Random Access Murtanovski

Corona Solis (india)

2012-02-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000

During one of our several photo shoots (all of which have resulted in dozens of usable reference pics), I took a picture of Ashley in the same pose as the one I took of my model from Awake...and here it is in my Sunflowers series.

That's the same dress that's in CS (november), but here it's in its actual black and white appearance. Also, you can see the front of the necklace that is visible from behind in CS (golf) and CS (papa).

Corona Solis (yankee)

2012-01-31T00:24:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

I graduated the colours of the matrix in this one to resemble a landscape of greenery, water, and sky, with sunflowers on the land and the sun in the sky.

However...

It was unintentional, I assure you, but there is a phallic implication to this composition (which I don't actually mind), so take it either way. Or both.

Sketch (no phallus here).

The reference for this model was sourced from a magazine and not my own photograph.

Corona Solis (tango & uniform)

2012-01-30T10:16:00.000-05:00

Corona Solis (tango)

15" x 11", watercolour, 2000 sold

I used photo ref of Alyson Hannigan from a magazine for these two paintings. This was at a time when I was photographing my own models for my paintings, so why are so many magazine models are turning up in the Sunflowers series? Most likely building my illustration portfolio with a few more recognizable faces to demonstrate I can do likenesses fairly well.

Anyway, in this photo shoot, she's actually goofing around with an action figure of herself as her character, Willow Rosenberg, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I replaced the doll with a sunflower. Ha-ha.

Corona Solis (uniform)

15" x 11", watercolour, 2000

Corona Solis (papa)

2012-01-29T10:44:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000

Ashley's back again in this one (pun intended) and, this time, I wanted to make it look like the sunflower was a tattoo. I used black ink for the outline and coloured the flower flatly, but conforming to the contours of her back to help the illusion. The dangly bit below her hair is the back of the same necklace that's in CS (golf).

I didn't have a sketchbook with me at the time I came up with the tattoo idea (that arrow leads to a note, indicating this), so I drew the sketch below on whatever piece of paper I had at hand.

Sketch (in ball point!)

Corona Solis (oscar)

2012-01-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watrcolour, 2000

That's Ashley again, making her fifth (of six) appearances in the Sunflowers series.

I tried, once again, to have the subjects affected by the matrix pattern (like I did with antidote, Cultural Mess, and Fruitful Mess) and it works pretty well, so I don't know why I haven't tried it in more paintings...

Corona Solis (mike)

2012-01-27T00:37:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

I used photo ref of my friend, Trish, taken in the mid '90s for this painting. I did a few paintings of her from that shoot where I got her to make some amusing, cheeky faces, and I thought this particular pose was so good that I decided to use it again here.
Only the addition of the green band is different from the sketch.

Sketch.

Corona Solis (lima)

2012-01-26T08:03:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

This is the first time in the series where the model appears to be physically interacting with a flower –even though the source model wasn't actually interacting with a flower: she was already holding that piece of fabric, but then I added the sunflower and shadow to create the illusion.

This model was from a magazine and not from photographic reference I shot myself.
She's also the same model that's in CS (quebec).

Corona Solis (kilo)

2012-01-25T00:35:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

When deciding the sunflower placement for this painting I chose to cover her crotch not out of any censorship concerns, but because it's kinda funny...and it's usually sexier to tease than it is to explicitly reveal. The flower at the top sort of evokes a flower in her hair as well as a halo.

This model was from a magazine and not from photographic reference I shot myself.

Corona Solis (juliet)

2012-01-24T00:23:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

This is the same model as in CS (foxtrot) and I had the same problem of trying to find a suitable place for the flower. Again, I played around in my sketchbook (sorry, not interesting enough to post here) with different arrangements, and, since she's leaning more in this one, and her hand's in that position, a single large sunflower was the best solution.

I did try a bit of light bloom around her head by softening the edges, but I still think that effect was better achieved in CS (charlie).

Yeah, I don't know why I left that triangular negative space grey rather than filling it with more blue matrix...

Corona Solis (hotel)

2012-01-23T09:33:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

This is the same model that's in Without List 2 (and she also appears in the very last painting of the Sunflowers series, CS (zulu)). To convey a floating feeling, I had Kim lie on the floor and, after arranging the lights (and her hair to be as flowy as possible), I stood on my coffee table and took the photo.

Sketch.

The placement of sunflowers didn't change from sketch to painting, and I like how the top flower serves as a halo –a true corona– (a recurring motif in this series).

Corona Solis (golf)

2012-01-22T07:51:00.001-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000

Ashley returns to the Sunflowers series with her back turned to us (my choice; so you can see her shoulders and the dangling part of her necklace). I actually took some time and specifically placed those strands of hair in front of her face like that, leaving a gap to reveal her eye.

Early sketch.

As always, and well after the photo shoot, I did a few sketches to determine what the background and sunflower arrangement would be. The above sketch was before I decided to include the oval element as a "window" set into the matrix to show the flowers. It also shows that this painting was originally going to be the 8th painting in the series ("hotel"), but, for some reason, it got moved up to "golf."

Corona Solis (foxtrot)

2012-01-21T04:12:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

Another flat white halo, but, for some reason, I didn't try rendering a light bloom around the model like I did in CS (charlie). However, the matrix "radiating" from it (sorta like in this painting), simulates a stained glass kind of brightness.

I painted three sunflowers for compositional balance (one would have been too lonely and two would have been too unintentionally comical if placed in front of her boobs (I tried both variations in my sketchbook and neither option worked)).

Corona Solis (delta)

2012-01-20T01:52:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000

Once again, Elaine Secord is modelling here. The circular motifs around the sunflowers are heavily inspired by the designs of Alfons Mucha, my favourite artist in the art nouveau style.

Corona Solis (charlie)

2012-01-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000

Here's Elaine again from the same photo shoot that resulted in so many good pictures that weren't used on Squirm's Cold CD, but ended up as paintings.

I wanted to give the halo a realistic glow, so I softened the edges around her hair and shoulder, trying to create a blooming effect, which is a photographic artefact I enjoy.

Corona Solis (bravo)

2012-01-18T09:36:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000

I used a number of unused photos from a shoot I did with Elaine for her band's 1998 CD Cold as reference for a number of paintings, including my Sunflowers series.

Balancing out the background matrix is a sideways "t" form that contains sunflowers...but it has the overall effect of looking (unintentionally) like a flag (Sweden and Norway and Finland (maybe others...) come to mind). But that's okay with me; they're nice flags.

Corona Solis (alpha)

2012-01-17T10:21:00.002-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000

This painting was the first of my Sunflowers series in which I painted 26 pictures of women posing with sunflowers, each identified by parenthetical radio code. Here, Ashley's wearing an outfit made of negative space (I'd been experimenting with negative space in a number of paintings since the mid-90s). The gold in the halo is simple gold paint.

toasty.

2012-01-16T10:17:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 1998

During the photoshoot (with a co-worker at the time) for this, I grabbed my shiny toaster, hoping something interesting would happen if she put it on her shoulder. The result is interesting, strange, and revealing: this woman appears to be younger when looked at in profile than she does from the front. Or maybe that's just my interpretation of what I'm seeing.

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

Shirley Manson

2012-01-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2002

Shirley's the lead singer in another one of my favourite bands, Garbage*, and was also at the top of my list for doing celebrity portraits for my illustration portfolio.

Again, I used a photo from a magazine as reference for this, but I changed some colours: Shirley's top was white...and so was her hair! This natural redhead had short, spiky-ish white hair in this photo. Unacceptable for my painting because she's normally ginger.

Guitar closeup.

Layout designs with flaming hair.

Here I am playing around with the idea of having her hair rendered in a very stylized way, focusing on flames. In the end, the stylized wave kind of does still evoke a flame, just not as explicitly as these sketches.

Flaming hair: interesting, but not used.

*Previously, she was in a band called Angelfish which I think she largely would like to forget, but there's a bunch of songs on their one and only CD that I really like.

Tori Amos

2012-01-14T10:54:00.001-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2001

Tori Amos is one of my favourite musicians and when I was painting a bunch of famous people for my illustration portfolio, she was at the top of my list (mostly for her red hair).

The likeness is a bit off, but I kinda like how the old-fashioned microphone turned out. As noted in my previous post, the separate photo references for Tori and the microphone are from magazines.

Early sketch.

Nicole Kidman

2012-01-13T07:58:00.002-05:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2001

I painted a number of famous actors* to round out my illustration portfolio, and all of them are based on magazine photo reference. The reason Nicole may look a little off here is more due to her makeup being quite stylized in that photo shoot –rather than me being off with the likeness...which happens.

I tried to keep her skin as pale as possible, only adding light colour in the shadows to help describe the forms, concentrating all my painterly flourishes in her voluminous red hair.

*and others throughout the years: Madchen Amick & James Spader; Tori Amos; Gillian Anderson & David Duchovny; Sean Connery; Alyson Hannigan; Alfred Hitchcock; Michael Jordan; Shirley Manson; Bettie Page; Michelle Pfeiffer (my first portrait of any kind); Albert Pujols; Meg Ryan; Tiger Woods...and a few others that didn't turn out so well, so you won't be seeing 'em.

End the Need for Eden

2012-01-12T00:31:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 1998

The title is a line from the song "Anagram (For Mongo)" by Rush, from their 1989 album Presto, a song in which each line contains anagrams of that line's words:

There's a snake coming out of the darkness
Parade from paradise
End the need for Eden
Chase the dreams of merchandise

According to my preliminary sketches, though, this painting was called "Truth." I don't remember why I changed it to the Rush lyric.

Sketches for the background.

Vertical orientation above switches to horizontal orientation below, in which the background is (nearly) locked down.

Final background sketch.Curvy matrix.

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

and suddenly...

2012-01-11T09:49:00.001-05:00

15" x 11", watercolour, 1998

A testy, screwy sketch.

