On Thursday, Nov 19, 2020 I did my first zoom demonstration for the Calgary Sketch Club. It was a fairly stressful process simply because I got a new, powerful piece of hardware that I hoped would make the experience better for the viewers. I worked beautifully.
Here is the painting as it was when I finished the demo (1 1/2 hours).
I spent about another hour in the studio and this is the final version.
I’m really happy with the painting and I’m over the moon with the process. I think I can use this technology to continue my teaching in this most challenging of times.
I try to make sure that I include play as an important part of my painting process. This is where I just try things to see what they look like. I find I learn a lot in these ‘fun’ times. This painting is a beautiful case in point.
This is a painting of the Empire Building in Edmonton. This painting just uses the basic shape of the buildings as they actually are. I wanted to see if I could completely change the lighting to go with this extreme sunrise theme. I also wanted to see if the building were interesting enough shapes. The painting turned out absolutely fine, but nothing special.
I thought both the sunrise theme and the shapes of the buildings were fine but then why isn’t it very interesting. The thing that jumped out was that the buildings in the background are as detailed as the closer buildings. This gets the eye wandering down to the background too much. I asked myself what is my story? Where do I want your eye to go? For me the story is the life on the street in the front so in this painting there are too many distractions.
So I redid it with the clear intention to push the background buildings further back and keep the detail only in the closest buildings.
In this version your eye is definitely drawn more to the foreground. It’s a more focused and comfortable visual experience.
For the past 10 years I have focused on urban landscape. Over that time the figures in the paintings became more and more important. So this interest in portraits is a natural outcome of that process.
I’m trying to develop a process that is fairly quick, a little impressionistic and that captures the character of the subject. Like anything if one keeps practicing one will eventually get there. These are 2 studies.
I find that when I do portraits I really do feel a personal connection with the subject. I love this process.
I recently had the opportunity to teach a fun workshop at a location that I really love – The Leighton Centre.
It has been a while since I taught this particular workshop and once again I came to appreciate how much fun it can be and yet how many useful watercolour techniques are involved.
It was a great group of participants and we formed a very supportive and enthusiastic group.
The three main activities were a fun way to do figures, a painting of Haystack Rock and a painting of a pond near Cameron Lake in Waterton Park.
As I mentioned it’s always the people that make the workshop!
