George Michael

Our oldest kids shared an apartment and together got a kitten, which they named George Michael. He came to stay with us over the Christmas holidiays, and somehow it sort of felt like we were babysitting a grandchild. A foretaste, perhaps. Here was great subject matter for a painting, but how to get him to stay still long enough for a photo? Finally I managed to catch him staring intently at something out the window. This one would be done in casein, using my newly acquired techinques.

Casein is a very obedient paint, unlike watercolor. It goes where you put it, but nothing more. Some people like that. But I found that I was missing the 'give and take' of watercolor. There is a kind of partnership with watercolor. You do this, and it will do that. You start the process, and it will complete it while you are out of the room. Its a bit like giving a horse the reigns and it will find its way home. I had the hardest time getting the paint to blend the way I wanted along the window sill in this painting. The watercolor would have known what to do. But this stuff! I had to tell it everything.

I attempted two more casein paintings, but not being happy with how they were going, abandoned them both. During this time I also bought a nice set of water soluable oil paints. Seven months later they are still in their box. Maybe someday, but I could hear my watercolors calling me back.

Casein

I don't know how it happened, but I started to get interested in an opaque medium called casein. Paint is applied like oil or acrylic and has similar characteristics. It is thinned with water but doesn't harden on the pallete the way acrylic does, so it sounded ideal. There is not much information on this fairly obscure medium, so I started reading books on oil painting technique. The self-taught approach kicked into research mode as I read everything I could from the local libraries. I was peeking over the fence so to speak into the land of an entirely different way to paint. It was a strange country where a foreign language was spoken. Impasto? Scumbling? Gesso?

After the research, it was time to try it. Theory and practice. Both are good. As I had done in the past, I turned to the work of an artist I admired, in this case acclaimed oil painter Caroline Jasper. Although I was working in casein, the method was the same, and I copied her piece entitled "Expectations". She (and therefore I) started this painting by painting everything red. What a strange thing it was to dab thick white paint over a dark surface. But fun too. See that little mistake? Well now you see it, now you don't...ha ha ha.

This wasn't Kansas anymore.

Kelly Vee

My uncle, I call him Uncle, is about as intensly interested in car racing as my dad is interested in tug boats. That intensity must run in the family. After following racing for decades, he finally left the spectator stands and bought his own race car, the vintage Kelly Vee, which he races himself. Not bad for a 65 year old. I saw him race once, and I saved the best photo I took for a painting. A suprise Christmas gift. I did only this one Christmas painting , as opposed to the previous year when I did six, which was kind of a lot.

Pointilism

Some of the impressionists experimented with pointilism: painting with small dots of color, and letting the eye do the blending. I wanted to give it a try too. So I bought a couple of very small flat brushes, and went to work on a 15"x22" format rhododendron. Most brush marks were less than 1/4" square. An interesting process, and I'm glad I tried it. But I missed the broad watery sweeps of a loaded brush. I don't think you'll see me doing one of these again any time soon...

Naramata Vineyard 2

I feel better about this one, but I still see room for improvement. Stronger colors, mainly. Although the biggest challenge was getting the sage brush right. What a beautiful place this was; on Okanagan Lake, overlooking Summerland.

Naramata Vineyard 1

I don't know if landscapes are really my thing. I took lots of reference photos of BC on my visit with the hopes of painting the land I love and miss. Yet I wasn't too happy with the paintings I did. Especially this one. I am sure I could improve my technique if I practiced. But do I want to do landscapes? I don't know.

Tugboats on the Fraser

If you see I've painted a tug boat, you can be sure that it is for my dad. This was a father's day gift for him that I painted while visiting him in Vancouver.

Crocus 2

As with the first crocus, these ones grew in my garden. Since I was using the same pallete for the two crocus paintings, I painted them together. As I waited for one to dry, I would work on the other. The system seemed to work just fine.

Crocus

Now this was all my own. I grew the flower in my yard. I took the photo. I painted it myself. I was now putting into practice what I was learning from others. This was something I could feel good about.

Not My Own

Encouraged by the result of copying a painting by Elizabeth Kincaid, I attempted another one. This one, of a tiny glowing bud was smaller and more elaborate. Her method is painstaking and sometimes tedious, but I learned much from this great artist. I needed to do my own work, however. So I could not camp in the shadow of greatness any longer.

The First Floral

While surfing around online, I came across a book that I knew that I must have. "Paint Watercolors that Dance With Light" by Elizabeth Kincaid soon became the most important book in my how-to-paint library. The realism and glowing colors and dramatic lighting caught my breath, and this had to be how I would paint.

It has long been known by artists that:

The great masters became great masters by copying great masters.

Therefore, to learn for myself, I would need to copy some of this artist's paintings. I would dissect her work and learn from the unspoken details. I would learn by doing. This peach rose is from a painting by Elizabeth Kincaid.