I don't have much commentary on this one other than to say it was an experiment with cropped composition. Also, I don't remember where the idea for the bolts came from or why I discarded it. Ditto the name change.

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

close

2012-01-10T08:12:00.001-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 1998

The position of the model was always intended to be right-of-centre, but I did a few sketches trying to figure out what the background should be, choosing to combine the last two (note: matrix motif is referred to as "stained glass") and rendering it with a rather reserved palette.

The title comes from the song "Comfort" by Michael Penn from his 1997 album Resigned.

And on line
The acrobat
Who has got his act down pat
Balance rules of etiquette
Until you hang another net
If I get too close for comfort...

I used charcoal to write the word on the painting (like I did with mad., figment, and learn).

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

Virtuous or Virtual?

2012-01-09T10:01:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 1998, sold

The composition of this one may look odd, but I always intended for the model to be sort of falling forward in space. She's actually lying on the same black chair that's in Without List 2 and Take a Break, Driver 8 (same model and outfit, but the chair is negative and "invisible," foreshadowing this painting's truly invisible chair).

The title comes from the song "Selfish" by Michael Penn from his 1997 album Resigned. I find Penn's juxtaposition of those specific words very interesting.

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

Take a Break, Driver 8

2012-01-08T12:02:00.001-05:00

11" x 15", watercolour, 1998

This painting has a lot going on for such a small piece: I wanted to play with flat negative space, so I made the chair white and only included the model's shadow; the matrix reappears; there are art nouveau motifs lifted from Alfons Mucha; there's actually a bit of a narrative relating to the title; and the jeans are quite nicely rendered.

The title is from the song "Driver 8" by R.E.M. from their 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction (also known as Reconstruction of the Fables).

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

figment

2012-01-07T21:50:00.002-05:00

18" x 22.5", watercolour, 1998

Here I managed to make the matrix into a sort of halo, which I find an interesting framing motif, despite (or because of?) the religious connotations.

Preliminary sketch.

I'm not sure why I posed her arms like that...maybe it was a subconscious need to paint someone doing the Safety Dance.

The title comes from the song "Figment" by Michael Penn from his 1997 album Resigned.

For other background info on the title, see my post about evade (featuring the same model and her arms).

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

orbit

2012-01-06T10:24:00.000-05:00

22" x 12", watercolour, 1998

I did a few sketches to figure out the composition for this, starting with the large one on the top right (then the three on the left, then, finally, the bottom right), and I had intended to use the word "orbit" on the painting itself, (incorporating my signature and a small dot as other "orbiting" elements). I changed my mind and left the word off, but only after a few more sketches to work out the matrix arrangement, deciding on the appearance of stylized falling broken glass (for purely aesthetic reasons).

This should have been a comic-like triptych depicting an actual orbit around the paper –as it is now, however, the title is a complete non sequitur (which is okay by me). Maybe I'll re-do it that way in oils...(I have to look for the reference photos I shot, because I like the hand placement in the bottom left sketch).

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.

For background info on the title, see my post about evade.

clear

2012-01-05T09:10:00.000-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 1998

The reference for this came from a photo shoot I did with my friend, Kimberley Black (whom I've known since high school), a year or two beforehand. Yes, she can touch the tip of her nose with her tongue; she wanted to to prove it to me...then I snapped the shot.

I find the supercolourful nature and the lighter middle areas of each cell makes the matrix more reminiscent of stained glass here than in other versions –it also makes me think of candy: I can taste that background (and, no, I can't touch the tip of my nose with my tongue).

This painting was part of Operation: Waterstorm.
For background info on the title, see my post about evade.

Fruitful Mess

2012-01-04T14:55:00.000-05:00

(with Peter Kovacs)
approx. 11" x 15", watercolour, 1988, sold

This is the second of only two paintings* I collaborated on with Peter (the first being Cultural Mess); I don't remember why we felt the need to work together on the same paintings, nor do I remember why we decided to stop. If we did continue, though, I'm certain we planned to keep using the G23 signature and probably keep naming the paintings "[adjective here] Mess."

We were trying to achieve some kind of cubist fracturing and ended up with this sort of stained-glass kind of look. My memory is very hazy, but I think peter pencilled the Canadian flag (with me laying out the matrix pattern) in the other one and I pencilled the fruit and drew the matrix for this one, then we painted each of them together (even simultaneously at times).

What's the significance of the apple and the carrot? I drew them from memory without reference (it shows!)...but why that specific composition?

*and my third watercolour painting ever.

antidote

2012-01-03T15:09:00.003-05:00

17" x 11", watercolour, 1998, sold

I'm in the middle of doing a comprehensive inventory of my artwork and it is interesting to see just how many paintings I have incorporated the so-called Matrix* motif into. Even before I really started painting in 1988, I can remember making these patterns in pen or pencil years before high school. The next run of posts will be about paintings containing the Matrix motif --some of them from 1998 when I implemented Operation: Waterstorm (one painting per week for a year).

With this painting I tried to return to my early attempts (along with Peter Kovacs) to bring the Matrix into the subject's form (changing the hues, but not following the contours). I've only tried that a few times and would like to explore that more...

I used a model from a magazine for this --which is strange, considering the voluminous photo ref I'd recently shot and used that year...

The significance of this painting's title is referred to in this post about evade, but there's also this from the song "Blunt" by Wild Strawberries:

All that I need is an antidote

All that I need is a muse

*Having nothing whatsoever to do with the movies, this motif was thus referred to (and subsequently named) by Ian Anderson (a friend in high school --not the guy from Jethro Tull) after seeing Cultural Mess (or, possibly, Fruitful Mess, the one Peter and I did right after it), simply thinking that's what that "stained glass" pattern/motif was actually called. Well, it was after that...

Self Portrait (Shoulders)

2011-12-29T16:57:00.003-05:00

28" x 22", oil on canvas, 2011

After spending a few months at the beginning of 2011 painting 12 portraits of 16 local Prince Edward County farmers for my Field to Canvas series, I thought it'd be fun to close out the year with a portrait of myself --also since I reached a milestone of sorts in October (that is, turning 40).

I sketched a bunch of different ideas of how to portray myself at this stage in my life and in my artistic career, but I decided to dispense with all the cutesy symbolism and iconography and bullshit and went for the most honest, unadorned portrayal possible.

I had Krista take a picture of me just a couple of weeks after my birthday, shirtless and without my glasses, using the available light of our dining room window (with a big, blank canvas for some bounce on my opposite side). I played with the levels a bit in Photoshop to provide some more contrast, but pretty much painted what was there in the photo: wrinkles, squinty light-sensitive eye and all. You can clearly see where my glasses sit on my nose nearly every waking hour. Plus: even my moustache isn't perfectly groomed.

The only dressing up of sorts is in the background, for which I applied the "matrix" motif I've been using since my earliest watercolour paintings. It seemed appropriate.

Tight pencils make it easier to steer.

Satisfied with the drawing, I held my breath and started painting. It worked out well and the only thing left was to determine the colours of the matrix...

(pardon this lousy photo* and its hideous glare)

Obviously, after the drawing, my next step was to cover the canvas in orange acrylic, which shows through wherever the oil paint happens to be applied thinly, providing a warm tone. This rather intense ground makes colour mixing tricky (especially when dealing with green landscapes!), but I was satisfied with my flesh tones here.

*I often take progressive photos of my work in case I want to show the different stages of the paintings here on this blog (or just keep for future reference), but this was taken specifically so I could play with colour variations for the matrix background (using Photoshop), arriving at the blues I finally used.

Geri and John Della Bosca : : FULL

2011-12-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

24" x 36", oil on canvas, 2011

For more information about Geri and John, as well as details of this painting, click here.

George Emlaw : : FULL

2011-12-23T01:21:00.000-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

For more information about George, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Lukas Lister-Stevens : : FULL

2011-12-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

24" x 36", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

For more information about Lukas, Back 40 Veg, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Ted Maczka : : FULL

2011-12-20T11:37:00.000-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

For more information about Ted, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Lino Micheli : : FULL

2011-12-18T09:26:00.003-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

For more information about Lino, Bethel Organics, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Erika Mohssen-Beyk : : FULL

2011-12-17T00:06:00.000-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011

For more information about Erika, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Tim Noxon and Vicki Emlaw : : FULL

2011-12-15T09:55:00.002-05:00

24" x 36", oil on canvas, 2011

For more information about Tim & Vicki, Vickis Veggies, as well as details of this painting, click here.

John Nyman : : FULL

2011-12-13T00:53:00.000-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011

For more information about John and his farm, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Ed & Sandi Taylor : : FULL

2011-12-11T12:45:00.001-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

For more information about the Taylors, Honey Wagon Farms, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Cody Vader : : FULL

2011-12-08T00:31:00.001-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

For more information about Cody, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Blaine Way : : FULL

2011-12-06T16:32:00.001-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011

For more information about Blaine, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Bay Woodyard and Gavin North : : FULL

2011-12-04T15:35:00.001-05:00

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011

Now that my Field to Canvas show at Angéline's is over, I'll be posting full views of my farmer portraits –but this time in reverse alphabetical order.

For more information about Bay and Gavin, Honey Pie Hives and Herbals, as well as details of this painting, click here.

Small Pond Arts Logo Design

2011-11-29T03:08:00.001-05:00

Many desperate acts of design (including gradients, drop shadows, and the gratuitous use of transparency) are perpetuated in the absence of a good concept. A good idea provides the framework for design decisions, guiding the work.

–Noreen Morioka

Names are very important to Krista and me and we brainstormed dozens of them and deliberated for weeks until we were absolutely happy with "Small Pond Arts" (during the logo design process, we dropped the "Ranch" to simplify the name). The next step, of course, was to create a visual identity, mainly a logo, for this new venture, so I set about doodling some concepts that had to do with the overall theme of "a big fish in a small pond."

