Back in the studio testing linen paper

Quite a few years back a commercial printing shop went out of business and I acquired reams of mixed paper for drawing on, printmaking and all round play. So I decided its about time I play with this paper to see how it accepts varied media. The following is Winsor Newton watercolor on 25x23 inch Linen paper. The paper is beautiful, slightly textured which would be great for pencil portraits, but as there is about a one inch pile of it playtime has started. The paper took the water pigment much better than expected. In fact the pigment soaked too well into the paper so I ended up mixing thick pigment fairly dry to get that "pow" strength. 

Play on wednesday led to

Thursday play time. Same theme of bunchberry plants that carpet the forest floor in alberta and BC. A tiny plant pushed to a gigantic size. It was fun, but would I use this paper for watercolor paintings; not likely as it eats up paint. My next test will be to draw on it and test print on the press when plates get designed. So much going on in my head.

I love that the paper is large as I stood at the easel I held the end of the brush loaded with pigment and played with outstretched arm moved in a loose manner. Side by side you can see how the size of the image was pushed bit more today than yesterday.

Was it not complete?

Was it complete? Well no. When I'm not satisfied with the overall look I can't help myself but to jump back in with paint on brush and make changes. At this point in a painting it can go two ways, worse or better. I am happy with all the hours, days that added up to a months worth of work that this painting improved with the extra days work.

this is the last image I posted which at this point I let the painting rest for a week then took another good look at it. Though it probably was good enough, I could see where it could be pushed further and strengthened by adding more darks into shadow areas and scumbling color into the foreground to integrate it into the rest of the painting.

This is the completed painting of "Watching the Hikers" it has since rested for over a week and I see no areas that leave me troubled. Done and ready to sign and get an isolation coat painted on to protect the image from dust.

Have a wonderful day.

Waterton National Park Bear Painting in acrylic from start to finish.

I love bears and I love watching and painting them. Last spring we camped in Waterton to study bears as they grazed on the open mountainside meadows. In all we were blessed with seeing about eight different bears and the meadows were abundant with a blaze of colorful blossoms.

 Mostly I paint tightly with high detail so this time I made a conscious decision to paint in a looser style. Instead of doing a highly detailed drawing onto canvas I only noted the bear and the mountains basic outline with a bit of detail to keep me on track. Keeping with the notion for my brush strokes to have more freedom I painted standing up, normally I sit while painting. Mixing a good quantity of acrylic gel into the paints brushed on with a one inch brush in a very loose manner to cover the canvas gives an initial color tone.

 The next step was to mix color with less gel though still keeping the colors washy yet darker tone shaping the forms with paint. The colors are Liquitex Cadmium red med hue, cadmium yellow light hue and Ultramarine blue (green shade) as well as titanium white mixed in to shape the moody spring sky that blends into the snow ridges on the mountain. I always use quality paints and high quality canvas to work on. It costs more but is well worth the extra dollars spent.

 Adding more paint and less gel the painting advances as more detail is added. Greens are all made up of blends of Cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue with varying touches of red to tone and mute some areas.

 I now push the paintbrush flowers with vivid pure strokes of cad red & cad yellow and add white to ultramarine to define the blue flower shapes.

 Passages of gray tones are created using the primary colors to add depth to effectively push the lighter mountains back into the distance. With a touch of burt sienna into the ultramarine the foreground is glazed to tone down some areas and some of the paintbrush flowers are toned down.

 The completed painting converted to black and white on the computer to check tonal balance.

The painting is complete, at least at this point I believe it to be. I will leave off painting at this point and see how I like it a week from now. Sometimes I get too close to a piece and don't see the flaws till later so its best to leave it alone and work on the next. Actually I work on up to three paintings at a time  bouncing back and forth between them. If I get stuck on what to do next I switch to another to keep the momentum going, well thats the theory if alls going well. This painting which is 16x 20 inches took about one week to produce. Title which came to me as I was painting is "Watching the Hikers"

Haiku to you

Haiku in the Mountains

After spending 4 nights at Waterton Lakes At Crandell Mountain campsite I have been inspired and refreshed by nature. Stirrings long and deep have surfaced as free-form Haiku. Now I've never considered myself a poet till the nest project of working with natural materials begged for poetic titles. Titles, some of which needed as much contemplation as the works themselves.

So in combination with photos taken I present to you a few poems.

Enjoy, and please do share if you wish.

Native Alberta Plants Garden

 Here is the Alberta native plants garden my sweetie has made. As the yard needed to be re-graded he moved the sidewalk off to the right to build the garden between the evergreens where it gets more light. So much nicer having stepping blocks rather than a solid sidewalk straight up to the house and rather than striving for perfection on placement of stones we chose not to cut out evergreen roots that were near the surface and went around them instead. Grass has been planted between the stepping blocks which is now coming up.

The view from our steps towards the street.

To build me this garden my sweetie went out and invested volunteer weeding time with the Edmonton Naturalization Group. I helped gather seeds and took hundreds of photos out at the garden. Now comes the work of sorting through the photos and putting the better ones onto disc for the group to use as they see fit. I enjoy going out to the garden where they grow natural Alberta plants. Its refreshing, and as a bonus the goldfinches are abundant.

Flowers at the Edmonton Naturalization Group Nursery Garden. There are goldfinches in these flowers though hard to spot as they blend right in.

A gift at our feet in the garden.

Alberta Wild Rye, we planted a small tuft of this in our natural garden by the stones that are outside the garden perimeter. The seed head colour is lovely.

We planted Prairie Blazing Star. I sure hope ours take as isn't it lovely. The resident jackrabbit ate one though thankfully left me with two plants. The White Prairie Asters are a different story though, he ate all of those yet left the yellow ones alone, and my Tall Wild Sunflowers, all gone. Ole Jack better watch out or he may become rabbit stew, just kidding; we will encircle the next bunch we get with wire to protect them.

There are quite a variety of wild asters , I cannot remember if we planted these type which are quite showy as a group.

Prairie Clover blossom.

Goldfinch on Wild Sunflower, this type is a southern Alberta flower.

Joe Pye Weed in foreground and Common Tall Sunflower behind, a sunflower that likes wet areas though I am told its pretty hardy and will acclimatize to gardens. These sunflowers are about 6 feet tall.

White Prairie Aster growing amidst Sweetgrass.

Garden Dragons.

Asters, the soft colour behind is Sage.

Bee and Gaillardia Aristata blossom.

Giant Anise Hyssop, a member of the Mint family that can be used as a tea that heralds a liquorice flavour.

Hopefully my garden will be sporting many of these wild blossoms next year.

Big Hugs, hope you enjoyed the mini-garden tour.