Search This Blog

Thursday 19 September 2013

Gathering Northern Inspiration and a New Painting

Due to being on vacation last week, there was no post on Thursday. I was once again in Northern Ontario with my tent and my kayak. I took along my sketch book and acrylic paints in the hopes of getting a lot of artwork done. I can't say I got a lot of artwork done but I did manage a few sketches and started a new painting.

As always, I have to relax enough to produce anything and so my first sketches are rough and not that great but I've learned that it's not about perfect sketches, it's about just sketching. If I'm not afraid to fail, I can take chances. Even bad sketches can be an inspiration for something better.

I was about to get out of my tent one morning to sketch the campsite but
then it started to rain so I sketched the campsite from inside
the tent.



I am mesmerized by campfires and can stare into them for hours.
I decided to try to capture those licking flames around a
large chunk of wood.


I walked down the beach on a cloudy day
and sat down among the rocks to sketch
them with the beach and bay in the distance.
The new painting I started is from a photograph from my 2012 Canoe Trip and is a northern island in the sunset. I'm using acrylic to paint it and because it is a sunset, I've had to purchase a few colours that I don't usually use. This painting will be a little more colourful than what I'm used to painting and so I'm finding it challenging.
 
This is the initial blocking in of shapes. These shapes will be the
darkest in the painting so I painted them in purple to give me
their placement. I will be painting the sky and the water over
top of the purple shapes making sure I can still see their
placement.
 

Here I have blocked in the sky and cloud shapes as well as the water.
At this stage, it still looks very rough, however, as I keep working
it will start to blend and harmonize together.
Oh, also, in case you are interested, I forgot to eat the protected pear before I left on vacation but it was still waiting for me when I got home and so I ate it immediately. It was DELICIOUS and totally worth the wait and vigil.

No comments:

Post a Comment