ACEO - Christmas Tree 1

With today being Christmas Eve what could be more fitting than a painting of a Christmas tree?

First I splattered masking fluid onto the paper for snow and some of the tree ornaments.

Once the masking fluid was dry I lightly sketched in the trunk and the main branches for the tree.

Just before I was ready to paint in the background I decided I should mask out the tinsel on the tree first.

After the masking fluid had dried the background was painted in using cobalt blue.

The Christmas tree was painted using various mixtures of French ultramarine blue, raw sienna, Antwerp blue and burnt sienna.

The painting was then aside to dry completely before removing the masking fluid.

Once the masking fluid was removed it was time to paint all the Christmas ornaments on the tree.

First I mixed up a blue grey with French ultramarine blue, Antwerp blue a little burnt sienna and painted the tinsel.

I wanted to have a number of different coloured ornaments so I started to paint a couple of them with cadmium yellow.

Next I changed the colour by adding a little alizarin crimson.

I added a little cobalt blue to the mix for a couple darker coloured red ornaments.

Next I used pure cobalt blue in various places and followed that by adding a little new gamboge for some green ornaments.

I painted the remaining ones with pure cadmium red.

I decided that I wanted to add a Christmas star to the painting and used cadmium yellow since it is opaque and will cover most transparent colours.

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

The ACEO shown here is an original watercolour painting using Artist quality Winsor & Newton paint on 140lb. Arches 100% rag, acid free watercolour paper.

It is priced at $20.00 and sold unframed.

The Lindsay Gallery Poster

It is snowing today and with tomorrow being Christmas eve hopefully we are going to have a white Christmas.

The poster from The Lindsay Gallery for the last half of the year has come out and some of my artwork is featured on it for my upcoming show 'Above and Below the Reef 'which will run from from 30 July - 24 August 2013.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and look at the artwork.

Spotted Eagle Rays - A Work in Progress

I had started painting in some of the coral on the closest reef face (see posts on 23 Jul12 and 17 Oct 12) and today I wanted to get that section completed.














Now that this part is completed I can decide where I wish to place the rays in the painting. I do this by having my finished drawing on a piece of tracing paper and move it around on the painting until I find where it looks the best. Then I transfer the image onto the canvas.














I will post this painting at a later date once the rays have been completed.

Christmas Show at The Lindsay Gallery

Today I had to go and pick up my paintings from The Lindsay Gallery All Member Christmas Show.  I was fortunate that even with a major snow storm going on the roads were well looked after and traffic was fairly light.










The Gallery has a lovely area in which to display paintings and I am looking forward to having my show with Carol Rutherford called "Above and Below the Reef" there. The show will run from 01 August - 24 August 2013.

Getting Hammered - A Work in Progress

Today with the Still Life class at KAGS one of our members brought in a collection of old tools, many of them more than 100 years old.

We were spoiled for choice and I took a lot of reference photographs and did a number of quick sketches before I decided to concentrate on the grouping of hammers.

I will probably do a series of paintings of these old tools from my sketches and my photographs. I will post this painting at a later date once more of it has been completed.

Old and New - A Work in Progress

This is the other still life drawing I did earlier this month (see post on 13 December 2012) at KAGS.

It was a difficult composition to work with due to the many horizontals and verticals as well as oval shapes with lots of details.














I will post this picture at a later date once I have some of it painted.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my artwork and I hope you will return often.

Autumn Forest 1 and 2 - Two Works in Progress

Today was another snow day; we had four inches more added on top of the six inches that were already on the ground from the storm that went through earlier this week.

I decided that I would work on two autumn scenes, since it is my favourite time of the year and I really didn't want to paint a snow scene.

The first one is of the Snelgrove Brook (see posting on 16 October 2011).

Autumn Forest 1

It was early morning and the mist was just being burnt off by the morning sun.

I painted in the water and some of the shoreline rocks and lifted a little more of this rising mist. Then I indicated where the taller foreground evergreens should be placed.

For the second painting (see posting 24 August 12) I drew in the boathouse that was on the Magnetawan River which had such beautiful autumn colours on the shore and the distant hills. I also put in the trunks of the evergreen trees that are in the foreground.

Autumn Forest 2

I will post these paintings at a later date once they have been completed.