Duplex

 The acrylic palette here includes 

Pemco primary magenta

Grumbacher Hyplar cadmium barium yellow

Grumbacher Hyplar Cadmium barium read deep

Rhiotec titanium white

Liquitex ultramarine blue

Riotech burnt umber

Honestly the student grade just doesn’t cut it except maybe for under painting. This pallet is something I used at home, as opposed to in my kit. I need quantity and quality at home. Jars or squeeze bottles? Also  the old pants go a bit gummy and have a questionable toxicity.

I was aiming to make the translucency of the plate part of the story here.

The Bachelor

 The apples keep getting better. The video is terrible-I’m too busy painting! The series would have been four but I would like to keep going. Student grade acrylic works well as a ground if cut 1/4 into gesso. I picked up a quantity on sale not really knowing how I would use it. At first I thought them useless as they are shiny and transparent. The Bachelor was made with regular heavy body acrylics whereas triplex was Golden Open acrylic, which are both transparent and precious feeling. Small tubes, perhaps?

Triplex

 How do you like these apples? This one is done at home using two lamps. The plate colours are dark and intense. I like where this is going, and aim to make a set of four with dwelling related titles. The 6x6 format is great for my skill development.

Acrylic Apples: Quarters

 What a difference light makes. Today I’m working without lamps and a bay window at my back, with barely enough overcast daylight to get shadow, highlight and reflection. My regular acrylic palette has  burnt umber, phthalo blue, alizarin, cad red, Arylide yellow medium, pale lemon and Titanium white.

Compare these two-such a small adjustment stroke to the background made such a difference in spatial dimension.

Watercolour Swatches

 I have a new approach to swatching where I can note transparency, lift, and light fastness. When my Curry’s art supply store moved away I picked up new colours on sale and it was fun to do new tests because the task is already started!

Swatches 

High Park Hillside Garden

 

My friend Ileen and I stole a couple of quiet hours in High Park today, to do some oil painting. We found a spot next to a bridge that had been chained off for no apparent reason. the changing light made me quit after about an hour and a half, so as not to blend too much trying to accommodate the light. I want nice chunks of paint colour to rest where they’re placed, to make a kind of colour poem. The red underpainting peeking through helps pull it all together. Ileen pointed out that Tom Thompson used red underpainting, and I googled who invented it- Titian?


Check out Ileen’s painting! @ileensart

China Town and the Salt Mines

 What does Chinatown have in common with the salt mine? One, they waited a long time for me to paint them, and two, they both had strong under painting. It is proving a challenge to paint the water over red. 

Goderich salt mines, underpainting

The initial drawing is covered up entirely but I try to leave sparks of the underpainting peeking through in small amounts. Blocking in dark areas is fairly quick and very satisfying!

Chinatown, sketch, underpainting and 90% finished,
These are Acrylic, 8x10 on stretched canvas.

My brushes are a mixture of sizes. I want less fussiness so I choose the largest I think I can work with. Ideally, each small painting, if successful, could be made bigger with a similar approach. The Salt Mine, Goderich has subject matter I love. I wish it could look more like Hester Berry painted it! Ah, well, perhaps in time. I think the umbrella in China town needs more bright saturatied colour, and the hats and sign lettering need addition, as well as the flag lettering details. The blue sign at the to needs the top truncated to get the cantilever in the architecture back.

I’m using a new medium for these, by a Canadian company - “TriArt” that offers better UV protection, and improves the stroke.

Oops I forgot the power lines!

The Buzzing Tree 

Noah | Malte Marten | Daily Handpan Meditation #1

This music is magic

The Buzzing Tree

 Walking the neighbourhoods near me is a regular thing now, with no gym membership. My daughter and I usually walk together and choose different destinations. For a change we went up to Beaconsfield, where there are curvy streets and cul-de-sacs. At one point we heard a strange and quite loud buzzing noise like machinery of some kind. Curious, we followed the sound to another street and a glorious old tree in full blossom. It was completely full of bees, furiously working on the nectar. So many bees, and so loud!

 I photographed the house across from the tree and later painted it. It has complimentary orange and pthalo in the sunlight with lots of planar shifts from one section to the next when viewed from behind. The lessons from my last entry about underpainting prompted a little experiment in colour and a more detailed underpaint. The bricks are under painted in light and dark blue while the sky is orange, with neutrals on the pavement and roofs. This is a cheap paper panel.

“Roll Out”

 Ok I’m actually liking these more than “Berry Box” which is exciting in the light of discovering an older failed attempt lingering in my kit. Granted it is unfinished but still… The colours were adversely affected by an umber under painting and the whole thing looks dead instead of Fresh.

