I just got back from a 2 day workshop with Alan Wylie, a noted BC artist. I took a workshop from him last year, on putting texture into oil paintings. This was was on texture in watercolour. Believe it or not, the painting above is a watercolour that he was using to show us the technique he uses to achieve these wonderful effects. When I had attended the previous workshop, he had an album with some of his watercolours and I was struck by the intensity that he created with watercolour. So I was really pleased to see a workshop with him on how he does this.

It was a good 2 days, learned lots, got started with a painting (I am too slow though!) and will continue with it next week, once our Escape Artists show is done this weekend, and the 2 day flowers workshop this coming Monday and Tuesday with the Artists’ Workshop Group here in town. I was invited to participate in this workshop just a few weeks ago, and the timing has worked out well. This group gets together to paint and show on a regular basis. Apparently each year they paint floral arrangements, and I was asked if I’d like to be a part of this, so it should be fun. Lots of activity these days!

The visit to Vancouver was enjoyable, and coincided with both my daughter and niece’s birthdays. It was good to be able to spend some time with both. It was typical November weather out there though, very wet and windy, so I didn’t get any photographs taken, other than from the workshop. Didn’t want to risk getting the camera wet! We had a wild ride coming home because we crossed over the storm to come into Calgary where the winds were hitting 80 kph. VERY bumpy ride. It was good to finally get home.

So tomorrow I start getting ready for our Escape Artists show, which we are having at our place. It will be Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Lots to prepare – particularly have to wash the floors! After all the mud from getting the fence rebuilt just before we left, I didn’t have a lot of time to get cleanup done. So that is on tomorrow’s list.

Off to bed, trying to readjust to the time zone, and then yoga tomorrow and work work work!

It is only just over 2 weeks to our Escape Artists’s show, so I have been getting ready now. I will be taking in a watercolour workshop next week, so time is really going to be pressing over the next couple of weeks. I don’t want to be doing too much last minute stuff – I’ll have to do some cleaning up beforehand as we are having the show at our place this time.

This will be an interesting undertaking. Only 6 of us will be participating in the show this time, and we weren’t able to find a suitable place. We had used the Art au Jus location for our previous shows, but it has been recently replaced by a new arts group called Mix (they don’t have a web site yet) and the space wasn’t available for the time we wanted. I thought – why not use our house, as the house-like setting of Mix was really enjoyable. So that is what we are going to do. We are going to have our opening on Saturday night, with entertainment provided by a flutist, Sam Mitchell, and a drummer Arlan Koop.  I sincerely hope that the weather is reasonable. November is fickle.

I have finished getting most of my cards ready, as you can see above. I might do a few more, but will decide later. This year I am trying something new – calendars. I have done a calendar of paintings and another of photographs. Will see how they are received. If not, Christmas presents for everyone!

I have some small paintings to varnish, but will do that next week so that they are as dry as possible. I had some new frames done, so have to put those together for the watercolours. The couple of oils are already done. Then to decide what to put in the show, make the labels etc. Lots to do. Also invitations and posters are going out and up.

Somewhere along the way, practice piano as our recital is at the end of November. Which reminds me, I’d better go and play for a bit before today’s lesson. One more listen to Piazzolla – the timing is trick!

Nearly the end of October. Why do I so often think in song titles or bits of lyrics? When this bit came to me, I googled and found the Youtube video of the song of this name, by Fairport Convention, from the 60s. I hadn’t heard it in decades, and it is still gorgeous.

Well, most of the getting-ready-for-winter stuff is done now. The fence is back up, the furnace fixed. Car tune-up and snow tires in a week. A little bit of yard things to do tomorrow, then settle in for the duration. I must admit that I am not really looking forward to winter, particularly as it was so long last year, so little summer, and now it is beginning so early again. Must be gettin’ old!

Still then there is the opportunity to just settle in and paint lots. We did get a space for a group show in Edmonton next summer, June through August which is a great time. We will be deciding on our theme and what size of canvases we will be doing so we can have a somewhat harmonized show. We are all planning to do large canvases as the space is very large – the entrance to the Muttart Conservatory. An exciting prospect for sure. And there is the annual April show with the other group to start working towards. So being primarily indoors will be good for that.

I am also looking forward to going to Vancouver next month. First of all to visit AK and hopefully see other family folk. Then there is the 2 day workshop on texture in watercolour with Alan Wylie who is an excellent instructor. I learned a great deal from his other workshop I attended about a year and a half ago on texture in oils. I want to do some more work with that technique over the winter. Also just to be out in BC, by the ocean.