With the sketching underway, the typeface had to be carefully chosen; it had to convey a friendly, artistic playfulness while walking the very fine line between professionalism and whimsy (it couldn't be staid and boring, nor could it be silly and goofy). Most of all, it had to be legible at a variety of scales and in limited colours. By the time the fish design took more concrete shape, I happened to find a great typeface that simulated casual non-cursive handwriting which I then customized so it would not only fit in with our design, but be unique.

The small selection of key doodles and sketches from a few pages from my sketchbook below don't necessarily reflect a linear progression as I went back and forth between variations sometimes, doodled on scrap paper outside of my sketchbook, and did a lot of the final changes on my computer, totaling countless hours upon hours of design time.

Vague doodles here, trying to incorporate a painter's palette into the design as the pond itself. The fish having two eyes on the same side is reminiscent of Picasso's cubism and are meant to evoke "art," but, since we would be dealing with all art forms, we decided to drop the overt references to painting.

Krista had the idea to place the words "Small Pond" inside the fish and did the two sketches (top left) to give me an idea of what she had in mind. The fish still had Picasso eyes here in the first appearance of Narrow Fish, but that either made it look silly (too cartoony) or like a flounder (which would be a bad connotation). The shape of the pond is further refined to look even more like a palette, but the word "maybe" means it's now in question and likely to be dropped.

Developing Krista's idea of having the words inside the fish, I researched Prince Edward County's local fish and, amongst the many local varieties, I found the silhouette of the pumpkinseed fish to be both attractive and an easily recognizable fish shape. I then started arranging the words inside.
Note there's now only a slight hint of painter's palette surrounding the fish.
In blue pencil: return of Narrow Fish, but now facing the other direction.

Letterform placement variations inside the pumpkinseed fish. I don't like torturing letters to conform to a graphic shape, so the extended stems of the M and the A kinda bug me here. Letters should be able to stand on their own, being legible and identified as letters (and the correct letters!) at all times. There's no confusion of that sort here, but they're still a little too "tortured;" I wasn't designing a psychedelic poster, after all.
The palette is now completely gone in favour of an outline of blue to represent the pond.

The fish facing to the left was bugging me since we read left-to-right, and facing left evokes looking or moving backward, so I tried a variation with Narrow Fish facing right. This design is a simpler fish shape which makes it easier to incorporate "Small Pond" with minimal letterform distortion. In fact, the D fits nicely inside the head.
The "pond" is now an oval behind the fish.
The red and blue here are just sketching colours to clarify shapes and are not suggested colours.

This variation appears after the red and blue Narrow Fish one in my sketchbook, but it was actually drawn before, with the other pumpkinseed fishes. If I continued with further refinement of this design, I'd get rid of the silly "tail" on the bottom of the S, and made the S smaller to accommodate a wider A. I would have also made the N less wonky so it doesn't crowd the D like that. But the negative space left over in the bottom right fin might've been a good place to put the word "arts."

Dozens of further design refinements using Narrow Fish were made with my computer. In customizing each character to fit inside the fish, I made sure the two Ls weren't exactly (mechanically) the same. The S and P are the boldest to help distinguish the two words.

Speaking of the Ls, they made placement a challenge: uppercase Ls leave unappealing negative spaces which negatively interrupt the rhythm of the rest of the characters (note that the O tucks in nicely –and legibly!– beneath the P to close up the negative space there). Lowercase Ls might not read properly as Ls (are they Is instead?) since all of the other characters are uppercase; making an exception for the Ls could be potentially confusing. The compromise of nesting them closes up the negative space a bit, but also adds to the feeling of informality that the "hand-written" letters convey –as a bonus, the negative space of the second L helps separate the two words.

The fish fills and extends beyond the oval of the pond, evoking freedom; one variation had it completely contained within the oval, but that felt very claustrophobic.

The "handmade" aspect of the characters is counterbalanced by the clean lines of the fish (in black, which highlights the letters) and the oval "pond" (in blue, of course). In this full colour iteration, the pond is enclosed by a darker shade of blue and the fish itself is sorrounded by a thin stroke of taupe, an earth-tone, evoking the land, but also giving the black fish a nice "glow" that a white stroke didn't accomplish.

The overall design dispenses with the computer-generated, mathematically-accurate lines of our online/print logos when we made our signs, and that was deliberate so the logo would have the nice "wobbly" handmade appearance that was intended from the outset.

Colours are a luxury, I believe, and a design should be able to stand strongly –and be legible!– in two colours (usually, black and white). The pond remains in the form of an oval ring, but the "water" is now white (as is the stroke around the fish).

As a supplement to the main fish logo, I designed this for a rubber stamp (which we love using) and for other applications where a more compact logo serves the design better. The typeface here is the one I chose to complement the fish logo when we add words like "Arts," "Arts Gallery," etc. The circular motif brings to mind postmarks used by post offices (and which I previously used on my own website (also a rubber stamp)).

The fish is the same fish as the main logo and the two circles above and below it represent Krista and me (orbiting the fish? embracing it?).

Steamy

2011-11-23T10:37:00.001-05:00

15" x 22", watercolour, 2002, sold

I had a show at the Steam Whistle Brewing HQ in 2002 and did this painting for that –and then for them to add to their collection afterwards. I set up the still life of fresh beer on my parents' back patio one summer evening and I added the watermelon because it's a refreshing seasonal symbol to me and it adds visual interest since the colour of the rind matches the bottles and the red flesh is (obviously) complementary.

There's a second pilsner glass behind the front one, but it's hard to spot unless you look closely. I did a number of shots and arrangement variations and this one was my favourite, but I should have moved the second glass a little to the right so it's in view (especially since there are two bottles visible).

The invitation I created for the event:

(look at that URL! ha-ha.)

Click here to see a similar painting to the one in the invite.

Australian Landscapes (part 2)

2011-11-17T12:49:00.001-05:00

each: 11" x 15", watercolour, 1998, sold

These are the last two of my five Australian landscapes I painted back in the 1990s. I shot the photo ref for the top painting myself at Wilson's Prom and the bottom painting of The Twelve Apostles was shot by my cousin, Liz.

Bonus Australian painting:

14" x 18", oil on canvas, 2002, sold

I also did a number of small oil paintings of the Sydney Opera House from various interesting angles, but this one is the best of the lot. It was undergoing a bit of a restoration but I managed to take a lot of nice pictures. Maybe I'll do some larger oils of this beautiful structure one day...

Australian Landscapes (part 1)

2011-11-15T11:09:00.001-05:00

each: 15" x 11", watercolour, 1998, the top two are sold

My previous post (and the fact that I'm currently in the midst of painting ten new local barnscapes) put me in the mood to post these old landscapes inspired by my trip to Australia in 1993 (the first and third paintings are based on photos my cousin, Elizabeth, took, the middle one's mine).

I don't remember where Liz said she took the photo for the top painting; the middle one is at Wilson's Promontory in south Victoria, if I remember correctly; and the bottom one is a close-up of Uluru (the formation formerly known as Ayer's Rock).

Kangaroo

2011-11-07T10:14:00.000-05:00

30" x 40", oil and acrylic on canvas, 2008, sold

Detail.

This is a commission I did a few years ago where the client wanted a painting that combined my realistic yet painterly style with the traditional patterns of Australian Aboriginal art. I did some research and found a style of patterns that suited my photo reference of the kangaroo and adapted the geometry and layout to fit around the marsupial.

Relatively speaking, the kangaroo was easier to paint than the painstaking lines and dots behind it. I used acrylic for the pattern (because it was made up of flat colours) and oils for the kangaroo (because I'm more comfortable blending colours in that medium).

Lisa (Green Chair)

2011-11-01T11:38:00.000-04:00

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2008

Detail.

This one's colours are more vibrant than the first of this series, and, being the most recent, you can see a progression towards more chroma over the four paintings (here is the painting done just before Lisa's). In retrospect, I prefer the subtleties of the first one, but the lively saturated colours of the last two are still pretty neat.

Krista (Green Chairs)

2011-10-25T11:36:00.005-04:00

30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2008

Detail.

Here's my beautiful wife, Krista, sitting across two green chairs. I wanted to mix things up a bit, so I made her portrait horizontal and added a second chair for composition's sake. That's also why her left leg is bent like that; it creates a nice rhythm as well as continuing a downward angular flow from her head to the top of the chair on the right.

Chris (Green Chair)

2011-10-19T11:56:00.000-04:00

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2008, sold

Detail.

This painting of my old friend Chris Patheiger is the one described in this post as being the first of this Green Chairs series. I was trying out something new as far as skin colouration here, choosing to go with non-realistic colours, the chair being the only thing colored "properly." I then superimposed a matrix background but carried it into the figures, rendering them ghostly* using lighter tones where the figures overlap the background.

I only did four of these before moving on, but I have a great reference image of Kimwun on a green chair for a fifth portrait (perhaps this winter?) from our photo shoot the Kitchen Warfare Trilogy was based on.

*Or "hollow" –in fact, the working title for this series (still in use as the folder name on my computer) was "Hollow Oils."

Cottage Canoe

2011-10-09T11:32:00.000-04:00

30" x 24", oil on canvas, 2009

This was painted as a gift for Kathryn Winning (that's her at the back of the canoe during a trip she, Krista, and I took to her cottage up north). I became good friends with Kathryn soon after meeting –and subsequently painting many pictures of– her daughter, Ashley. Separately, Krista had become friends with Kathryn as well, and it was when Kathryn was directing one of Krista's plays in Toronto (Love in Swift Current) that the chain of events began that would lead to Krista and I getting together (and getting married and starting Small Pond Arts!). Kathryn really pushed for us to get together and has been a great and supportive friend of ours, so, in appreciation of all of that, I painted the three of us in a canoe on a very happy trip and planned to give her the painting upon our move to Prince Edward County in 2010, but she now lives on a boat and there's no place for a painting there. Until she has a wall to hang this on, it's on display at Small Pond HQ.

