The end is in sight! I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do when this challenge is over. The positive effects of working on my art as a priority every day since January 1st far outweigh the negative – house needs a good clean, my taxes need to be done, I have piles of paperwork sitting in various locations gathering dust. As this week carries us all to the last 9 days, the way forward will become clearer and more concrete. For now, here is what happened last week.
Day 85
We left the shores of Harrison Lake at 9 am, so my painting for the day had to be completed and uploaded quickly. I struggled again with the paper of my sketchbook, however, perhaps the weave added to the murkiness of the weather. Clouds were low, temperatures hovered around 1 degree, the lake was calm. It was remarkable, at first, to see so much sand and such a low water level. Yet, it was well used by people with metal detectors, dogs running after balls, and children playing in the pools.
Day 86
Today’s prompt was vivid darks. I do get caught up in gentle, light colours and so this one was an opportunity to go all out! The sun was shining, the umbrella wasn’t needed – so I gave it a job modelling.
Hanging it from the top of my easel, I chose a bright, complementary background and set to work with all sorts of blue-like colours for the silky fabric. The drips were added at the end from my imagination.
It was enjoyable to immerse into the bright, vivid world of colour.
Day 87
On a day of no clouds, just pure blue sky, the prompt was Atmospheric Clouds. So, I rifled through my reference photos and came across a whole group of cloud images taken last year of the skies over Malaspina Strait.
Soft pastel worked well over an Evolon paper base. I mostly used a soft cloth to smudge the colours into the paper and into each other.
Once I got going, this was quite a simple picture to produce – a little messy, however, easy to clean up afterward. I was surprised by how many different colours I used for what could just be assumed as a grey sky.
Day 88
Paint like an impressionist. This challenge is helping me gain an education in the artwork of famous painters from the past. I read up on what makes an impressionistic style and intended to work true to a list of methods. However, once I chose my reference image (a picture I had taken of the large pond in Beacon Hill Park, Victoria) all that flew out of the window!
So, the end result was a little more me than impressionistic. It’s one of the images I may go back to after the challenge is over to make the fountain in the pond look less like a goose or swan taking off and more like a spray of water droplets catching the light.
Day 89
The prompt was sunrise or sunset. As I had missed sunrise, and wanted to paint well before sunset, I, once again, relied on reference materials. This is a view looking north up Malaspina Strait from Powell River, taken from somewhere along the sea walk.
When painting from the photograph, I realized that oddly, the light coming across the water was not directly under the setting sun. The setting sun was slightly to the left, a yellow glow, mirrored in the water beneath, and yet it was the track of whitish blue light that provided the pathway across the water, joining the shoreline with the distant islands.
Day 90
Friday, a day of no prompts. Our plein air group met indoors at Townsite Mall and realized the value of such a location. Chairs and tables were scattered around, meaning we could sit in lots of different places to capture the essence of our surroundings.
I sat close to the climbing gym and looked back toward the main entrance on the upper level. There was a lot of activity. We were there from 10 am, at a time when the major bustle and hustle was around Base Camp coffee shop. However, as time pressed on toward 11, more stores opened with owners arriving and chatting casually in a friendly atmosphere.
There were a lot of people milling around and so, as one of my friends said, we became ambassadors for art. It was a tad distracting, but I think we each created something worthwhile.
For me, I chose to take a rubbing of one of the old timbers as a background then drew using ink and Promarker pens. I added a few bits of coloured pencil to the image once the rack of clothing arrived.
Day 91
Layers. This one took a long time to create, or at least, I did it in stages throughout the day.
The idea of layers had me baffled to start with, but as I looked outside I found myself musing over the apple tree. We have an old apple tree that has served us very well with hundreds of pounds of fruit. Last year, as it was for many trees in the area, was a difficult year for fruit production. We did end up with one totally perfect apple, although oddly inside there were no seeds! The tree also lost a major limb, and a family of paper wasps decided the twigs made a good frame for a large nest. Together with dust that now seems to attach to the leaves each year and holes in the trunk, the apple tree needs all the love it can get.
So, I started with a bark rubbing. On top of that I added brown and gold ink drips. Once dry, I added smudges of red, and then blue. Finally, I drew an apple, coloured it green and called it done!
The blue is for the clear blue skies of summer, the red is for the tinge of red often seen on the skin of each apple, the gold is for the sunshine, the brown for the season without leaves.
With that, we reach the end of week 13. What would you create if asked to paint in an impressionistic style?
Janet and Janet 