture to another by a cowboy on a horse and his trusty collie dog. Living in the city, it's not often we get that close to a herd of cows - it was a fun spectacle.


Note to self: wear longjohns next time!


And a few more of the mixed media panel pieces are finished:



These are all 6 x 6"

This one is 16 x 12". I'm not sure I like how it turned out...