value study 2

I'm quite pleased with the way the folds of the cloth turned out on this one.

value study 1-corrected

I decided to repost this study after I added the shadows on the left. In the earlier study I hadn't depicted the shadow of the squash on the wall, or even the values of the wall itself. As a result it looked a bit too flat. The addition of the shadows livens up the background.

value study 1

I've just begun working on a series of still life graphite value studies, that will (hopefully) turn into a series of paintings (in pastel or oil) sometime in the (near) future. This is the first of what I hope will be a series of studies using common kitchen objects and food items. I especially like the way the shape of the tureen picks up on the shape of the winter squash , and the bowl of the ladle picks up the shape of the onion. I think I'm begining to make sense of this composition thing. I've intentionally left the tureen less well developed to facilitate transfering the drawing later on since the values of the left side of the tureen and its shadow tend to run together.

The squash is a Celebration acorn--a heritage variety with a firm flesh and a nutty flavor that tastes marvellous with a bit of butter and brown sugar. They're small enough that a single one is perfect to serve two people. I liked it so much that I've saved the seeds and will try to grow them in my own garden next summer.

Each of these sketches takes 2-3 days to complete so I will probably not be posting every day for the near future.

Lieu de Repose

(A Quiet Place)

This is the pastel from 14 November all dressed up and ready to go out into the world and find a new home. The frame makes a world of difference. Dave at Atelier Caron down the street does the framing for me, and does an excellent job of it. This work will go to the Christmas exposition of the CAAJC at Sainte Catherine this weekend.

No paintings or sketches today

We had the first real snow of the season yesterday. The heavy, wet kind of snow that sticks to the trees and makes them into sculptures. Shoveled the porch and the back deck twice so the dogs don't come to harm. I'm just glad I don't have to shovel the driveway. A very nice man in a very large machine comes and does it for me. I took this picture after about an hour of snowing.





I love the way this plum tree looks when its covered with snow. Almost as pretty as it looks in the spring when it blooms. Too bad its a singleton and (almost) never produces fruit. In seven years its given me one plum a beautiful red fruit with golden flesh that was ever so sweet. Now if I could just find out what kind it is so I could get it a buddy and get the fruit its meant to produce.






A night view of the plum tree.

squashes from my garden

A 5.5x8.5 graphite sketch.

negative glass sketch

This 8.5x9 inch still life in charcoal and pastel on matboard is accomplished by first covering a piece of white matboard with an even coating of charcoal dust. Then the drawing was revealed with an eraser. Finally, the cruet at the back was glazed over with pastel.

Grandma's Doll

This 5x17 inch oil on watercolor paper is done in ultramarine blue and indian yellow with touches of titanium white for the highlights. It's done in a glazing technique with Liquin. The "doll" is an unglazed pottery figurine about eight inches tall. She used to carry a basket of flowers, but that got broken some time ago by small fingers exploring.

Wild Sky Over Water

An 8x11 inch landscape in oil on sanded pastel paper.

Blue On Blue

Another 8x11 inch acrylic sketch on watercolor paper. This little landscape sketch is done in ulatramarine blue and a bare minimum of titanium white.

Hanging Basket

This 8x11 inch still life is done in oil on watercolor paper.

Interlude-a waterscape

I finished this 6.5x16 inch pastel waterscape on sanded pastel paper late last night. I love the way that bullrushes spring up wherever the water flows a little more slowly no matter how fast the river itself rushes to its destination. If the river can be seen as a metaphor for the hectic pace of modern life (and the rocks as the inevitable obstacles to the smooth passage of that life), then the small spaces on the shore where the rushes grow can be seen as a metaphor for those meditative interludes when we can step outside of the daily rush and nourish our spirits before plunging back into the rush of daily life.

Pine Tree Sketch

In this 9x12 inch graphite sketch I tried to capture the spare barren essence of the Northern Ontario landscape. I love the way the trees in that area are shaped by the wind and the weight of snow in winter. They make me think of giant bonsai trees shaped by nature's hand.

Pine Tree in the Snow Sketch

A 9x12 graphite sketch. This little tree was less than a foot tall, but it stood straight up under its burden of snow beside the highway in the Fraser canyon.

Still Life Sketch

This is an 8x12 inch graphite sketch on sketch paper.

Summer Landscape

This lanscape ia a 10x12 inch pastel on sanded paper.

Pitt River conte sketch

A 9x11 inch landscape sketch in conte crayon on watercolor paper.

A Safe Spot

This 9x12 nature sketch is my first successful water color.

Frazer River Sketch

This little landscape is another 9x12 sketch in acrylic on watercolor paper.

Abandoned

This 9x12 landscape of an abandoned rural house is an acrylic sketch on watercolor paper. While I like the composition of this sketch, I'm not sure the values work. The old house gets lost in all that green, and so do the flowers in the foreground. A bit more value contrast is definately in order when this becomes a larger work.

Wild Sky

This 9.5x12.5 landscape is done in oil on sanded pastel paper.

Vertigo

Vertigo is a 9.5x12.5 pastel on sanded paper. I can't really say much about this one. It certainly doesn't fit into any of the standard categories--its not a landscape though it is outside, its not precisely a still life either, at least not in the traditional sense, and its not an abstract eithre. I guess I'll just leave it to the viewer to decide.

Les Toit Rouge

The Red Roofs

This is the third of the paintings that I have placed at Maison Catherin'Art. It is a 15x15 landscape in oil on watercolor paper. If it seems a bit out of focus its because its framed under glass. I didn't want to go to the trouble of pulling it out of the frame to photograph it. Lesson learned--photograph before framing.

Lightning Storm

Tempete Eclair

This 16x20 landscape oil on watercolor paper is one of the three that I have on display in the gallery at Maison Catherin'Art.