This wasn't intended as a self portrait (unlike this and this), but there it is (and there I am), anyway.

Self Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fool

2011-10-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

20" x 16", oil on canvas, 2007

Yep, that's me and, although I chose to wear Rigoletto's fool's cap for this self portrait, I'm not sure where the fiery background came from (I honestly don't think I intented flames or "Hell" when I was painting that –just warm colours), but it does sort of comment on my state of mind at that time. Also, since 2007 wasn't a significant year anniversary-wise (the following year would be my 20th anniversary of painting in watercolours, and to celebrate, I painted this piece), I don't remember what prompted my painting of this.

Come to think of it, I did this self portrait in 2001 which also had no temporal significance except for the fact that I was almost exactly 29 1/2 years old when I painted it. There's also this cheeky self portrait to consider, which was my last deliberate (but, again, cheeky) self portrait. I turn 40 in a few days and I've been gathering self-shot reference photos for another self portrait to be done in the next few weeks, again in oil but quite large this time.

The moustache is actually only a little bit exaggerated.

Scarecrow Festival 2011 Poster

2011-10-01T12:52:00.000-04:00

11" x 8.5", ink and digital, 2011

Small Pond Arts will be hosting the famous Scarecrow Festival in lovely Prince Edward County for the first time this year and this is my poster design for it. For the illustration, I shot reference photos of our own scarecrow, Socrates, who resides in our garden. I added a primitive box guitar hanging onto him because a couple of folks from ArtsCan Circle will be attending to the event and will be playing some live music. I drew Socrates in pencil, inked him using a brush (I used a pen for the lines on his shirt), then scanned the drawing and coloured him in Photoshop. I used flat colours because I wanted to keep the design as simple as possible. Afterwards, the text was all laid out in CorelDraw.

Krista will be blogging about the event soon after the festival next weekend, but, in the meantime, you can read about previous Sacrecrow Festivals at Galloping Goat Gallery, the initial hosts who've since handed the event over to us.

Stickfest 2011 Poster

2011-09-24T09:52:00.000-04:00

11" x 8.5", photography & digital, 2011

Stickfest is once again upon us and my poster for this year's event features an installation (in progress) by Mary MacDonald created initially for Cornography a few months ago. I took most of the photos before she started joining the ends (as seen in the bottom right) since the long branches (branches...sticks...c'mon, close enough) looked beautiful against the blue summer sky and I knew these would somehow form the basis of my poster this year. I did a bit of post-processing in Photoshop, then the design and layout was done in CorelDraw.

2011 Studio Tour

2011-09-18T22:49:00.000-04:00

What an interesting three-day extravaganza the 2011 Prince Edward County Studio Tour was. There were lots of people walking in and out of my gallery here at Small Pond Arts, and I chatted amiably with interested folks, all while I worked on the underpainting of my next Prince Edward County barnscape. My large body of work (spanning just over two decades) seemed very well-liked by my visitors –including the six new paintings I did especially for the Tour using three local wines (Malbec, Cab Franc, and Baco Noir).

However.

This whole time –from the initial application process last winter, until I took down my Studio Tour sign at the end of the Tour today– something was nagging at the back of my mind. Something about the whole Studio Tour's visual identity seemed oddly, and inappropriately, familiar...something about...my home town? Something about...an old TV show?

Something...

...

...something...

...

...

...something...

...

...

...

> holy crap <

Equally bizarre: this is Post #200 yet it doesn't actually feature any of my own artwork.

Follow-through (Malbec)

2011-09-12T10:30:00.001-04:00

Here are the last two of my six recent paintings created with wine (about 90%) and watercolour (about 10%). Some wines are hybrids, so why not my paintings?

When I asked Sherry Martin of Karlo Estates (in beautiful Prince Edward County) what their signature wine was and she replied "Malbec," I was surprised, expecting her to say their Van Alstine Port because it is absolutely amazing (but, then again, I would prefer to drink that Port...). The vintage of the Malbec I used is 2008.

Still Life in Malbec (a)

15" x 22", red wine and watercolour, 2011

Both of these paintings (as well as two made with Cabernet Franc and two made with Baco Noir...and, of course, many of my other paintings) will be available for sale at the Small Pond Arts Gallery during the 2011 Prince Edward County Studio Tour.

Still Life in Malbec (b)

15" x 22", red wine and watercolour, 2011

Follow-through (Cabernet Franc)

2011-09-10T09:53:00.002-04:00

These are the next pair –of six– wine-themed paintings actually painted with wine which will be available for purchase at the Small Pond Arts Gallery during the 2011 Prince Edward County Studio Tour. This time the wine is a 2008 Cabernet Franc from Casa Dea Estates Winery in Prince Edward County, where I now live and work.

As I mentioned earlier, red wine alone cannot provide a tone dark enough for my tastes (I like having great contrast), so I had to supplement these wine paintings with a bit of watercolour (at a wine-to-watercolour ratio of about 9:1).

Still Life in Cab Franc

22" x 15", red wine and watercolour, 2011

Toast in Cab Franc

15" x 22", red wine and watercolour, 2011

These wine paintings are based on my own photographs and, not having a model on hand at the time, the one above is based on two separate shots of my own hands which I combined in Photoshop for reference.

Follow-through (Baco Noir)

2011-09-08T11:57:00.000-04:00

About a year after my first experiment in painting with wine, I finally got around to a few actual full-scale paintings in this new medium (for me, anyway; there are many artists already painting in wine).

3 PEC wines, 6 Murtanovski paintings.

For these new pictures, I chose three Prince Edward County wines: a 2008 Cabernet Franc from Casa Dea Estates Winery; a 2008 Malbec from Karlo Estates; and the 2007 Baco Noir from Sandbanks Estates Winery which I still had on hand since last year's trial. Incidentally, I used available light (as in the shot above) for all of my reference photos for these six paintings.

Reductions.

As previously noted, red wine can only get so dark and is unable to provide me with the extreme contrast I prefer to have in my paintings. To get a darker tone from the wine it needs to be reduced by heating it in a pot. Unfortunately, this concentrates the acids and keeps the wine from drying for an annoyingly long time. I got some advice from a physician to freeze some of the wine, remove the ice crystals (which would presumably contain these acids) and then reduce the remaining liquid. I did so and the reductions this time weren't as dark, but did dry in a timely manner.

Because they didn't get dark enough for my tastes, I had to supplement the paintings with watercolours (so they're ultimately, roughly, 90% wine, 10% w/c).

Still Life in Baco Noir

15" x 22", red wine and watercolour, 2011, sold

Still Life (with Woman) in Baco Noir

22" x 15", red wine and watercolour, 2011

Both of these paintings (and the other four) will be framed and available for purchase (among many of my other paintings) at the Small Pond Arts Gallery during this year's Prince Edward County Studio Tour.

Baco Noir

2011-08-30T21:41:00.009-04:00

Now that I’m living in a burgeoning wine region, I thought I’d push my envelope and try a medium that few artists are working in: wine. How different from working in watercolours or inks can it be?

Materials (now featuring 100% more vino).

Where to begin? With the wine, of course. With dozens of wineries in Prince Edward County to choose from, I decided on the Sandbanks Estate Winery to feature first. Their signature wine is made with a grape called Baco Noir which is rare in this area (and, unfortunately, has nothing to do with bacon or back-hoes). My medium for this painting happens to be vintage 2007.

Initial results.

At first the wine looked like a light violet mixed with some red, but as it dried, it got a little darker, towards purple. Still, the wine was very transparent and, although perfect for the initial blocking-in of shapes, wouldn’t get me the intense darkness I prefer for deep contrast. I tried laying down a second “coat” on the wine parts after the initial pass has dried, but I could tell simply adding wine on top of wine wouldn’t cut it in the long run. I’d heard of other artists cooking the wine, reducing it as though making a sauce, to get it to a dark and a little thicker, too.

Small Pond Test Kitchen.

I didn’t measure the wine before cooking, but I poured a good number of glugs into the small pot and began reducing it on medium, testing the wine with a brush on scrap paper intermittently. After just over half an hour, I decided to stop the reduction for fear of reducing it all away. The wine was now darker, redder, and slightly thicker –not perfect, but better.

Reduced.

During the reduction, I added some water to the wine in my cup to lighten it and filled in the remaining white areas in the background and cutting board.

Pretty good for grapes.

The reduced wine looked pretty good –rich and deep red– but I discovered that wine takes longer to dry than regular watercolour paint. In fact, after laying down the latest “coat” of wine at around 11pm that first night, the painting was still wet the next morning at 8:30am, so I put it in the sun to dry. Exposure to sunlight might wreak havoc with the lightfastness (i.e. permanence) of the pigments, but I couldn’t think of another way to dry it (besides sitting over it with a hair dryer, wasting time and electricity).

The never-drying painting.

It's been a year now since this experiment (yes, the final painting below is dry) and my six new wine paintings are nearly done. I used three different wines, including the bottle of baco used in this experiment. Interestingly –but not unexpectedly– the wine has turned a rusty brown colour, both the liquid in the bottle and the wine in the painting, so the deep purple colour below has now oxidized and changed.

Baco Noir

15" x 11.5", wine on watercolour paper, 2010
(photographed in 2010)

Tangle (AW-18)

2011-08-20T20:08:00.006-04:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2002, sold

My latest painting project I've recently been chatty about is almost finished and I'll be posting actual images next week. It went well, but the "Science Element" meant to aid the darkening of the colour was only a semi-success, and I'll talk more about that next week as well.

