I have moved! Now living near Lake Huron on the west side of Ontario.
The paintbrush is still putting on miles! 🙂
More info to come on some wonderful paint experiences.
Still Learning to be Astonished..
Let me keep my mind
on what matters
which is mostly standing still
and learning to be
astonished.
Mary Oliver
This is a great time of year to be spending some time indoors and although many of the native bird species have migrated to their winter habitats, it’s actually given me a chance to study them and learn more. I’ve been inspired by John Muir Laws (and his guide to drawing birds), who is a wonderful naturalist, teacher, and artist. The pictures included in this post are taken from my sketchbook and contain those studies. Already I know that I’ll be in better shape to observe and capture the real thing, ideally on the Bruce Peninsula (in warmer weather)…and be astonished.
Gone Sketching
2015 is drawing to a close and with the advent of a new year there will be a few changes in your lives I’m guessing and most definitely in mine. This post will be the last one for this year 2015 but it also indicates an artistic change of direction for the upcoming year. Over the next couple of months, the links from the images to the online site Daily Paintworks will disappear. I may be starting a new account elsewhere but for now I am taking a hiatus from online sales.
I will be making art, of course, but am more interested in returning to my roots as a biologist and reviving my passion for field sketching in particular. It’s a passion from a time when I worked as park naturalist and my roommate for the summer was an artist who helped me see the joy in capturing and illustrating the observations I was making through sketching. Painting and sketching have been a constant in my life and so this is not a departure but rather just a re-emphasis.
I recommend it highly to anyone who would like to connect with ‘the creation’ through the ‘creation’ of sketches and illustrations of your own part of the planet. Maybe I’ll see you in the field with binoculars, camera, and sketch pad.
Pomegranate and Tea Towel
It’s still wet but it think it’s finished. The tea towel was just ‘hangin’ around so I grabbed it and added it to my little cardboard still life box. I really like the lines and how they move the eye through the painting. The pomegranate would be a bit of a red bulls eye otherwise! The nice thing about alla prima is that you can have a time limit on the work. Otherwise, I have been known to spend months on a piece. Think I’ll do a few more pomegranate paintings before Christmas–not for gifts–no… ‘just because’.