Arrangement in Green

Etude en Vert

This 16x20 still life is done in oil on traditional stretched canvas. It is one of the three paintings that are hanging in the gallery at Maison Catherin'Art. If it looks somewhat familiar its because its the predecessor of the pastel I posted on 23 September. That one was titled Still Life with Harvest.

I'm Back

I'm back and I have some very good news. I've been invited to join the Corporation des Artistes et des Artisans de la Jacques Cartier (CAAJC). Its a collective of local artists and artisans working in a variety of media who present their work at a galley/boutique called Maison Catherin'Art. I have, of course, accepted the invitation, and have submitted three paintings to be displayed in the gallery. This is a picture of Maison Catherin'Art:

Over the next couple of days I'll post pictures of the paintings that I have placed in the gallery.

Just to let everyone know, I've enabled anonymous posting so you don't have to be a member in order to post a comment. The purpose of the "word verification" system is to eliminate comment spam generated by automated systems. Comment away.

Just to let everyone know, I'm having a spot of surgery on Monday so I probably won't be posting any artwork for the next week or so.

untitled 1/2 nude

This little sketch is an example of why one should always work on acid free paper. This is done on a piece of note paper and even though it's never been exposed to light its slowly yellowing and the graphite is fading.

Blue Heron

Another 10x13 pastel on sanded paper.

Stanley Park Ducks

This is a 10x13 inch pastel on sanded paper. Again, this landscape is less about the land than it is about the reflections of the sky in the water of this quiet pond in Vancouver's Stanley Park.

Big Sky

This little landscape is a 5.5x10 inch oil painting on sanded pastel paper. Perhaps it should actually be called a skyscape since it is more about the the depth of perspective in the sky than it is about the landscape itself. The trail leading out of the meadow and seemingly into the sky serves to emphasize the expansive depth of the sky.

A word about the technique of painting on paper. The initial underpainting is done with paint heavily diluted with turpentine. This gives the paint qualities more closely associated with water colors, but with a great deal more control. Subsequent layers are thicker, and the final touches, the highlights on the trees for example, are directly from the tube.

Night ride

I tried a new technique yesterday. This little work is the result. It's 5.5x7 inches, and its done in graphite pencil on black mat board. It's amazing the range of values that can be acheived against a black ground with pencils that make black marks themselves. To acheive this effect I used everything from a 4H to an 8B. The darkest darks are the 4H (which would make the lightest marks on white paper), and the lightest lights in the sky and on the mountaintops are 8B (which would make the darkests marks on white paper). The lines on the highway are in 2B.

Wreck beach sketch

Thought for the week:

The Buddhist prayer chanted by the monks of Myanmar in front of the home of Aung San Suu Kyi in September:

“May we be completely free from all danger, may we be completely free from all grief, may we be completely free from poverty, may we have peace in heart and mind.”

I went back to some of my old sketch books and found this graphite sketch of Vancouver's Wreck Beach that I did back in the summer of 2001. I'm thinking this might make an interesting pastel what with the weathered greys of the wood and the light and shadow on the rocks.

Guest painting

Something a little different today. This 12x24 inch oil on stretched canvas was painted by my granddaughter Amanda in the summer of 2004 when she was ten years old. Not bad at all.

Winter Trail

This is a 9x12 inch acrylic on water color paper.

Tribute to Vincent

I finished this 16x20 inch pastel on sanded paper yesterday.

woman walking-2

woman walking

Another 5.5x8.5 graphite sketch.

bedtime sketch

A 5.5x 8.5 graphite sketch.

Fish--God's eye view

Thought for the week: The shadow does not belong to the object which casts it, but to the light which creates it.

This is a 5x7 inch oil painting on paper.

Still life with pitcher

This still life is a 10x12 oil on stretched canvas.

guacamole pre-constructed

This 9x12 inch oil sketch on canvas is part of what I call my 'pre-constructed' series. The notion of pre construction comes from watching the Food Network and the trend of serving food in a de-constructed state. The best example I've seen of this is the chef who served a 'deconstructed' lemon meringue pie--On a long shallow plate he placed a wafer (to represent the crust), a serving of lemon pudding (to represent the filling), and a meringue based cookie (to represent the meringue)--voila! lemon meringue pie deconstructed. A bit too precious for my eating tastes, but the genesis of an excellent idea around which to build still life portraits of the everyday.

Fantasie still life

This 9x12 inch oil on canvas is made up of what I call 'invented objects' which bear no relation to any objects in reality.

Still life with sunflowers

This is a 9x12 inch oil on canvas. Even on canvas, sunflowers always bring with them a hint of late summer, and always evoke thoughts of sad, bad, and quite mad Vincent van Gogh.

The Tiger

This 7x7 inch work is done in oil on black paper. It makes me think of the William Blake poem:


The Tiger

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?


In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?


And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?


What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?


When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?


Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

"Ken Danby, recognized as one of the world's foremost realist artists and best-known in Canada for his iconic hockey painting, At The Crease, has died at the age of 67 while canoeing in Algonquin Park." Globe and Mail 24/09/07

http://www.kendanbyart.com/

Mountain majesty

This 11x14 inch graphite drawing took several weeks to complete, working only a few hours at a time, because of the effects of eyestrain. The area shown in the detail (below) was done with a magnifying glass.





detail of Mountain Majesty

Still life with harvest

Thought for the week: It is said that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for only a day, but if you teach that man to fish, you feed him (and his family) for his life. This is true. But you must also consider that, having taught him to fish, if you poison his rivers, you haven't helped him at all.





A 16x20 pastel still life on sanded pastel paper.

Salsa and copper plate II

This 16x20 inch pastel work on sanded paper is the full color version of the greyscale one I posted on 15 September. It's not quite identical, but its close.