Here's Ashley yet again wearing her blue velour tube top. I'm absolutely happy about how I handled the lighting on her right shoulder, but somewhat disappointed with how I handled the lighting on her face and her lower left arm. It's not subtle enough on her face, and I should have added some "bounce" light on her left biceps, letting the lower part remain descending into darkness. Not a terrible (or even bad) painting, but it was a learning experience, for sure.

That red tangly motif in the upper right is an art nouveau design I borrowed from Alfons Mucha.

Coke Addiction 3 (AW-29)

2011-08-12T13:08:00.012-04:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 2002, sold

My next painting project (for this year's Prince Edward County Studio Tour) will be getting underway tonight, so I'm continuing with the figurative watercolour posts for now.

A key concern with this new project is maintaining the level of dynamic contrast I enjoy employing in my work. With watercolours, this involves leaving key areas of the white paper to be the brightest end on the Contrast Scale (let's call that level 1) and mixing blues and browns to get rich darks at the opposite end of the scale (let's call that 10). In between I can play around with all kinds of delicate glazes, showing off what the medium does best.

No mid-range-only wimpiness here.

The challenge with this new project, and hence my concern regarding sufficient contrast, is that I'll be using a new medium. I experimented last year with a test painting which turned out pretty well, but there were some issues when it came to getting severe darks from the medium. My new approach will involve a bit more science than last year...

And yes, that's the Coca-Cola logo in the background --chosen for it's colours and, quite honestly, brilliant design.

AW-20

2011-08-07T14:57:00.012-04:00

30" x 18", watercolour, 2002

I'm gearing up for a new painting project I intend to have ready for this year's Prince Edward County Studio Tour, and, although most of them will likely be still lifes, I may do one or two figurative pieces. With that in mind, I thought it'd be fun to post a few of my older figurative watercolours until I'm ready to reveal the new works.

Here, Ashley's in the same outfit as in this painting, but I wanted to try something a little different, so I changed her black skirt to white (I did a similar inversion in this painting) and, since I decided to leave the background blank white (it looks grey in these photos, but it is the white of the paper...as in the first, watercolour version of Fuel), I outlined the skirt area --as well as the bright highlighted area around her left shoulder-- in yellow, creating a luminous glow. Thus, her tube top is now the anchor of the painting with Ashley's head and hands balancing it out.

Velouria.

I am exceedingly happy (and somewhat surprised!) with the way the velour texture of her tube top came out so convincingly in this and the other paintings in which she's wearing it.

I normally try to have any white areas of my watercolour paintings be the bare unpainted paper, but sometimes I need an assist from some white ink. Look closely at the detail below and you can see the white ink I used for the highlights in her eyes, glasses, and lower lip.

Visible ink.

Paint the County 2011

2011-07-30T21:33:00.015-04:00

Last year I participated in Paint the County and had such a good time that I signed up again this year. There was a draw to see where the artists would be situated last time, and I got The Edward, which I really liked, so I asked for it this year and, lo and behold, the picture of my setup below looks almost exactly like the one from 2010 (I even got almost the exact same parking spot: my blue van is in the foreground here, last year it was one spot ahead):

Once again in front of The Edward.

The image I chose this year was a farmscape I shot while driving around the County last summer looking for interesting photo ref for future paintings. I prepped the pencils on the canvas months ago, but painted the orange and brown acrylic underpainting last night. I then started painting as soon as I was set up (10am) and I took a photo of my progress every hour.

11am

Noon

1pm

2pm

3pm

And precisely at 4pm I was finished:

Daytime Version of Sleeve

oil on canvas, approx. 12" x 24", 2011, sold

The title comes from a last-minute inspiration from my actual sleeve. This morning we were given Paint the County t-shirts and, rather than using the paper towels I brought to wipe my brush when changing colours, I used my left sleeve (gradually intending a very loose landscape image). When people saw the finished painting and gave me compliments, I jokingly said that it wasn't as good as the landscape on my sleeve, which I then said was a "nighttime version" of the farm scene. When submitting my painting for the auction I blanked on a title, so I used the one above, inside joke and all.

To my surprise, one of the event organizers, Katy McIntyre, actually wanted the shirt off my back to include in the auction as a separate piece. I didn't think that would fly, so I offered it as a bonus to whomever won the actual painting. Below is the sister piece to my 2011 Paint the County effort:

Nighttime Version of Canvas
size XL, oil on cotton t-shirt, 2011, sold

Cornography

2011-07-20T09:46:00.011-04:00

8.5" x 11", ink and digital, 2011

Happy with the results of my illustration for the Picton Picturefest Afterparty, I went immediately to work (later that same night!) on the illo for Small Pond's upcoming event, Cornography. With this one, I wanted to use similar grungy textures and the faux screen-printed look of the other poster, but I wanted to use a slightly bolder drawing style closer to the way I usually draw.

The original concept for the illustration involved a sexy pinup of a corn cob based on one of the famous photos Marilyn Monroe did for Playboy --which was tasteful enough, but for humour's sake I was going to add black "censor" bars over the "naughty bits." Krista and I discussed my sketches based on this idea, then decided that the event was more celebratory of food than anything else. We brainstormed a bit and came up with a cross between a Soviet-era propaganda poster and a nod to the Statue of Liberty's torch-holding hand (I even stole the design of the cob's tuft from the flames in Liberty's torch).

My photo reference for this was a picture of a cob of corn and a picture of my own hand holding my pencil case (this was very late at night and going to the store for some actual corn wasn't an option). I inked this with a black Uniball Vision (which I usually only use for sketching), then added the colours and textures in Photoshop. I deliberately nudged the various layers of fill colour to simulate misregistered screen printing.

A little muddy, but kind of neat.

Above is the original background with thick and luxurious textures. I simplified this for the final poster so the hand and radiating lines would read better.

We often make inexpensive black and white half-page flyers and I went through a few variations of my illustration until we settled on the one below for this use:

Simple, clean, and easy to read.

Although I like the one below for the texture and plain, yet bold, white fill of the illustration, the background textures would make the info text hard to read:

I created the final poster layout (with text for the event information) in CorelDraw:

Life Jackets

2011-07-14T12:15:00.014-04:00

36" x 54", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

As I was nearing completion of my Field to Canvas portrait series, I took on this commission, feeling confident that I could paint this (despite its huge size) and still paint the remaining few portraits in time for the opening in June. Everything worked out very well.

The photo I received as reference for this painting showed the two boys from behind (thus featuring their life jackets), which was fine, but I felt the framing of the photo didn't give much information about context (where were they? in a boat? on a dock?) and it wasn't a very interesting composition. The red box below indicates the composition of the original photo ref:

Since the woman who commissioned this (the boys' mom and, ultimately, a very satisfied customer) wanted a very large painting, I felt I could expand the composition by "pulling back the camera," so to speak, and still make the boys quite large in the final piece.

Changes/additions:

I added a horizon line to allow for some sky and to break up the picture a bit. This was the first thing I thought of adding when I first saw the original photo.

I positioned the boys on the left, giving them plenty of breathing room as well as making it appear as though the one on the left is looking toward that bright area I invented (this effect is greatly assisted by the fact that, not only is he already facing that direction, but he's leaning that way, too). And I like how this shift put the other boy's yellow cap in the dead centre of the painting.

Also, the original photo didn't show much of the boat, so I cheated and widened the sides and created the prow, making them unmistakably inside a canoe (rather than possibly appearing to be on the edge of a dock).

Below are a few shots of the painting in progress:

Pencil cartoon with added horizon line.

Starting with the darks.

The titular life jackets were next.

Boys completed, it was time to paint the lake,
mixing the colours directly on the canvas.

Picton Picturefest Afterparty

2011-07-02T09:26:00.009-04:00

8.5" x 11", ink and digital, 2011

For the past couple of months, we'd been working very hard to upgrade our art barn at Small Pond Arts so that it would be more versatile and better overall. There is now a nice cement floor currently curing in there and it'll be ready very soon, with plenty of time to spare before its first official use on July 10.

Small Pond is hosting the Picton Picturefest Youth Retreat and, to close out the big fest, also hosting the Afterparty featuring music by Calgary's Kris Ellestad, who'll be performing on our aforementioned fresh new barn floor. We're very excited to be such a big part of Picturefest and this excitement carried over into inspiring me to try something new for the Afterparty poster illustration.

Conceptually straightforward, I referenced my own photos and photos online of singers with guitars, old style microphones, and classic Bolex film cameras, and combined and re-combined them until I was satisfied with the arrangement and composition. The "new" thing I wanted to try was a different way of inking the drawing; I used a regular ballpoint pen because I wanted a very loose look with a "dead" line (a line with no variation in width) throughout. Then I scanned the drawing and messed around in Photoshop with textures I've been collecting for a while now to achieve that grungy, worn, screen-printed look.

The dimensions above refer to the original line drawing of the camera-headed singer I did on a piece of regular copy paper.

And here's the final poster layout:

Kitchen Warfare Trilogy

2011-06-23T12:08:00.015-04:00

This trilogy was intended to be only part of a much larger group of paintings dealing with the concept of a house party devolving (escalating?) into a battle in a kitchen.

I had taken a number of photos of a friend (Toronto-based actor Kimwun Perehinec, who also modeled for me as The Princess) and had intended to shoot a bunch of other folks and composit them in such a way as to illustrate the battle idea, but that never happened, and seeing as I had a ton of photos of Kimwun in various martial arts poses using kitchen implements as weapons, I used a few of those as the basis for this trilogy. I did some studies in acrylic called the Rolling Pin Variations as well.

Whisk, watercolour on Yupo, 20" x 26", 2009, sold

Obviously, I used a cropped version of Whisk for my blog's banner.

Pan, watercolour on Yupo, 26" x 20", 2009

I think the illusion of her being in flight works quite well in this one.

