Another Wednesday Watercolour and Happy New Year!

I missed last Wednesday's watercolour, but I decided to do a little ink and wash sketch of a little family of geese that we saw at the Brigden fair this past October. Just a little quickie painting to end the year! Happy New Year everyone!

Mother Goose and Goslings

5" X 7"

A Gaggle of Geese ~ Watercolour Wednesday

Here is a quick sketch of a gaggle of geese in the snow. Reference photo courtesy of the great website Paint My Photo. It has given me an idea for a potential collage painting in the future....stay tuned!

Gaggle of Geese
5" X 7"
Watercolour and ink on Arches 140 lb CP

It's LIME TIME!

I'm continuing on with my "Fruit Salad" series, with a little lime. These little torn paper collage paintings are all 6 x 6" on gallery wrapped canvas. (Which means the sides of the canvas are quite deep - 1.5") They look really fun and bright all hung together.

Three have already sold, but there are still two available in my Etsy shop.

Lime Time

Click here to see Etsy listing

Here are the others in the series:

Click here to see Etsy listing for Pucker Up!

It's Wednesday again!

Today I thought I'd do a quick watercolour sketch of a bunny that was visiting our yard last summer. As a pure watercolour, it's a failure, because I couldn't seem to keep my hands of the ink pens and even had the oil pastels out!
Anyway I did get a bit of watercolour practise in, even if it's not a total success.

Summer Friend
5" X 7"

Watercolour Wednesday!

Now that I'm retired, I have a lot more time to spend in the studio! I've been loving doing my mixed media collages, but I want to keep in touch with my watercolour roots.
I've decided that every Wednesday I will do some kind of watercolour, just to practice and also because I do really enjoy it.

Today I didn't have a lot of time to do something fancy, so I did this little 2.5 X 3.5" ACEO. ACEO stands for "ART CARDS, EDITIONS AND ORIGINALS".  They are also known as Artist Trading Cards. I've had some luck selling these on Etsy, which is where this little guy is hanging out.

This little Baltimore Oriole is smart and doesn't hang around here when it's cold, but painting him brought a bit of warmth to my morning.

New Day

One morning, last summer I was surprised while driving to work when a beautiful Great Egret landed in a ditch along the road. It was early in the morning and so peaceful. I thought it would be a great subject for a painting.

I didn't get started on it right away, but in my mind's eye I could picture what I wanted to do. It was going to be a night scene with a dark blue background and a white moon and the beautiful white egret standing in the light of the moon. It was going to be wonderful!

Well....not so much.. I decided to collage the whole background. It somehow ended up being a purplish blue monstrosity! I had made a big circular pattern in the background that was very distracting. The bird was too small in comparison to the moon. I used all the wrong colours and papers in the egret. The whole thing was a mess. I looked at it for a few days and decided I hated it.

That's when I got out the gesso. It was very cathartic to slap that white paint all over the canvas. I decided to just go for it and see what would develop. I stamped a few impressions into the gesso. I got some really great texture from the underlying paper that I had collaged in the beginning. I drizzled on some clear tar gel with great abandon! I let it all dry and then brushed on some lovely muted colours, thinking that I might keep layering until I got the nice dark colour that I wanted in the beginning. But when my first wash dried, I loved it! It reminded me of a foggy morning with the sun just starting to burn through.

I drew the egret larger than before and kept with the colour scheme of the background. The whole painting is now like that morning when I saw the beautiful white egret....peaceful and serene.

Sometimes it's good to start over. I've decided to call this "New Day".

Where Did Summer Go?

Here in Southwestern Ontario, we seem to have plunged directly into Autumn without any transition! Brrr! Looking out into my garden, it's starting to look pretty sad, compared to its glory days in July.

Recently, I completed a garden collage painting commissioned by one of my favourite clients. (Thanks, Jennifer!) She wanted something to remind her of her cottage garden in the depths of February. 

If you would like your own personalized collage painting, just contact me and I can work with you to create something fun and beautiful and "just yours"!

The completed painting: 

A portion of the garden:

A quick concept sketch:

Some closeups:

Maggie

Yesterday, I thought I'd get out my watercolours, and have a practice. I chose one of my favourite photos of our dog, Maggie. She can be a bit of a clown and this was taken a year ago when she was just about one year old. As you can see, she has very expressive ears! They seem to have a mind of their own...sometimes both up, or both down, or one up and one down!

Here is our Maggie, breed "Unknown". :-)

Baltimore Oriole Mixed Media Collage

I haven't decided on a title for this one yet. It might be because most of the time I start out with a title already in mind, but this painting kind of came about by accident!
I had started a really cool painting with the background a collage of road maps with a very thin wash of gesso, and clear tar gel swirled over top.  I washed on some really nice blues and aquas. Over that I was going to collage some monarch butterflies, using my pre-painted papers.... Well, the background was great. The butterlies, not so much. I hate giving up on a painting, but I went for the gusto and took a big brush and gesso'd all over it.

Not really knowing where I was going with this one, I took Mary Todd Beam's favourite colour trio of Golden Fluid Acrylics: Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold, Quinacridone Crimson, and Turquois (Phthalo), and did some random washes. The crimson kind of got left behind!

The result reminded me of the sun and some twigs or branches. I had recently taken some photos of a beautiful Baltimore Oriole that had come to our back yard, and thought he might fit in somewhere.

A bit of a different composition, but I kinda like it!

24" X 12" on Gallery Wrapped Canvas

Country Singer

I decided to work on a companion piece to "Puzzled". I had such fun with that one, I thought I'd go the same route again!
You can't drive very far in the country around here without seeing one of these guys. The Red-Winged Blackbird and it's song really says summertime to me. I decided to call this one "Country Singer". The background is covered with old sheet music and the bird and cattails are small pieces of hand painted paper and a few pieces of other found papers.

This and Puzzled will be entered into the Annual Desmond Juried Art Exhibition and Sale this summer.

Puzzled

Has it really been four months since I've posted anything? Time flies and life gets in the way of my creativity, but I've just completed my newest Mixed Media/Collage.

I'm not sure why I seem to be attracted to Crows in my artwork, since lately they have been a real pest in our work parking lot. (Don't park under the tree!) Maybe it's because they seem to have real personalities and they just look kinda cool!

Here is "Puzzled", 16" X 20" on canvas. This painting will eventually framed in a black "floater" frame.