The secret lives of eggs

The Secret Lives of Eggs

Available for purchase from my Etsy shop

This painting reminds me of the Sesame Street character, Elmo.  Big eyes, big nose, all it needs are irises and pupils.  Not the right colours for Elmo of course, but shapes create forms that remind us of other shapes.  And it makes me smile each time I look at it.  This painting is 5" x 7" on stretched canvas in oil.

Eggs are such a part of life now as the 'ladies' in the barn produce more than could possibly be eaten and there is a steady stream of people lining up wanting fresh eggs.

Eggs are quite remarkable creations and the original convenience food.  Here are a few things you may or may not know about chickens and eggs, based on questions that are often asked at the farm.

1. You do not need a rooster with a flock of hens for them to produce eggs.  The hens produce infertile eggs without a rooster present. And roosters are usually pretty nasty birds. Or so I think...perhaps its the scar on my leg that influences me...
2. Fertile eggs look and taste no different than infertile eggs.  
3. The application of heat on eggs less than 10 days old, if fertile, will start the growth within.  A hen usually lays up to a week's worth of eggs before sitting on them for hatching.
4.  It takes 21 days for a hen's egg to hatch.
5. Brown shelled and white shelled eggs are no different in taste or nutritional value.  The colour of the shell comes from the breed of bird.  The yolk colour can be affected somewhat by the food that the hen eats.
6. Want your own Omega 3 eggs? Toss the hens a handful of flax seed each day.  Voila!  It takes a hen approximately 24 hours to produce an egg.
7. Hens occasionally lay double yolked eggs.  This is usually from a young hen just starting the laying cycle and doesn't continue often.
8. Hens lay according to length of daylight.  In natural light they lay most in spring and summer then trail off to nothing in winter.  To induce laying, timed artificial light is used to imitate longer day length.
9. Chickens are vicious killers.  If they see another bird in distress, they will attack and kill it, including their own chicks.
10. Like most birds, chickens share a great deal of DNA with their lizard ancestors, however, according to a July 2010 story in the Times & Transcript, recent DNA analysis shows that T-Rex and chickens are such extremely close cousins biologically that “science has no choice but to acknowledge that birds are, in reality, dinosaurs, not just critters evolved from them.” 

This is the last post til early next week as I'll be away for a  few days, going to Manitoba for work. Hopefully I'll find some time to become inspired by some new things while I'm away.  Fitting in sketching is a challenge as the schedule is so hectic, but I'll try to take advantage of some quiet moments to capture a sense of the place.

Flow

 Available for purchase from my website

Last year I completed a large painting in acrylic of a wave that I watched at Middle Cove beach - Landwash.  The piece now lives with someone else and I have meant to try it in another medium for some time.

A long weekend and some time to myself gave me a chance to try it again, this time in oils.   Its a much softer image with the palette muted into pale blues and turquoise with that ever present silvery grey of the Atlantic ocean on overcast days.

In this piece I've left the foreground without any spattering, tying it in with the softer overall feel of the piece.  Scumbling the colours of the course sand/gravel gives all the form that is needed.

This is 10" x 20" on stretched canvas.  I've found these Apollon, Canadian made canvasses and have to say that I really like them and especially this size. Not too large to be unwieldy or take forever to paint, but not so small as to become a frustration to fit subjects into at times.

I'm not sure if the company is wholesale only or open to consumers, as I've only bought their canvasses from art supply stores.  This is the second Quebec company I've located for high quality art supplies, the other being Kama Pigments.  Their oil paints are professional grade, excellent quality and hand made.  The prices are very competitive.

Water Line

Available for purchase through Etsy

Last weekend I went on a little expedition to get some new reference material and ended up on a wharf in Petty Harbour, about 15 minutes outside St. John's.  Its a lovely, snug harbour with lots of boats lining the wharves and few more on land, some for sale, some in the midst of preparation for the fishing season.

While exploring I came across the multi layers of paint on the hull of a boat.  The waterline and outlet above it showed years of use and rust making a path downwards.  It looked like a good image to play around with as an abstract.