Tongs, watercolour on Yupo, 20" x 26", 2009

These three (and five other watercolour paintings I did on Yupo) are currently on exhibit at Blizzmax:

Blizzmax Gallery

3071 county Rd. 13

South Bay, near Milford

613.476.7748

blizzmax@kos.net

Show continues until

3 July 2011

Tractor & Barn

2011-06-16T16:55:00.021-04:00

24" x 36", oil on canvas, 2010, sold

Tonight is the opening of Art in the County, but I have to miss out on the festivities as I'm also a projectionist at The Regent Theatre, and I'm showing the latest Broadway production of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest."

This is my entry for this year's AitC based on a photo I took last summer driving around the county looking for beautiful scenes to paint (needless to say, there were plenty...and still more left unphotographed). This is the first thing I shot at Karlo Estates while visiting Richard Karlo and Sherry Martin. They're great folks and Richard makes the best (and PEC's only) port I've ever had. I seriously can't shut up about the stuff. Sherry's an accomplished artist herself and runs a life drawing class on Wednesday nights during the warmer months (they're held in a loft space in the barn depicted above, which isn't winterized). Unfortunately, summer is when we're very busy at Small Pond, and I rarely can get away, but this year I'm going to make a concerted effort to go more often (because I love figure drawing).

I wanted to make the sky especially beautiful, so I studied one of my books on John Singer Sargent, hoping to learn something through mere observation and then actually infuse the sky with some Singer-inspired flavour. I really do like how this sky turned out (I moved some clouds around, making minor compositional adjustments). Do you see Singer in my sky? It doesn't matter, because the point wasn't to paint like him, but to learn from him --and I sure did (and I think it shows, because it's a little more sophisticated than my previous oil skies (including this later piece)).

Late stages of development.

I didn't shoot earlier stages showing the brown sky or red grass underpaintings, but you can see here the dark brown underpainting of the silo and roof. The point of this was to experiment with light final colours over a dark base and I think it worked out quite well.

UPDATE: This painting is now on the cover of the summer 2011 edition of County Magazine, which has a feature on me and Krista and Small Pond Arts. On stands now!

Leaning Poles

2011-06-09T13:42:00.005-04:00

16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

Last year I had a watercolour painting (which I have not blogged about yet) in the local Art in the County juried exhibit which won both Honourable Mention and People's Choice awards. As a consequence of the latter award, the organizers asked me to provide a piece for this year's silent auction, so I rummaged through my photo ref that I took while driving around Prince Edward County last summer and painted the picture above. In fact, I just finished it last night and it's still wet, so we'll see if the recent heat keeps up to help it dry before the show opens on 16 June...

Entirely coincidentally, I've submitted a larger painting also of a red barn (and a red tractor, which I finished last fall) for the AITC show proper --so if that one gets in, could it be considered...barn storming?

Blizzmax 2011 Season Opener

2011-06-06T22:45:00.010-04:00

M.C. Blizzity --to the max.

Stand by for action!

That's right: barely more than a week after my last art opening, there's another one. This one will feature a number of my watercolours on Yupo plastic and I'm joined by fellow artists Buffy Carruthers and Blizzmax co-owner Peter Mennacher. Peter and his wife, Alice, throw great openings (last year I was happy to be part of Sommerfest, which was great fun) and I'm looking forward to this one as much as I was the show at Angéline's last week.

Blizzmax Gallery

3071 county Rd. 13

South Bay, near Milford

613.476.7748

blizzmax@kos.net

UPDATE: photos from the opening can be seen HERE.

Field to Canvas: Reception

2011-06-05T17:16:00.028-04:00

Reception: June 2, 5-9pm

Exhibition runs through 2011

Angéline's Restaurant & Inn

433 Main St., Bloomfield,

Prince Edward County, ON

613.393.3301

Top photo: agent provocateur.

Bottom photo: "I hope there's no math tonight!"

Me and Krista in front of George Emlaw's portrait.

(this photo by Pat Hyduk (the rest are by Krista).
More of Pat's photos from the reception can be found on Facebook HERE)

George Emlaw and George Emlaw and me.

I heard he was so pleased with his portrait that he hovered near it the whole time he was there, almost...protectively? Everyone was saying how significant the addition of his farm at the bottom is; the farm is going by the wayside, and George is kind of sad about that. There's still another month or so until we hear if this painting gets in the Kingston Prize for Canadian Portraiture exhibition.

Small sampling of large crowd.

The turnout Thursday evening was simply amazing. The restaurant estimated about a hundred people turned up for the event, making this my largest art opening. But numbers aren't everything; being surrounded by many of our friends made it my happiest art opening, and I give immense thanks to everyone who came out last week.

Extra big thanks to Alex, Melanie, Monika, and the rest of Angéline's staff for hosting; Chef Michael Potters and his team for the great food; the seven (7!) wineries for their tasty tastings; Tammy Love for literal Field to Canvas artwork in the front bar area; and, of course, my lovely wife, Krista, who supported this endeavour by putting up with many late nights of painting, painting, painting.

This photo contains five farmers, and includes (from left to right), Nina-Marie Lister (Lukas's mom), Vicki Emlaw (featured in the painting on the left), Sandra Emlaw (George's wife), Ed Taylor, Tim Noxon (also featured in the painting on the left), George Emlaw standing in front of Ted Maczka's portrait, Budgie with his back to the camera, and, on the far right, peeking above Budgie, is Lukas Lister-Stevens.

Here I am with Erika Mohssen-Beyk, who seemed quite amazed that her portrait was so much larger than life.

Here's Ed and Sandi Taylor, stripped of their winter clothes. Sandi reminded me the name of the dog in the painting is Socks (I had forgotten his name since the photo shoot, but I've since edited the blog post to fix this omission).

Me and Cody Vader. We look comfortable, but we're actually squatting so as to fit into this composition.

Partly making fun of the need to squat in the previous pic, and partly bored of "straight" posing for the paparazzi, Vicki, Tim, and I ham it up a bit.

Chef Potters came out of the kitchen briefly to say a few kind words about my paintings and the farmers in them. His team served up some delicious hors d'oeuvres all night long. Vicki, Michael, and I didn't plan it, but here we are all in co-ordinating white tops.

Stojan Fixing Combine

14" x 17", ink on paper, 2003, sold

To fill out the space in the front entrance of the inn portion of Angéline's, Alex asked me to bring some other, thematically-related paintings. As well as a few cow paintings in ink, I brought these two pictures, and their inclusion makes me very proud, since, not only does this show celebrate local farming in Prince Edward County (some of it going back many generations), but it now includes my own family's farming heritage in Macedonia which also goes back several generations.

The painting above is based on a family photo of my father fixing a wheel on their combine harvester in Macedonia, probably in the 1960s (certainly before he emigrated to Canada in 1969). It's a fine illustration of my dad's formidable skills as a mechanic and, interestingly, is incredibly reminiscent of my very first blog post.

Combine

15" x 22", watercolour, 2003

This painting (of the same combine as in the ink painting) is based on another family photo, but this time one taken about 40 years later when my father and his brother (pictured, shirtless on the machine) visited Macedonia in 2002. I was trying for a very loose technique with this one, to the point where the combine looks almost abstract. I really like the sky in this one.

Bay Woodyard and Gavin North

2011-05-29T21:03:00.022-04:00

Bay Woodyard

Gavin North

Bay and Gavin run Honey Pie Hives and Herbals and their products can be found in shops from Ottawa to Toronto and, of course, throughout Prince Edward County. For about ten years they've been making soap, teas, candles, lotions, etc., but they're probably most famous for their unpasteurized honey, and it was this aspect that I chose to feature in their portrait.

The idea I came up with to tie in their honey production was to superimpose a hexagonal (i.e. honeycomb) pattern on the painting and then make subtle colour shifts to differentiate the cells (see below). This got tricky when it came time to paint the grass and trees because of all the complex details.

I shot the couple in various locations (starting with inside their straw bale house, then moving outdoors), but this painting is based on a photo taken when we approached a group of bee boxes to see what the honey bees were up to. They're mostly dormant in the winter, but a few come out from time to time...to poop. You can sort of see a bee on Bay's hand and a few are on the snow (in the detail further down). Some bee boxes also appear in this portrait on the far left side but aren't shown here.

Towards the bottom of the painting the cells were easier to differentiate, but the "subtle colour shifts" ended up not being so subtle...but still successful, overall, I think.

Even Bay and Gavin's soft shadows on the snow were tricky to modulate subtly in the cells and still keep them convincing.

I simplified the tall grass to keep the painting from looking too cluttered --besides, the top portion has lots of wintry foliage already.

See the full version of this painting HERE.

Blaine Way

2011-05-26T15:10:00.019-04:00

Blaine's happy smile here comes from having to steadily hold onto a piglet while I took pictures...and I'm very glad for it, as it really shows his good-natured character.

We got lucky with some sunshine for a few minutes, but, as you can see from the close-up details below, it's mid-winter and Blaine is out there, tending to the animals (with his son, too). Again, what I initially was worried would become a sameness in my paintings (photographing the farmers in winter) actually underscores the fact that farm work has to be done all year round, regardless of what we would consider uncomfortable working conditions. Winter farming isn't something that comes to mind when we think of pastoral farming scenes, so I'm happy to have depicted this aspect in a number of these portraits.

Blaine has a variety of animals on his farm (cows and calves for beef, horses, wild boars, and muscovy ducks), but I was quite taken with these red-haired cuties, and he was quite happy and proud to pose with this little squirmer).

His secret to raising these adorable (and yummy!) porkers is feeding them barley from local Barley Days Brewery and whey from (also local) Black River Cheese Company (this practice started in 1954 with his grandfather, continued with his father, and now makes Blaine the third generation to do so). The whey is costly to get rid of and not only does recycling it like this make for efficient, cost-effective symbiosis, but, according to Blaine, it makes for sweeter pork. Small Pond Arts will soon become part of this symbiotic chain when Blaine starts harvesting hay from our fields later this summer.

