Yellow Flowers

I am busy getting ready for my next workshop, this one with Carol Marine. Carol has been posting her daily paintings on her blog since 2006. She is truly one of the very best contemporary artists, and I feel so fortunate to be attending one of her workshops. Marina and I leave Thursday morning for Greenville, New York where the workshop is to be held at an old inn the home of Hudson River Valley Art Workshops.

Train tressel near the Marina in Pembroke

I wanted to return to this site and make another attempt at painting this charming view. Tuesday evening presented a clear beautiful evening with the sun raking over the scene. I kept in mind the technique of painting large colour shapes with the piece being design driven and tried to avoid "knoodleing" (Marina's and my nickname for too much unecessary and confusing detail).

Witherspoon's Pond

I started this painting of a beautiful pond while I was at the workshop in Goderich. The morning had been spent doing some amazing exercises, which although I enjoyed immensly, kind of scrambled my brain. I worked very slowly trying to integrate what I had learned in the morning into my painting. I was't able to finish the piece during the workshop but because I had various pencil sketches and the colour block in done I finished it this afternoon.

Farm Buildings

The photo of this painting turned out a bit on the rosy side, I will retake it in the morning and attempt to repost. I was working today on trying to maintain simplicity and retain the original colour shapes from the block in. This is the rear view of the farmhouse and out buildings on the abandoned farm near us on Forest Lea Road. This is now the retake of the photo, much closer to the actual colour.

Driftwood Revisited

After spending time with Ian Roberts at his workshop in Goderich, focusing on colour shapes and design, I felt that I would like to try repainting the scene from the boat launch at Driftwood Park. Yesterday I spent some time on a value study of the sketch using my previous sketch and a photograph as a preliminary step off point. Today's painting is very simple in terms of colour and values with very little detail but I am happy with the new direction that I have taken.

Pink Flower

One of the lessons taught at the plein aire workshop was to simplify shapes into colour masses and not to get lost in the detail. This small sketch is an attempt to do that. It is always hard to not keep adding and adding small details which are easily visible to the human eye, but which tend to complicate the design.

Rainy Day near Auburn

I am back from the plein aire workshop with Ian Roberts in Goderich, Ontario. It was a wonderful experience, for both personal and artistic growth. The 4 days spent immersed in the fundamentals of painting outdoors; design, composition, simplification, colour mixing, value determination, to mention a few were exhilarating and exhausting. The above painting was done outside in a small park pavilion with the rain pouring down . A damp and cold environment, which however, revealed a subtle beauty not normally available . Marina and I had so many laughs and enjoyed so many good times in this beautiful country of ours during our trip to and from Goderich and during the workshop.

Train Tressel

I am so glad that Marina called me on Monday and we went out to paint after we did our errands. The day was glorious and we found this little painting spot near the Pembroke Marina. Today we are in Goderich after a beautiful drive from Pembroke, filled with new and interesting sites, and a very funny driving experience with me driving Marina's standard, through the town of Harriston, very slowly through the intersections with the traffic opening before us like the Red Sea. For some reason we found this incredibly funny and we laughed until we cried. Today is the first day of our Plein Aire workshop with Ian Roberts, a very wonderful and talented landscape painter and teacher.

Doran Road

Again a very quick sketch, this one from Doran Road looking north across Highway 17. The major colour shapes are laid in but I did not take the sketch any further. The clouds were moving so fast and the light was changing so quickly I decided to stick with the initial conditions.

Crab Apples and Chinese Bowl

This is one of my favorite still lifes. I was happy with brush work and the colour harmony from the very begining of the sketch.

Cloud over Point Alexandria

This beautiful cloud rose after the sky cleared following a thunderstorm. This is a very quick sketch done after the rain cleared away and my equipment and I dried out.

Driftwood Park

Yesterday was a glorious day for painting outside. After a great road trip driving north on Highway 17 to Bisset Creek where I was determined there was a great painting subject and numerous side trips, Marina and I ended up at the boat launch at Driftwood Provincial Park.

Bisset Creek is truly a spectacular place but unfortunately because the highway is so close to the water there was no public place to park and set up our easels. We turned around and drove south and ended up with a beautiful, quiet spot to paint. High clouds were coming in so the sky was very light, that was my most difficult problem to solve yesterday, how to show a very bright day with difuse light.

