Fog

Fog Blanket Over Middle Cove

11" x 17"  oil on wood panel

Fog is such an elusive thing.  Ghost like, it is there one minute and gone the next.  I stopped at the lookout in Middle Cove and watched its progress up the cove and over the land.   You can drive past the cove and be socked in with fog then drive a tiny bit further and see clear blue skies.  There is never a dull moment with the weather here.  I've sketched and photographed this vantage point several times capturing sun and fog.  Now there's a bit of both in this painting.

Painting fog with oils is all about pressure for me.  I put in a thin layer of the background then meld the fog colours over it with very light pressure and a good amount of paint on the knife.  Picking up some of the background colour with heavier pressure gives that illusion of land showing through the fog.   Its worth a little practice on a spare piece of paper or canvas to get the hang of it and decide on the fog colours, as they will change depending on the weather and the background.

Middle Cove Fog

10,000 years and counting

Untitled

15" x 30" oil on panel

This painting in progress is of some large chunks of ice on the shoreline.  The colours in the ice are amazing always and combined with the water lapping at their bases made a good composition.

I seem to be encased in ice lately.  My previous post at Easter about the first iceberg of the season seemed to send a signal to Mother Nature to open the floodgates.  And given the gift of ice, I figured I may as well paint it.

The pack ice pushed in to shore off and on depending on the wind direction and last weekend we had 60 hours of freezing rain and drizzle, coating the landscape.  Oddly enough it didn't seem to affect roads too much which is unusual.

Today, the sun was bright but the wind cold, but icebergs and more loose ice moved into the harbour where I live.  The sun lit the bergs and ice and the colours were beautiful blues and turquoises against the deep indigo ocean.

As the ice was so close and even on the shore, the opportunity was too good to not pass up the chance to harvest some glacial ice for drinks.  This ice is dense and melts much less quickly than the ice you'd make at home.  It was rinsed and broken into smaller pieces (this glacial ice is HARD) then to the freezer to add to drinks.  There are tiny pockets of air in glacial ice and they make popping sounds as the ice melts in a drink.  Its very unique.