I started with a 5 x 7 panel and laid modeling paste over it, sculpting it a little to mirror the lines of the boat stripes.  When the paste was dry, I added layers of oils on top which let the surface texture show through.

Weekend Warriors update

This is an update on the Weekend Warriors and while I'm still refining the boats, I'm working on the water to anchor them and show movement of current and wind.

Painting a water surface involves layers of colour and glazes to achieve the sense of depth and movement in the water.   Its interesting how a turn of the brush can create a completely new feeling in a piece.  Manganese blue, ultramarine deep, pthalo turquoise, indigo and titanium white are creating the water and work well against the brighter colours of the boats. Once I have more layers and glazes on the water, i can move onto the tiny details that pull it all together, then on to the next piece.

 

Weekend warriors

Small, colourful boats litter the water, moored together and reminiscent of the streams of small children from child care you sometimes see all hooked together so they don't go astray.  These are the boats of the weekend warriors. Those souls who secretly are adventurers in their heads and on the weekend, while confined to less adventurous lives from Monday to Friday.  On the weekend, they take to the land and water, each trying to outdo the other in technology, ability and sheer nerve.  It gets them through the next week.

This is about the half way point for this piece with more work on all elements required after this layer dries a little.  I like the strong sunlight creating shapes within the boats and eventually on the water surface too.  This is on stretched canvas, 10" x 20".

Wax tulips

I offered a spring challenge awhile ago and agreed to take part in it.  Why I'll never know as I really dislike painting flowers in any form.  I know I can create form and colour but for some reason flowers just don't appeal to me at all. I put up this mental block against them. But because I'd agreed to join in, I figured I'd better show willing and have a try with the tulips.

I wanted to try a wax batik again and the contrasts in the colours of these flowers should work with this technique  I used unryu paper, a mix of beewax and paraffin and watercolour to build layers.  The process itself is quite quick to produce, as it seems once you get going, you want to see it through to the end to see the final result.  The layers of wax,  as they build, mask the final piece which isn't revealed until all the wax is removed.

Because I'd run out of ginwashi paper I tried the unryu but its a bit more fragile and doesn't take to scrunching as well before the final application of pigment and there are a couple of tears in the surface.  This is an easy fix as once its on a backing paper of the same surface its not noticeably.  The distinctive patterning that is batik isn't as strong as a result of less cracking in manipulating the paper less.  But the effect is there and does read batik.  The fibres in the unryu also help achieve the pattern.

I usually put a piece of parchment or wax paper behind the paper to make peeling it off easier but grabbed a cutoff of foam core board instead this time.  The board has a slick surface, and releases the wax easily.

What I found when I removed the piece was the ghost of the original painting on the foam board.  It seemed too good an opportunity to waste, so adding more paint to the surface gave version two of the tulips. I wasn't respecting rules or shapes a lot in this piece and let water and pigment run and mix on the surface, which acts much like yupo.

The batik is about 12 x 15" and similar size on the foam board.

Four Elements - Fire

  A burn

6 x 12

The four elements, Earth, Air, Water and Fire are classic and open to much interpretation.  I am toying with an idea for my own interpretation of them, using Newfoundland themes.  Of course on this island, all elements are very much in abundance, so there is a lot of room for experimentation.

There are some common sights in the province that spark off ideas for this little series of four pieces. They usually depict small slices of life in Newfoundland that spring from activities which encompass each element.

The first that came to mind was fire.  On the island, fire is a common heat source, but a woodstove burning was too mundane.  During the winter and early spring, especially after cutting wood, the limbs and boughs are heaped up and burned to make space when clearing ground - a burn.  This painting is in the woods on my property, the wet boughs sending up a plume of white/ochre smoke into the still air as the fire crackles underneath.  The embers of this type of fire is where I produce my own charcoal.

This is in oil on a 6 x 12 stretched canvas.  The smoke and fire still need work on them and another session should do it.  I have a number of ideas to populate the remaining three elements but haven't decided on specifics yet.  Ideas are always welcome.