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.

OSWOA - Magnetawan River 1

Today I am sitting on the final day of the Driven to Abstraction show held at KAGS.

With having taken the first part of Neil Broadfoot's Fast Water Workshop earlier this week, I decided to finish a painting of the rushing water from the Magnetawan River while I was spending my time sitting at the show.













If you would like more information about OSWOA please go to my post on 12 March 2010.


The OSWOA shown here is an original watercolour painting using Artist quality Winsor & Newton paint on 300lb. Arches 100% rag, acid free watercolour paper. It is priced at $40.00 and sold unframed.

ACEO - Stormy Skyline 1-4

Autumn has always been my favourite time of the year.

It is not only the wonderful changing colours of the trees from their summer greens to the blazing colours of orange, gold, and red before the leaves finally fall to the ground leaving a rustling blanket on the ground to protect next year's growth.


Stormy Skyline 4

It is the strong, sharp contrasts. The dark storm clouds in behind the autumn trees as the morning sun sets them ablaze, or after a rain when the almost black trunks of the maple trees stand out against the glowing colours of the leaves or the bare deciduous trees casting blue lacy patterns across the freshly fallen snow, or the pines standing boldly out against the sky.

Stormy Skyline 3

It is also the many changes in the weather from the last few warm weeks of the Indian Summer, the frost covering the ground in the morning, the cool crispness of the clear, bright air, the first light dusting of snow on the ground. Shortly after Hallowe'en we can expect a glittering blanket of white covering the ground which will usually stay until the early Spring.

Stormy Skyline 2

If you would like more information about ACEO please go to my post on 11 March 2010.

The ACEO shown here are all original watercolour paintings using Artist quality Winsor & Newton paint on 300lb. Arches 100% rag, acid free watercolour paper. They are priced at $20.00 each and sold unframed.

Stormy Skyline 1