November is going to be a busy month with the trip/workshop, the group show here at our house right after, and then another two day workshop here in town that I was just invited to. The Artists’ Workshop group here in town, one of Saskatoon’s oldest running groups, has invited me to participate in a workshop they hold on floral painting. Apparently they set up  number of floral still life arrangements and spend a couple of days painting those that appeal. It should be very interesting, and it is very nice to have been invited to participate.

Busy is good. Just wish I had a cook and a housekeeper. Well, one just does. So cup of tea time, watch ‘New Tricks’ on PBS, and hopefully a decent sleep.

Well, after our lovely September, October hit like a ton of bricks – straight down to 0 and bits of snow to boot. The snow landed on warm structures and turned to ice, like it did on our sun room. The leaves are still mostly on the trees, many not even turned colour yet, and they now appear freeze-dried in place after 2 weeks of cold. I am wondering if they will even fall – most likely they will just break off now over winter. Very bizarre year. Through the ice, you can see the red cranberries of the tree and its green leaves.

Also, pretty well through the whole summer, we have been dealing with accusations from the man who is the developer for the property next door. He has continually accused us of having our fence on ‘his’ property (he is not the owner). In April he threatened to have our fence torn down. We couldn’t believe his accusations, so this lead us to get a new survey, take our fence down to rebuild (it had been totally destabilized by the construction work), and get legal advice. We were having the fence rebuilt last week and he confronted our fence contractor and threatened to take a chain saw to the fence. So that halted work! I spoke with him to no avail. However, after speaking to two surveyors, documenting everything, with photos, the lawyer says he is totally wrong and just go ahead, which we will do. But this has caused endless aggravation, a lot of expense, and a huge amount of time wasted. Now, finally, I feel that we are in a strong position and will now just ignore the ‘jerk’ (in the words of the lawyer!) .

Then, to top it off, our furnace quit on Sunday. It had been making noises and we actually were scheduled to have it replaced this week, but it beat us to it. Fortunately is has been steady around 0 with little wind. It turns out that our gas fireplace more than keeps the place warm, and with our few baseboard heaters upstairs and a space heater in the kitchen, we are doing fine. Just one more thing to contend with though.

Needless to say, it has been a little stressful this week, and no painting done at all. So I am now going to make the effort to get this all behind me, and put on some good painting music (Sting, Piazzolla). I will get going again.

Miserable weather finally set in yesterday and will go on for a few more days. We are getting a good soak though, which will help water in the trees and such for winter. Just it is also cold and windy. So time to take advantage of inside time.

This is something I have wanted to do for a while. I am not going to say exactly what it is at this point. Needless to say, it is going to be quite abstract looking, even though it is actually something real. I got the sketch done up and then have started to block in the colours. This is the fun bit, just smooshing colour onto the canvas without too much detail. This won’t have a lot of detail anyway, just some refinements of the colours and highlights.

This is probably as far as I will get today. We are going out to a lecture tonight – I’d rather stay in when it is like this. It is a Sir Ken Robinson, who gave one of the TED lectures about education, called Schools Kill Creativity. I wonder if I can skip? I am sure it will be interesting, probably an elaboration of what was on the TED program. GK’s former student, now a new faculty member here is going to so maybe they can go together. Hmmm. I’ll probably go anyway as I am sure it is going to be good. Just whingeing about the weather.

BTW the TED site is a very interesting one with 15 minute lectures by people from everywhere. It is Technology Entertainment Design. It is definitely worth checking out.

Well, had better organize supper early as we will have to get there early for a seat – free lecture so should be widely attended.

We are finally having wonderful weather, temperatures way above average, lovely days. So the flowers are still blooming away and the morning glories are really plentiful this year.

I have been getting a few more house type things done – painting one of the french doors, a window frame, and the downstairs bathroom cabinet. Also time to start cleaning the windows. I hope to get all the french doors painted at some point but as there are 8 still left to do, it will be a while – they are very slow going with all that glass to go around. Although I did discover that using one of my oil painting brushed made doing the edges a lot easier this time. So maybe I might tackle one more, depending on how the weather holds.

