I have been back to the watercolours in the past weeks.  I love the discipline of the medium as well as the way the paper receives the pigments. Wet washes sink in while drier applications hover on the surface.  It always seems to me that that paper resonates more like a soft skin as opposed to canvas behaving like an exterior fabric.

I don't generally use masking fluid or draw out the subject before painting, but prefer to work directly with brush and pigment.  I also work from a 'live model', not a photograph. I feel that this leads to a less static interpretation of the flower.

Dahlia Trio
5" x 7" watercolour on acid free paper

  

Our weather patterns are behaving like a yo-yo right now.  For two days we receive glorious fall weather that begs you, loudly, "Come outside!" Then the skies open to deluge us with torrential rains.  The flower beds are all caught up in the drama, reaching blooms and buds to the sun only to be beaten down and tangled up by the rain.  Feel free to use any of these images to paint from!

                                                               

Whew! That was a busy summer! Hope yours was great!

As the morning air becomes cool and crisp and the light turns golden, it is time to be enjoying the last days in the garden.  Dahlia's are definitely the colour champions at this time of year and the garden is packed with white, pink, orange and yellow blooms. 

I set up in the kitchen of the house to paint in the full spectrum of south light instead of the studio's north light. It  looks like a mess, but it was fun to paint in a different space.  I'll  include a photo of the bouquet as well, in case someone else wants to take a crack at painting it.  

Thanks for looking.

 















The kitchen table remodeled!

  On top is the 6"x6" oil  painting while the photo below is the still life. You can see that I added another petal to the red and yellow dahlia in the final composition to better  balance the pink one.

Thinking about Space,  the‘nothings’ that make ‘ somethings’ more interesting
Reflecting on the disciplines of math, music and dance, I find there 
are many tools with which to consider and analyze the use of space 
in visual art.  From math the concept that the element ‘one’ is defined 
by the space, or ‘zero’ seems simple but is often overlooked. 

When one paints an object in a field, the field is just as important as 
the object. The one, defines the other, quite literally.  For example a 
tree placed on the left of the composition will project differently than 
one in the middle, top, bottom or right hand side. Playing with the 
relationship between the object and the field (space) is one of the most 
rewarding and simplest ways of enhancing a composition. 

Attention to the repetition and grouping of units and space is very useful in 
creating interest and unity. Two, four, six as compared to three, six, 
nine for  a simple example.   I can also think of scale which is easily
expressed in mathematics as a useful tool in painting composition. 
How different the reading of the same image, tree, if it takes up ten 
percent of the field, versus ninety-five percent! Quite simply paying
attention to the ‘nothing’ element, space – creates more interest in 
the ‘something’ subject!

Just added new paintings to Daily Paintworks today.  Check out the new 'crop.'
One of the works is of the Arrowleaf Balsamroot, which looks very much like a daisy, and which can only be found in the Okanagan.  Here are some photos of it this spring on the hillsides overlooking Lake Okanagan. It was a great day for a hike, and seeing all these blooms made it quite a wonderful time.

Thinking about Space,

The necessary element that makes the ‘other’ visible.

Our book collection seems to constantly be growing with art books, poetry, science, sociology, psychology and 'how to' books hogging the majority of the shelf real estate. I like used book stores, and try to visit them when on travels, especially abroad. You never know what will present itself in a dusty, almost universally poorly lit, spot!  I delight in finding the older books, including outdated elementary school textbooks.  They are written in a plain, uncomplicated manner, offering a comprehensive yet simple overview of their topic in an engaging conversational way.  

Mathematics, by The Golden Library of Knowledge, published 1958, begins with the sentence, “Mathematics is the science in which we think carefully about numbers and space.” In another that I cannot find right now, “Mathematics is about one and zero.”  I love it! As far as I can remember, no math teacher every pointed out to me that it requires a zero to define the one, a space to create separate and distinct units.  In Music, space divides sound into separate notes which can be used to create rhythm and pattern.  For dancers space is the expanse which allows movement. It may seem obvious that Visual Art needs space as well, but I find often in pursuit of creating the subject, I can forget about the important element of space.

It has been three months since my first oil painting in Qiang Huang's workshop at the Scottsdale Artist School in Arizona.  As I  become more proficient at manipulating oil, I am starting to think about how to use the medium in terms of expression. 

Qiang, paints mostly still life.  His work uses broad lush strokes in high key colour and tone.  This type of painting style is loose and the paint shimmers and dances as it portrays how light falls and reflects off of it's subject.  I have not done much in this style as one needs a bright light source - and I profess that right now, I can't wrap my head around adding more stuff to my small studio.  Other possible approaches to painting include colour, line, pattern, texture, shape,or space. I hope to explore them each on their own merits as I keep exploring oil painting.  

In previous years, my watercolour paintings have explored and pushed the use of space, or volume quite a bit.  Here below are three dry brush watercolour paintings.  

Last Years Maple                        17 x 14". 

The Plight of the Bumblebee        22 x 30"

Sweet Ravages of Time               22 x 30"

Mr. Bumblebee won Best Watercolour in a Botanical Artists of Canada exhibition, while Ravages received the First prize in a Canadian Federation of Artists Show. 

PS: You can check out Qiang Huang at   http://qiang-huang.blogspot.ca