The Herd

This is one of those small paintings I can work on while I sit at a show.

You just start by painting in the first horse and then gradually add more until you have a herd of them.










Wash in a sky behind and add some grass beneath their feet and it is complete.

The Herd is an original 1-1/2" x 3-1/2” framed watercolour is available for $65.00. SOLD

Changing

This is an original 1-3/4" x 4-1/2” framed watercolour available for $35.00.

As we approach the month of October the mornings have a hint of frost in the air and the leaves are starting to change colour. Autumn is my favourite time of year.

When looking from the top of my hill out over 400 acres of forest and wetland it is easy to see the changing colours. A few of the maples change to brilliant red, many to orange and the elms, poplars and birch turn varying shades of yellow.

The cedars and pines remain their stately green and one of the last to change is the tamarack whose needles turn golden.

It is a season of change.

Frozen Lake

This was a quick demonstration I did for my friend Heather who wanted to know what she could teach a group of people who had never painted before.

I have found that snow scenes are probably the easiest thing for a beginner to paint.

I also used a limited palette of French ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and raw sienna to do this snow scene. These are basics and give a wide range of colours.

I used French ultramarine blue for the sky and on the snow covered lake. I added a touch of burnt sienna to paint in the shadowed underside of the clouds.

Using the cloud mixture I added a touch of raw sienna to get a green grey for the background shoreline trees and also used it for the under painting on the rocks.

Darkening the mixture down with more French ultramarine blue and raw sienna as the paper was drying I added the foreground pines.

I added burnt sienna and more French ultramarine blue to the pine tree colour to get a very dark colour and painted over my rocks. Using a palette knife I lifted out the rock shapes.

To finish the painting I thinned the dark mixture and added a few dead tree trunks to the foreground.

The entire painting would have taken about 20 minutes to complete.

This original 5-1/2" x 6-3/4” framed watercolour is available for $95.00.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and enjoy the artwork. I hope you will return often.

Red Rubber Ball

This was another exercise from the Golden Acrylic Paints workshop at the Kawartha Artists' Gallery and Studio held earlier this month to show the advantages to using their Open Acrylic line which stays wet longer than most regular acrylic paints (see Single Pear in my post on 17 September 10 and Study in Sienna in the 21 September 10 posting).

The purpose of this exercise was to blend colours starting with a dark base colour and changing it to create shapes. In this case a red rubber ball.

Thank you to returning collector Mme. Cecile Desrochers of Ste-Ramon, Quebec on her purchase of this painting.

Winter Birches

This is a painting I had started quite a while ago; I had sketched in the trees while in my car at the side of the road. It was one of the few times I didn't have my camera with me.

It was a bright sunny day just after the first heavy snow of the year and there were a lot of trees that still had not lost their autumn leaves.

Winter Birches is an original 7" x 10-3/4” framed watercolour available for $125.00.

Silent Sentinel

With having taken the Golden Acrylic workshop at KAGS earlier this month I have been doing more work using acrylic paint.

While in my frame room sorting through the frames I had on hand for acrylics I came across a number of small frames in various sizes.

I cut mat board to fit the frames and gessoed both sides of the boards, lightly sanding in between the layers of gesso.

Once the third layer of gesso was dry I started painting. This 4-1/2" x 8” acrylic is the result.

Congratulations to new collector Mr. G. H. Rennie of Peterborough, Ontario on his purchase of this painting.

Early Winter

It is still autumn and many of the changing leaves are still on the trees.

But a cold front moving through has caused the precipitation to be snow instead of rain, leaving everything covered in a mantle of white. This provided a stunning contrast between the rocks and the coloured leaves.

This is an original 7-1/2" x 10-1/2” framed watercolour available for $125.00.