Our Escape Artists group is getting geared up now to have our fall show at the end of November. Also, it is quite possible that we will have a summer show in 2010 at the Muttart Conservatory in Edmonton! That is very exciting. Linda will be going to Edmonton in a couple of weeks to check out the space. She has has a show there before, but it has apparently been renovated so she will see what it is like now. We will all have to do big paintings for this, so it will be time to break out that big (for me) 30 x 30 inch canvas that has been lurking upstairs. I have been planning to do a big succulent painting on it, so now I have the motivation to get going.

Our Prairie River Artists group got back together last Saturday to get our new season underway. We have three new members of the group, so it will be interesting to see what kind of work they do. Everyone does something different so it is great fun to watch all the different pieces being produced. So fall is definitely underway, even if the weather is summer-like.

I am also starting to look forward to the painting workshop I am going to in November. Will have to start making travel plans soon for that. I’ll get to see family then and that is always the best part. I also hope to see some friends as well. Always lots to do and see there.

Well, have to get going on making invitations and posters, and getting the advertising underway for the upcoming show. Better hop to.

Yesterday, I was feeling like this, just out of sorts, gnarly, not able to settle. This was partly due to some unresolved things, which today, are now taken care of. The first was deciding to give up the volunteer work I have done for almost 5 years. It had reached the point where it wasn’t really benefiting anyone much, other than the social aspects. I realize that those are important too, but it is something I can do on an individual basis with the couple of remaining people from the group. I had played telephone tag for several days with the program coordinator, so finally today, just left a message with my decision and will get in touch later.

The other was a fall group art show with the Escape Artists. It is nearly a year since our last show, and we were all getting a bit antsy that it wasn’t coming together. We had thought of using Grace Westminster church, but it wasn’t really the best venue for us as we are a small group and it is a big space. I had been pondering this for a while, and the experience of a couple of other artists I know in town lead me to think about using our house as the venue. So we met last night, and I put the idea forward, and we are going to do that. Even G thinks it is a good idea, so it is great to have everyone on side. So now we can go ahead with planning, have an actual date set, something to work toward, and are excited about this new experiment in showing our work.

I think that I like deadlines, or some specific event to get ready for. I was still kind of drifting and not getting anywhere. So last night, after our meeting, and, of course at 3 in the morning, I had lay there thinking about all kinds of ideas.

Today I had to pick up the couple of paintings from the Prairie River Artists‘ group show that was just over, so after that I headed over to check through three of our antique shops for some items that I wanted to find for still lifes. Here is what I found…

I found the 2 copper pots, a white cream jug (not overly visible here on the left), 3 old locks, and a ceramic insulator (again hidden a bit to the right behind the pot). I have a lot of other things too – the little chinese sewing basket, a shell with barnacles that I brought back from Vancouver, plus the floats and my Auvergne pot where I keep my watercolour brushes. This actually make an interesting grouping as it is. Hmm. Will have to revisit.

So now I feel energized and ready to get going again. The days will be full, as there will be lots of gardening to take care of, plus a couple more house things to do before that time, but that is good. I like to have a focus like that.

So on this lovely autumn day,  am feeling more like this…

The beginning of September always seems like the start of a new year, much more so than Jan 1. It is probably because of the link to the school/university year, which has been a part of my whole life, in one way or another. So I thought maybe I should make some resolutions now, although, we all know that resolutions are always broken. Still maybe just to think about what the upcoming winter will bring, and how to make the best of it.

I already know that I will be going out to Vancouver in November, for about a week. A painting workshop and critique session happily coincides with Ariane’s birthday, so it will be a doubly good time to go out. I’ll get to have some family time, particularly staying for some extra days.

I have decided that I will be winding up volunteering with the seniors group that I have been with for almost 5 years. They are all now very frail and not really able to participate any more, even though they try. Pretty well all of them are now fairly ill too, so I don’t want to make them feel they have to show up when they can’t really manage any more. I will just go and visit from time to time.

I also plan to work on some specific paintings, towards submitting them for shows in the next year or so. The idea of a body of work has been in the back of my mind for some time. With shows though, I have put everything out there. I did do a theme for last winter with the coastal paintings and I really enjoyed doing that. I have been thinking about a series called ‘Organic/Inorganic’, using paintings of rusted objects and of succulents together. I am going to try the very big succulent painting I have been planning for a while and hope to start quite soon as it will take some time to do.

One of the painting groups is trying to decide if we will have a show yet this fall. We will have to decide soon as time will fly by! Hopefully that will be decided soon, as it will impact other possibilities. I have also had an idea about doing an at-home, salon type show with the group. I haven’t discussed it with anyone yet, but the place is big enough to do it, and there would be very little in the way of overhead costs.  Something to think about anyway.

