2014 Paintings 1

June was all about paintings.  I got about 25 paintings done through almost-daily practice, mostly landscape, mostly from photos I've taken on my travels over the years.  It was a good exercise, I'm kind of sorry I stalled out right after Art Walk.  Neil left for his conference, there was a heat wave that made working in the studio unpleasant and I spent a week in the basement among some of the greasiest dust bunnies I've ever encountered.  The next couple of paintings went particularly poorly.  It's enough to stall anyone.

While I'm trying to get back to the studio I'll be working on pencil crayon stuff, comics and sketches.  In the meantime I might as well show off the fruits of my labours.  All acrylic on hardboard.

Evening Sail.  From a photo I took on Vancouver Island a few years ago.  Sold at Art Walk to a nice lady who is displaying my art in her tea shop right now.

Farm Shack.  From a photo I took last year near Sherwood Park.

Chair Garden.  From a photo I took in Montreal a few years ago.

Montserrat.  From my Barcelona photo set.  I quite like the textural look one gets on rocks by applying paint with a palette knife.

Above the Badlands.  I quite like this one.  Not sure anyone else did, but I don't care.  I snapped a bunch of photos from the car on our Drumheller/Waterton trip.  Love those Alberta fields!

This was a good learning experience and I should really continue it.  I'm not sure I learned a whole lot more about painting, but I sure learned a lot about choosing a subject!

The Red Barn

All summer my guy and I trained to do a metric century bike ride. After trying out a couple of highway routes that proved to be absolutely awful for cyclists (no shoulder, shoulder that disappears, shoulder that exists on one side of the road but not the other, shoulder that is three inches wide and next to a curb... what kind of moron put a curb in on a secondary highway? Really now) we found one route that worked.

So as I've been riding on the overpass above this farm every week I've been staring at the barn thinking "OH GOD I'M GOING TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK hmmm... I should paint that thing. It looks nice. Would it be more of a quinacridone red or cadmium red middle? Shit here comes a pothole. Only 60 more kilometers to go!"

At the end of the summer I finally got out to paint the farm. It was very different painting it from the dirt road than looking at it from the highway overpass. Less spandex, for one. And many, many more thistles. After a pleasant afternoon of baking in the sun and sitting in a thistle patch, I tried out the huaraches at a food truck in a nearby town and then dragged this painting back to the studio, where I applied many changes to it. I think I'm finally having a breakthrough in painting.

University Farm

Well, I muffed up the perspective and proportions good, but I console myself with the fact that this isn't the worst thing I've ever painted.

And in my defense there was a huge trailer blocking the last third of the barn that wasn't nearly nice enough to paint.