Storm near Deep River

This particular view of the Ottawa River is near Deep River. When I set out to paint it was a very warm, humid day. In just a short time clouds had closed in and a storm came down the river valley from the north-west. It was spectacular watching the enormous clouds moving towards me and then feeling the cold down draft rushing in behind the still muggy air. The rain pelted down for about half an hour and then the skies cleared and the rest of the afternoon was clear and lovely.

Looking Down River

The Ottawa River flows south-east with the Laurentian Mountains on the Quebec side and a usually more gentle flood plain on the Ontario side. This view down the river is from a public wharf in a small Quebec town about 30 miles nort-west of Pembroke.

Muggy June Evening

A view from my friend Martin's deck across the farm behind his house. The air was heavy with moisture and the sun was setting, the colours were muted and golden. The photograph does not entirely depict the softness which is evident in the painting. I think I have some glare on the sketch which I will try to eliminate tomorrow when I rephotograph.

Pear and Grapes

I did this study yesterday but did not finish it until the evening. I have to photograph my paintings in daylight so was unable to post until today. The composition is a little spare but I was very happy with the grapes.

Swamp Iris

This is the second painting done on Monday at the same location as the previous sketch. The Snake River passes under Stafford 2nd Line through 2 large culverts here and there is a large marsh populated with numerous birds, animals, insects, and plants. The beautiful blue flags, or irises were in full bloom in clumps growing out of the water and near the stream. As always, I was attempting a loose painting style over a design of several colour shapes which formed the composition.

Into the Swamp

Monday was a perfect day for painting this view of the Snake River. The day was cool with wind, which kept the bugs away, and the sky was full of clouds which kept moving, letting us enjoy lots of sunny periods. Marina and I are working on developing a method for our outdoor sketching which will keep us true to our design and original concept. It is so easy to get lost in the complexity of colour and detail when painting outside, to the point of losing the impact of the large picture.

Pinks

These are some of the lovely flowers that grace my garden this time of year. I was aiming for a simple composition that echoed the simplicity of the vase and the flowers themselves.

Spring Sketch

This view through the trees along this little laneway proved irresistable. It was painted very quickly, I was trying to capture the feeling of stillness and quiet. The trees were still bare and the grass had only started greening up.

May Evening

Marina, her daughter Toya, and I went out to paint last week on a beautiful evening. The sun cast a beautiful golden light on the landscape and as we stood at our easels and painted the scene became more and more beautiful as the sun set lower in the sky. We were at the end of a dead end road looking across some farmer's fields. I had the sun to my back so the sun shone directly on my canvas and on my palatte, big mistake. I was shocked when I saw my painting the next day as it looked so dark. Lesson learned, paintings in brilliant sunlight often are darker when brought inside so the bright light of the sun must be taken into account when mixing colours outdoors.

At Walter's Farm

This is a quick sketch of a little out building that is on a neighbour's farm down the road. It is a gorgeous property with many great looking compositions. Marina and I plan to back and paint there again, when the weather warms up a bit more.

Pond Reflections

This is a sketch from my trip to the USA last year, probably painted exactly this time last may. It was a beautiful clear evening and I wanted to catch the effect of the stillness of the water with the reflection of the trees and sky. It was one of my first outdoor oil paintings and I had a wonderful time painting it.

Lempke Lake

This is a small lake on Doran Road a few miles from my house. One spring evening last June I sat on the dock and quickly painted this scene before the clouds that had been rising all day dissapated. It often happens here in Ontario that the afternoon skies are full of gorgeous clouds and just before the sun sets the wind dies down and the clouds disapppear leaving the night sky clear.

Plate of Fruit

I had a wonderful afternoon of painting with my friend, Marina. After wandering around her yard we decided it was too cold and windy to paint outdoors and instead went through her refrigerator looking for inspiration. She found a bag of apples which she arranged on a simple white plate and we set out to paint. We had specifics in mind i.e. leading the eye, arrangement of lights and darks, interesting brushwork, but as the afternoon progressed we found ourselves back into our old habits.