There are also some personal issues I really need to deal with, so it is time to get going on those. No success on dealing with it myself, so time to get some outside input. So there will be no shortage of things going on. For now, just enjoying our late summer weather, after a cool spring and summer. Nice to have to warmth and good light.

Although I had started out intending this to be a still life of peaches, I quickly discovered that it was also a ‘white sheet exercise’.  Also, I hadn’t really done reflective metals in watercolours before, so this was a painting that has three different elements in it.

I didn’t know about the white sheet exercise until I took my first oil painting class with Iris Hauser a couple of years ago. One of the first exercises we did in the class was to do a painting of a white sheet that was draped over a chair. Well, if that didn’t teach you about colour and contour, I don’t know what would. It was a great way to start out with oils as I had no idea what they did, never having worked with them.

I have also done a couple of pieces in oils that have metal objects in them and found that they are much like the white sheet exercise – looking at the blocks of colour that make up the reflections on metal.

I wanted to get back to doing some watercolours and with peaches in season, it was just the right time. Peaches have such great colour and texture, and I knew it would be a challenge to get that soft fuzziness in watercolour. So I blithely set up the still life with a silver bowl, antique fruit knife and fork, on a white cloth.

Well, the white sheet is a lot harder in watercolour. I have reached the stage in the painting where I am going to put it up on the wall for a while and see what needs to be done. I am sure there will be more needed in the shadows of the cloth, and the shadows in general – always an area I need to work on with watercolour. I use transparent watercolours, so I can layer a lot without getting mud, which helps.

The silver seems to have worked more or less, and the peaches are okay too. So it is going to ‘proof’ for a while, and as I look at it over the next while, will make notes of things to work on a bit more. It is mostly done though and I am reasonably happy with it, particularly after having been away from doing any watercolour for such a long time.

Well, I just bought some nice fresh, ripe figs, so am going to do something with them, as well as eating them that is!

There is always that one day in August when you know that summer is coming to an end, at least for me here on the prairies. I go outside, and the light has noticeably changed, and the air has a different feel. It can be a clear summery day, but I just get this sense of a shift toward fall and away from summer. Yesterday was that day. I got out my bike to ride over for yoga and that was it – light at that lower angle, a certain dry scent to the air.

That makes me a little wistful, although autumn is my favourite season in this part of the world. Here we get such intense blue skies in fall, the sun at a sharp angle, highlighting all the colours, and clear air. If we are lucky, it can last for several weeks, gradually winding down the year. It also seems a bit like a new year – September always has that feeling of starting something anew, probably a holdover from our school days. We are stilled tuned to that kind of calendar via the university, so it seems much more like new year than New Year to me.

We had a few days of warm sunny weather again so I was able to sit out on the deck and work on a new watercolour painting. I have been doing so much oil painting in the last while, that I wanted to get back to watercolours. I had a bunch of lovely BC peaches, so decided to use them in a still life.

I am beginning to think that I am more or less a still life painter, regardless of what I am painting. I have tried various kinds of landscapes, sweeping scenes of skies and fields etc and it just doesn’t seem to work for me. I find that I need a point of focus, so that even if I do some kind of landscape, it is primarily of something specific in that landscape. That has been useful to clarify for me as I think it comes from my background in the sciences, particularly microbiology, where one is focussed on the very small. That might be a useful challenge for me at some point, to try and look at the ‘bigger picture’ as an exercise. Something to put on the list of things to try.

Speaking of trying, I have just checked out the FCA workshops for the fall and have found one on watercolour and texture with Alan Wylie (he has a redesigned website and has lots of his wonderful paintings). I took his workshop on oils and texture in March of 2008 and it was great. I have used the techniques he taught for several paintings. I was able to take my painting to a new level afterwards, which was very rewarding. He had photos of some of his watercolours, and they are so interestingly done and so intensely coloured. I really want to work on my watercolour and improve that to a better level as well now. I think that I could learn a lot from his workshop again. I will have to sign up quickly though – only 5 spots left already! I also noticed that they are doing a free critique session a few days later. That could be very interesting. To be critiqued by three well known artists. Have to be brave!

Well, it is a rainy day here, so I will spend the afternoon inside, working on the peaches. I ate one for breakfast, and maybe will have another for lunch – I do love them!