The hands of a farmer.

Abstract close-up detail.

More impressionistic than abstract.

See the full version of this painting HERE.

Cody Vader

2011-05-24T11:09:00.014-04:00

I met Cody in Angéline's parking lot on a snowy morning which gave me perhaps too much diffused light, softening everything and not giving me strong, contrasty shadows. When looking at the photos afterwards, I determined Cody's portrait would reflect this softness around the highlights on his face, but I'd add my own contrast in the form of a very dark background and slightly rough texture on the coveralls. This was the first portrait I completed for Field to Canvas and, I believe, set a strong precedent that I was onto something here.

Cody was "born and raised farming," and his large family has a grand, well-known, and respected presence in the County, farming vegetables, sheep, cash crops, and their famous maple syrup. Follow this link, scroll down to the bottom, to read about their syrup (you'll see John Nyman on that page too!).

Thick, luxurious hair.
(plus negative space)

Amazingly-fun-to-paint coveralls.

Cody showed up dressed for the part because he was actually on his way to work. Unfortunately, that meant I didn't get to spend much time with him (maybe ten minutes --enough to take a few photos), but I got to include these very cool coveralls. The attractive element for me is their colour and texture...and also the way the colour just happens to complement the blue hoodie.

???

Only when I got to painting Cody's portrait did I notice this mysterious thing in his pocket; I should've asked him what this tool was. Is it simply a knife? Is it a cool measuring device of some kind? Is it a secret agent gadget fresh from Q Division? I had enough information to be able to paint the clasp, but I got more and more curious about what it actually was. Maybe I'll ask him at the reception...

See the full version of this painting HERE.

UPDATE: This painting is now sold.

Ed and Sandi Taylor

2011-05-22T14:25:00.012-04:00

Ed Taylor

Sandi Taylor

The Taylors run Honey Wagon Farms located just at the outer western edge of Picton, growing a wide spectrum of vegetables (note the lovely potatoes below) as well as producing maple syrup in their own sugar shack.

They've been at it for fifteen years, not using any herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides, which often means extra, often tedious, work is needed. In fact, to get rid of the Colorado Potato Beetle from their spuds, they go out into the fields and actually vacuum the little buggers off the plants. With a vacuum cleaner. For real. That's pretty amazing. But the Taylors love it, feeling that farming allows them the opportunity to work with Mother Nature (Sandi told me that Ed comes in the house, gleeful as a kid, every season when the new sprouts begin to poke out of the ground, retaining that wonder in the miracle of life). They also feel farming provides them the great opportunity to meet like-minded people who are as interested as they are in growing and eating natural food.

Sandi's rubber boot.

Basket o' taters.

The abstract close-up.

This is actually the neighbour's dog, Socks, who often accompanies the Taylors during their farm work --so much so that they wanted to include him, and, of course, I had no problem with that as I'm growing quite fond of painting animals.

I mentioned in my post about Tim and Vicki that this painting was always intended to be monochromatic, and to keep things interesting for me, I wanted to give it a sort of vintage photo look, so it's not truly black and white, but, rather, it has a slight greenish tint from the olive green I used as the primary colour. Look close enough, and you can see quite a bit of orange from the acrylic underpainting showing through, warming it up a bit.

See the full version of this painting HERE.

UPDATE: This painting is now sold.

John Nyman

2011-05-20T13:32:00.013-04:00

John Nyman's been farming all his life (over 31 years now), but six on his own (but that doesn't mean by himself). Visit John's website for tons of great information.

I visited John's farm in the dead of winter, and there he was, clearing snow, feeding the sheep and cows, tirelessly (and impressively, to me) just doing what needed to be done --and without complaint, I must add. That's another thing I found all my subjects had in common: although a few explained some of the frustrations and challenges facing farmers (versus the big agricultural corporations like Monasnto), they never complained to me about the actual work they needed to do (I've seen it; it's not easy work). These great folks are examples to everyone.

This portrait allowed me to incorporate elements of John's farm, giving me the chance to try out different techniques and subject matter. Like in my portrait of Lukas Lister-Stevens, I wanted to use a shallow depth-of-field to help make the foreground subjects pop. My approach to convey this effect was to render the background elements in an impressionistic and slightly abstract manner. The detail above --just a tiny part in the top left of the actual portrait-- could be a satisfying winter landscape on its own.

I'm really, really happy with these boots.

The now-obligatory close-up detail masquerading as an abstract painting. This time: a blander, boringer, lamer Rothko.

Talk about free-range! These pretty little chickies were wandering around here and there, contrasting sharply against the snowy ground, looking incredibly healthy and happy (and, therefore, incredibly tasty!). Also farmed by the Nymans but not featured in this painting: sheep, pigs, turkeys, and maple syrup from their own sugar shack.

My portrait of John Nyman is actually made up of five separate reference photos: John's head is a separate element from similar pic, turned more appealingly to the camera, because his head in the shot of him petting the cow was turned downward at an angle that didn't show his features very well. The chickens are from a completely separate photo of them by themselves, incorporated here for compositional balance. The boots had to be drawn from a separate, full-body shot where you can see the boots because in the ref I did use, the photos cut him off just above the knees. And the cow and his right petting arm are from a shot that better denotes their friendly relationship.

When I say "friendly relationship," I'm not exaggerating; these Jersey Cows were very friendly and curious. I don't know if it was the one in the final painting, but one cow did come up to me and began licking my coat's sleeve just like a dog might. It was a leather coat, though, so I don't know what that says about the cow...

See the full version of this painting HERE.

Tim Noxon and Vicki Emlaw

2011-05-18T10:44:00.017-04:00

Tim Noxon

Vicki Emlaw

The farm may be called Vicki's Veggies but it's very much a joint operation between this husband and wife team (and a few others who help out/work there from time to time --like Lukas). They've been farming for about ten years (mixed vegetables, heirloom tomatoes, etc.), but Vicki's Veggies is somewhat of a cultural hub in Prince Edward County. When Krista and I moved here a year ago almost everybody we met asked us if we'd been to Vicki's Veggies, so much so, that we found a few free minutes (we were very busy setting up Small Pond Arts, after all) and paid them a visit.

Our visit coincided with their annual Heirloom Tomato Seedling Sale, and we were dumbfounded at the sheer number of different varieties (see a few in this short video clip). We also met Tim and Vicki who, like all of the farmers I met for this project, were incredibly friendly and welcoming. We had now met the Cultural Hub of the County, and we've been friends since. Vicki even helped me flesh out my initial list of potential farmers to paint and locate them on a County map (thanks again, Vicki!).

Vicki's Veggies also offers Veggie Bucks which can be redeemed for amazing vegetables and other great, local food items (like honey from Bay and Gavin) that they stock in their shop. There's so much to say about this concept that you're better off clicking on Veggie Bucks to learn more about it at their own website.

Earlier this spring, we bought a great variety of seeds from Vicki to plant in our garden which we doubled in size from last year. So far, we just have some tiny sprouts, but by midsummer, we'll have a huge smorgasbord for our table.

Here are a few close-up details showing very subtly stylized colour shifts and a textural technique I thought I'd try out with this painting to keep the series fresh and each portrait uniquely different. I was going for a monochromatic effect using non-realistic colours. I would revisit the monochromatic theme more intensely in the portrait of Ed and Sandi Taylor.

Enough abstraction;
here are some ears:

In case you're wondering about order, I've been posting these portraits in alphabetical order, which includes order of appearance within the paintings themselves, that's why this one is here and not after George Emlaw (Vicki's dad).

See the full version of this painting HERE.

Erika Mohssen-Beyk

2011-05-16T14:42:00.009-04:00

Erika runs Reachview Farm (which is also a bed & breakfast) in Prince Edward County and has been farming for about ten years. She's got vegetables, fruit, grain, hay, sheep, goats, and chickens, but there's another feature that Erika's got that makes her operation quite remarkable: she's entirely off the grid; she supplies her electricity via wind and solar power.

None of the farmers featured in these portraits work alone, but, for various reasons, some appear solo and some appear as couples. Erika is not the only woman in the series, but she is the only woman who appears by herself. Just as I felt it was important to show an age range, it was important for me to represent both men and women here, and I am very happy to be able to include Erika.

Close up, the weave of the sweater becomes a big, blue field of abstraction.

There are areas of thick acrylic underpainting I added for texture (click on the pictures above and below), but only surrounding Erika's head and neck because I wanted to render her skin softly by smoothly blending the paint --the opposite of the way I painted Ted Maczka.

When I photographed Erika in her home she was backlit by a bright window, creating a nice sort of halo around her which I chose to emphasize by making the background in the painting very dark green.

See the full version of this painting HERE.

Lino Micheli

2011-05-14T09:26:00.022-04:00

Lino, AKA The Accidental Farmer, runs Bethel Organics and has been farming chickens, hogs, ducks, and veggies for about three years, but specializes in heritage breeds: Chanticler Chickens, Canadian Horses, and Berkshire Hogs. The last of which, Krista and I were lucky enough to taste in the form of naturally-smoked, nitrate-free, organic bacon a few weeks ago when Lino announced he had some available. I saw the notice on Facebook and immediately drove out to Lino's and bought about 7 pounds of bacon (most to freeze for later enjoyment). It was the most bacon I'd bought all at once, but worth it...and I may have even met the source pig when I went out to Lino's in the winter for our photo shoot.

The first time I saw Lino was during the 2010 Maple in the County festivities in the Town Hall in Bloomfield, PEC, where he was selling his wares as The Accidental Farmer and I was displaying some of my artwork, representing Small Pond Arts. I didn't actually meet him until later that year when Chesterfield's in Picton had a Pork Night where various cuts of pork were served with a local cider from the County Cider Co. that went beautifully together. Check him out with some of his gorgeous produce in the second half of this short video clip. Here's another, more recent, video clip featuring Lino.

