This One's for Me

I have completed most of the artwork that I had planned for others. The wedding gifts are done and shower gifts as well. Ever since arriving back from my canoe trip this summer I have been percolating ideas in my brain for a painting of Algonquin Park. I recently went back to my photographs and picked out a subject, did some sketches and decided that I wanted to do a rather large painting in acrylic. I bought a canvas that was 3 feet by 2 feet.  You saw these sketches in my last blog and at first I thought I'd use the bottom one -- and I did for the most part -- but as I was drawing it out on the canvas, I felt it needed the little tree on the bottom right of the top sketch, so I added it.

I drew the basic plan on my canvas with an ochre coloured watercolour pencil. As I paint the pencil will disolve into the acrylic paint without staining the canvas. Eventually the acrylic paint will cover the drawing completely.

Detail of the canoes. You may think that canoes are easy to draw but to get the proportions right and the foreshortening looking realistic, I had to adjust things quite a bit.

Above is the very beginning of paint. I am planning on making this an early morning scene with some pinks in the sky reflecting into the water and perhaps also showing some mist coming off the water. There is not much colour here yet but I've blocked in the areas that will be the darkest and grayest due to their distance.

Stay posted for updates on the progress.