Purple Penumbra

 Completed corrections on his panel! The wood has a nice textural effect on the Berrybox, and dry brush softened transition between light and dark blues and yellows. The penumbra has a lavender edge against the background.

Outlier - Acrylic on birch panel, 8x8

Corrections

Small adjustments to the shadow and background colour makes these look as brilliant as the first “Strawberry Box” did. I actually prefer the more decisive brush strokes instead of the lighter more tentative approach. In “Oddly Chopped Lemons” the shadow already had alizarin inside, but more seems to give depth. Intense sun made this a difficult painting from the beginning. The middle painting I may title “Roll Out”. The penumbra was violet, but I added a transitional lavender against the background yellows. That blue see-through is much better with the same lavender. The topmost painting, “ Outlier”, now has the same lavender transition in the penumbra of each shadow. The background needs ombré lighting in the light to darker blue range, all lighter than the tabletop. These changes were made with Procreate on my iPad!! It’s possible to make the changes in paint with much greater confidence and less mess,  waste and time. I do love this device and how it improves my tasks.
 

More strawberries

 This painting is the one I cannot sell- my daughter says so! 

Yesterday I started a similar arrangement in acrylic- process photos follow-

The bright green leaves still have to be added. My daughter says they look like plums!

Acrylic paints dry out so fast outdoors. Still, I may try again with acrylic and mix only a limited range of colours at any given time, rather than laying out the full palette.

That meant stating by blocking in dark areas with  a raw umber/ phthalo blue. Then a purple penumbra around the cast shadow. The reds needed light and dark reds in varied temperatures. Painting with as few strokes as I can manage.It is a Triassic colour scheme with primaries.

Here is my setup with finished paintings from yesterday and today. I love my home made pochade box!

I see distortion in the boxes and can adjust the blue showing through the corner to fit more with the background colour. Hey, not a bad day!

Callas

 This got entirely stalled whilst I scribbled with pen and ink. There is always some fear holding me back, and daily prompts from pen and ink challenge have helped a little. I did get a pen repaired and have fallen into daily use with it, as it is such a joy to draw line with.

The background colours were a little too dark, in retrospect. Still, carving shapes out has been somewhat successful. I love the image unfinished, and this is making me stall. I don’t understand why I worry so about blowing the job, since things do, for the most part, turn out! 

I am also documenting process with video on this one. It will generate a story on Instagram.

The soaked paper was used wet with flowing colour dropped in.

The colours were mapped out on a strip to help me recall them; Lemon Yellow, Pthalo Blue, and Transparent Iron Oxide which is used below to carve out the yellow blooms.

Moth-headed

 We all got Covid at my house! I can draw and paint but for some reason anything practical I do is overwhelming. Daily drawing lately has been an anchor in these strange times. The prompts this spring are all earth-related. It’s a great way to fill a sketchbook, and I won a prize from a Pen-focused Instagram Contest!

I find the idea pops into my head, and sometimes then I do a bit of research. I can credit other Instagrammers for their inspired photography, and challenge myself to push my comfort zone with media and techniques, and composition. The original inspiration nearly always sees me through, which is encouraging. These are posted, so they actually get COMPLETED, which I often have a problem with. I try to limit the pencil and fussiness, finding the best means to the end. I try to economize clean, confident  line and simplified colour palette. The only stage I don’t enjoy is the procrastinating!

Today the prompt was “moths”, and I got Procreate to give me the symmetry and background. The result is a digital file. Should I print the result and glue it into the sketchbook? Maybe. I’d like more commentary in imy sketchbooks too, like Liz Steel. My skills in Procreate are pretty rusty.

All in Noodlers Walnut with just a touch of black.

Vintage Nurses Pen from Fifteenpens

Background studies

Droplets and Negative Painting

 I spent time practicing. I needed an eye-stopper for the negative painting to finish.

There are three basic wet on wet base paintings here for a negative painting project. In the colder months I really need something to hunker down, that is additive and contemplative, experimental and imaginative. Kind of the opposite of plein air painting which is time- limited, location oriented and based on life. And outdoors. I read Linda Kemp and love her creative approach, especially with these spontaneous watercolour explosions!

Freesia are half finished, from the top one of the three basic grounds. The blue and yellow elements are suggesting Callas to me, and the blue green red turned into a Christmas Cactus. Callas present mysterious and confusing shapes.

Crackdown or continue?

 

Blockade police line

Daily sketching and or painting ties in with journaling and habit trackers. More on this later… this morning these scenes greeted us on tv, and I can see these images may be interesting to reflect upon in future. They are getting the protesters children out now I think. Police advance slowly and the media is taking a wait and see approach- will the pressure from America and canada bring things to a head?