Fogbank

Living on the ocean, fog is a very common occurance.   When the sun is up it seems to force it back to the edge of the horizon where it lurks like a murky blanket, waiting to slide in over the water and land.

At dusk, it starts to creep forward and lose its rolled form, flattening out to fill every nook and cranny with cool, moist air. 

This piece is in oils, 12" x 12" on canvas panel. I'm not sure if its finished yet or not.  It was produced fairly quickly with a large brush.  Sometimes that works, and I don't second guess.  This time I am wondering if there is enough contrast in the piece.  A few days to let it sit will usually tell me what to do.

Today I joined Daily Paintworks to use their auction format for a few test paintings. You can find the link to my gallery here or on the right side at the top of this blog. I find eBay has become very expensive to auction items on and I mostly use Etsy.  Of course with the numbers of artists out there all selling something, its difficult to be seen individually sometimes, so worthwhile to try a few new options for selling work online. 

Lucie Rose sails!

Lucie Rose

12" x 24", oil on stretched canvas

available for purchase

I stopped procrastinating and put the final glazes and touches on the Lucie Rose and now its ready to sail out into the world.  This one of several paintings in a boat series.  The shapes of boats and the little details that make them unique making interesting subject matter.  And of course, the water.

I have one last 15 x 30 panel that will host another boat painting.  I will draw it out this weekend and make a start on the underpainting. 

I love the technique and detail, but at times I am seduced by loose, free paintings that let me put down colour and form and not think of detail.   Where does my style fit in?  What is my style? Is style defined by technique or by subject matter, or both?  I wish I could make a firm decision on the path I want to travel and stick with it.

Roller - finished

Here's the final (I think) image of Roller.  I have fought with this image and its still not correct.  I can't get the focus or colour correct on it, no matter how hard I try under artificial light.  I will try for daylight, but in the meantime here it is.  I may give a glaze of transparent oxide brown over the board when this layer is dry to complete it and give some warmth to the wood, but aside from that, there should not be much tweaking to do.

Its sitting on the top of my old file cabinet to dry along with an eclectic mix of other paintings, props and tools.  the little wooden manikin of a cat I bought a few years ago, but haven't used it yet.  There are endless manikins of various animals and body parts available.  I have a classic human female manikin, about 16 inches tall, which makes for interesting drawing when I have time.  I should take the wooden cat manikin for a test draw too soon.  Perhaps on my Buddha board which finally arrived today.  More on that tomorrow.

Apple - part II

I finished an oil painting last Friday of an apple, a challenge that was thrown out by one of the members of my local art group.

I wanted to play around with other mediums for it and started the next version in pastel.  Pastel is not in my comfort zone, but I enjoy using it.  I started laying down colour in broad strokes but don't like the final result.  Too bright, too red, too.....I don't know. 

So I wiped out most of the colour, or more like spread it over the paper so there's almost a ghost image instead of the contrast of the blue paper and I like this version more. I'll see what I can do with it, still wanting to keep it more subdued.

This is done on St. Armand paper, made in Montreal.  Its a denim rag paper with a soft tooth.

Roller in progress

I should be painting water, but instead I'm caught up in marbles.  Why?  I have no idea, except that they're so appealing and so....round!

I'm trying to create some pieces for a May exhibition of small works, and this may become one of them.  There's still work to be done on the marble shape. It looks a little compressed to me right now. Funny how you see these things when you step back from them for awhile.   The surface the marble is on is an old wooden board.  I'm still considering how that will be depicted effectively.

This is in oils on 4" x 12" gallery canvas and still in progress, but I'll get there.  There are just too many ideas in my head right now.

Giving away my heart

Well two hearts in fact.

I've been turning a mistake into something different.  I printed a couple of photos the other day, but accidentally put the paper in the machine the wrong way.  As a result, it printed on the wrong side of the glossy paper.  This leaves a blurred mass of colour that is unusable as an image.  However, the glossy photo paper is very similar to the surface of yupo paper, so I decided to play around with layering some paint and see what happened.


Like yupo, the surface is not absorbent so water based media stays on the surface and dries, lending itself well to marbling.  I used watercolour and some freestyle hearts.  The background seemed to create the guide for colour and works well being muted and blurred. With very wet colours applied one on top of the other I let colours mix and bleed and these are the results.

I've decided to provide them as giveaways on Valentine's Day.  So how do you enter your name to win one of them?  You can subscribe to my Artist Page on Facebook, (see link on top right of my blog) comment or share the post there.  Or comment on this blog post or send me an email.  On the 14th, I'll draw for two names to send a heart.  Everyone needs a little heart now and then...