Vancouver Tug Boat

That Christmas, my dad would be getting a painting as well, although not a portrait. One of his great interests is tug boats, particularily the ones he watches working the waterways around Vancouver. He knows them all by name, and could probably tell you what kind of engine each one has. But where to get a reference photo? I had not taken any on my previous trips home, and there are not many to be found in the farming country of Southern Ontario. None, actually. This painting was taken from a photo at the website of Seaspan International. I loved painting the mountains that I grew up beside, and the water reflections were time consuming. But the big challenge was making sure that I painted the boat accurately. A stickler for detail (on important things like tug boats) I knew my dad would be checking. I must have gotten it right, because he knew which one it was instantly. This photo is blurrier than the actual painting.

Thank you to Seaspan International for granting me permission to display this painting here.

Danielle

No stranger to a camera, I think that Danielle, my husband's youngest, could have posed all day. She had read enough fashion magazines and watched enough top model tv shows to know how its done. Or perhaps she is a natural. Getting good shots of Danielle was easy, but for some reason, I stuggled with this painting.

Having done three other portraits, I may have let my guard down and gotten careless. Also, with a deadline fast approaching, I was working quickly. In the end, the rescue effort took more time than doing the painting. But the challenge was a good one, and I learned a lot. It is all part of the process of being 'self taught'.

Valerie

Val is my husband's oldest daughter. She had just gotten off work and was tired when I sat her down to take some pictures. Not used to having a camera pointed at her, she was at first self concious and the results were strained. However, there was something spontaneous and natural when she rested her head in her hand, and I knew I had the shot I wanted.

By now of course, they all knew what they might be getting for Christmas. It had become obvious. They just wouldn't see the painting until that day.

Ian

Ian's portrait would require something different. As a gift, the picture would mean more to him if it was of something that he was very much into, namely skateboarding. I took him out one day for an action photo shoot and went from there.

He is really very good at this difficult and sometimes despised urban sport. Unfortunately, he took a bad fall a few months ago and will soon undergo major surgery on his knee.

Ariane

Ariane is my husband's middle daughter, and she was with Annie and I on that fall hike. I had brought the camera along to get landscape shots of the flaming Ontario fall foliage that was everywhere around us. It seems that the portrait shots were better; either that or I was ready for a change.

My next challenge was to see if I could paint a face directly. It was facinating to paint the effects of such strong lighting.

With two done and three to go, I decided that I would paint portraits of all the kids for Christmas gifts. But I would have to work fast.

Annie

It was time to attempt a portrait. I chose a windswept pose of my daughter for my first try. She was overlooking a high bluff on one of those rare clear fall days. The late afternoon sun made her hair appear very red. Also, I liked how the hair partly hid her face, making the features easier to tackle. I was reminded of album cover art.

It became her suprise Christmas gift that year.

Late Swim

I happened to be in the right place at the right time with my camera when these girls jumped. The sun had set behind them but there was still time for one last swim. It was at about this time, somewhere between day and night, that the loons began their haunting call.

This was my first painting to be rented out in an Art Gallery rental program, a special milestone for me.

Ghosts

I thought about the original owners of this home as I painted it. Did they often sit out on their wrap-around porch? How was their garden different than the one I was now painting? How different we are from the people of that era. And yet in many ways we are the same. We all reflect the values of the culture that we live in, and our perspectives are therefore different. And yet we are all human. Human strengths and frailties, and emotions; the human condition does not change. I am facinated by this concept. The houses are an echo of these people, now gone. So similar, so different. We learn from them by what they left behind.

When painting, I become very well acquainted the subject I am working on and all its little details. It is interesting, then, after a painting is finished, to revisit the site and have another look. I see it so much better after I have painted it. One fall day I took a slow drive by this home that I had come to know so well. I was in for a bit of a shock, however. The porch was a riot of garish halloween decorations. There were polyester cobwebs, cardboard skeletons, plastic witches and hollow eyed sheets where the flower baskets had hung.

This was not the essence of a people who had come and gone before us. This was a different kind of ghost. I quickly left.

Cottage Country

The great thing about photographing provincial park landscapes, is that no one may question what you are doing, unlike houses. Of course, Northern Ontario is a beautiful place, even if it is lacking the mountains I was used to, having come from BC. So the camping trip was an ideal opportunity to capture landscapes that were begging to be photographed. On this trip I also sketched.

Now some artists will take all manner of painting equipment out with them and paint right out there on location. They get very good at knowing exactly what to take right down to the sun hat and the bug spray. They also manage to shrink their art materials down to a very tidy little bundle, suitable for long hikes in the bush. They call it "Plein Air" painting, after the french for fresh air. It is especially popular in the UK. I however, was not quite up for all that. A sketch book and pencils would suffice. And of course, my trusty camera.

I sat on this Pre-Cambrian Canadian Sheild rock for a very long time one evening, sketching the lake and the rock and the trees. Actually, as I found, disecting the scene I was painting, the way an artist does, while being a living part of that environment myself, was a powerful experience. I wasn't only deeply seeing what was before me, but I was breathing it and hearing it and feeling it myself. I know my backside certainly was feeling it......

The sketch was an experience, but a painting was what I wanted.