(forgive the low resolution of this image)

Click on the pic above and you'll see some Xs which I used to indicate to myself areas that were to be painted black (actually a mixture of several colours that appear as "black"). It's an old comic book shorthand from the penciller communicating to the inker that an area should be filled in solid black, without the penciller having to spend time (and graphite) needlessly filling in those areas.

Behind the canvas.

In this sneaky preview shot from behind, you can see the orange acrylic underpainting showing through as well as the red oil paint underpainting filling in the darkest areas (which I marked with an X in the pencilling stage) and describing various other forms. I only do the red oil if I feel I have enough time for it to dry before continuing. The concept is the same as the orange underpainting: where layers of paint are thin, a warm colour shows through, rather than the white of the canvas. I especially like red for dark areas (maybe I should just do this red stage with acrylics from now on...hm, I'm learning while blogging!).

A close-up of the background becomes an abstract painting.

Another close-up view.
(that's dusk outside the barn windows)

In this close-up of Lino's hand, you can see the dark areas indicated by the Xs in the pencil detail above, as well as some of the orange underpainting showing through.

Note the layers of clothing.

At first I was a little disappointed that I'd have to shoot all my Field to Canvas subjects during the winter, missing out on some potentially great shots of the farmers working their fields, but I learned immediately during my (very cold) visit with Lino (the first farmer to be photographed for my reference...and also the first portrait I completed) that farmers work all year round. Sure, the working-the-field aspect is seasonal, but crop growers still need to prepare for the coming year...and those that have animals certainly need to tend to them even on the coldest winter days. The care and attention (and love!) for their animals I witnessed in visiting the farmers was evident --and comforting, knowing the food produced by them was in good hands.

One of the most memorable moments of my visit with Lino was seeing him enter a hog pen and play with Orson, a gigantic, 500-pound porker who thought he was a puppy, playfully running towards Lino like a freight train. With puppies, a gentle pat is a nice show of affection, but Orson liked to be punched, and the more Lino punched him, the more Orson seemed to be loving it. It was strangely adorable.

UPDATE: This painting is now sold.

See the full version of it HERE.

Ted Maczka

2011-05-10T10:01:00.027-04:00

Ted's eyes seem to tell it all.

Also known as the "Fish Lake Garlic Man," Ted is so famous around Prince Edward County that I could have just used this close-up as his portrait and people around here would probably still recognize him.

Ted came to Canada in the 1970s and it was while working in a non-agricultural job that he learned that Canada imported its garlic from China. After looking into this further, Ted came to the conclusion that there was no reason Canada could not be self-sufficient in garlic since our climate was ideal for growing it. He then took it upon himself to become an evangelist for garlic and, since 1978, apart from operating his wildly successful garlic farm, he's been interviewed and featured in dozens of papers and on nearly as many TV programs across the country and abroad (he showed me several binders of clippings).

A strong advocate of locally-grown garlic, Ted's entirely self-taught with regards to the scientific research into all aspects of it, regularly helping out (and correcting!) governmental agricultural research.

It was only fitting that I paint him wearing a garland of his beautiful garlic (incorporated from a photo he supplied).

Ted's famous garlic.
Plant in fall before frost.

After our photo shoot, Ted gave me a bulb of garlic which was then split up into its separate cloves and planted in a large pot. A few months later, by early March, sprouts were coming up and now the garlic is ready to transplant into our garden. The photo below was taken in the midst of writing this post (just after 10am, 10 May 2011).

Garlic ready for transplanting.

Garlic now transplanted.

Shirt area detail.
I tried to make this look as flannelly as possible;
seeing the weave of the canvas helps.

Ted's ear.

I love cropping areas that look like abstract, impressionistic paintings.

Garlic Man in progress.

Note the orange acrylic underpainting evident in the head area.

UPDATE: This painting is now sold.

See the full version of it HERE.

Lukas Lister-Stevens

2011-05-07T08:26:00.011-04:00

Lukas is, by far, the youngest farmer in my Field to Canvas series, and I was very happy to be able to include him and show the next generation of vegetable growers. Lukas considers Vicki Emlaw (daughter of George) and her husband, Tim Noxon (a couple that is also in this series), his mentors and has conveyed that enthusiasm into Back 40 Veg, creating, along with his brothers, a thriving operation that is an inspiration to us all.

Barely a teen, he's already been farming for 5 years and grows a wide variety of produce: heirloom tomatoes, heirloom beets, heirloom carrots, mixed lettuce, squash, pumpkins, spinach, parsnips, and lots of other garden veggies.

Addressing his youth in painting, however, created a technical challenge for me. Lukas was the second-last portrait I painted and came directly after the oldest farmer in the series in which I employed a lot of patchiness to great effect, denoting great age, so controlling the brush to give me smoothness and lots of blending for Lukas was a necessity, and I think it worked out well. Also, the photo I took as reference had a very shallow depth-of-field (my preference) so the background was rendered in an impressionistic way to appear out of focus, compared to Lukas.

The "out of focus" barn in the background looks like an impressionistic painting, but serves to push Lukas into the foreground.

Another area of abstraction that could be a painting in itself.

Check out his great website by clicking
RIGHT HERE.

UPDATE: This painting is now sold.

For the full version of this painting, click HERE.

George Emlaw

2011-05-05T16:39:00.024-04:00

Upon entering George's farm (winter).

Pictured above is my final painted version of what I saw when I first pulled up to George's farm back in January. I immediately stopped the van and took a few shots to turn into a panorama later on, thinking of it as simply adding to my collection of local farmscapes. Little did I know at the time that this would be an integral element of George's portrait. You can kind of see it sketched-in in the last photo in this post, and you can also see why I added it; although George's head takes up about half of the canvas, that would leave the other half being just his shirt --and that would be boring, so I incorporated this scene of the farm entrance.

George has been farming all his life (formerly dairy, now crops) and his grandchildren are the 9th generation of his family in South Marysburgh. Vicki Emlaw, also in the Field to Canvas series, is George's daughter.

Seen up close, this detail could be an abstract painting.

I tried a slightly different approach with certain areas of his face, painting loosely, which looks pretty neat when cropped.

One window to George's soul.

But I did still have to capture his likeness, so some tight rendering was required as well. But not too tight; click on the sparkle in his eye and check out those patches of colour!

George has fantastic hair.

Getting his likeness was one thing, making sure his fantastic hair looked fantastic was an absolute must.

More abstraction in the details.

This area is what's covered up by the crook of my elbow in the photo below --in other words: his mouth. When I was adjusting the lights around George for my reference photos inside his home, George's wife, Sandra, kept urging him to smile. "I am smiling, " he replied. When I showed them the finished painting a few weeks ago, he said, "I should have smiled for this." Then I reminded him that he said he was smiling at the time. I did get a couple of shots of George actually smiling, but I think him not smiling, seated in repose like this, makes for a much stronger portrait.

Me painting George at Small Pond Southwest.
Somebody replaced my torso with a sack o' firewood.

This portrait of George was one of three I took with me on our trip to Arizona this winter. I had seen the call for submissions for the biennial Kingston Prize for Canadian Portraiture and knew that I'd be choosing one from this series as my entry. Even very early on, though, while still in the south, and with only a few paintings in the series completed, I knew that my painting of George was going to be the one I would enter. I'll find out if we've been selected to be in the exhibition some time in July [UPDATE: my portrait of George didn't make it into this show].

UPDATE: This painting is now sold.

For the full version of this painting, click HERE.

Geri and John Della Bosca

2011-05-03T14:59:00.016-04:00

Krista and I took some much needed time off at the end of January, but we decided from the start that it was going to be a working holiday, so I prepped three Field to Canvas canvases to take with us to Arizona to paint a few farmer portraits in what we dubbed Small Pond Southwest. It was a greatly successful trip and Geri and John Della Bosca were among the subjects I took down.

In the above photo, I'm tightening the pencils on the side of the painting containing John's portrait. When I arrived at Stone House Farm on County Road 15 (in Prince Edward County) John greeted me heartily, wearing blue coveralls and a tuque. He welcomed me inside where I met his wife, Geri, who was wearing a nice sweater and looking much more formal than John. I had no preference as to how my subjects should be dressed (I told them they could wear whatever they wanted) but Geri insisted on looking her best (fine, by me), and insisted John do the same and get out of his work clothes. John, though, was adamant that since I was there to create farmer portraits, he should proudly look the part (also fine, by me). They agreed to disagree and I photographed them separately, knowing I'd figure something out later on.

I decided to create a split portrait: Geri with a basket of fresh eggs on one half, and John with one of their beautiful chickens on the other half. The split was out of necessity, having shot the subjects separately in different types of outfits and circumstances, but it also works very well conceptually, with the chicken flapping its wings outdoors and the eggs all neatly gathered together indoors. Now it was up to me to finally decide the age-old question: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Basket of farm-fresh eggs in Geri's lap.

Gorgeous chicken on John's shoulder.

To see the full version of this painting, click HERE.

Field to Canvas

2011-05-02T14:15:00.024-04:00

This picture was taken back at the end of November 2010 as I ransacked my old sketchbooks for ideas and titles for my big winter painting project.

About a month earlier, at the suggestion of our friend Tammy Thompson, Alexandre Fida of Angéline's Restaurant and Inn had asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition in their restaurant the following summer. The theme: portraits of local farmers. I gave him an enthusiastic "yes" and started planning the minute I had some actual free time. That rainy day in November was perfect for it.

Lukas Lister-Stevens and Ted Maczka form the age brackets of this series; Lukas being the youngest, Ted the oldest. Obviously, these aren't all the farmers in Prince Edward County (that portrait project would take years!), but it makes me happy and I think it's important to be able to represent such an age range, representing a continuity --especially since the average age of farmers in Canada is around 55.

I knew I would eventually have to visit the farmers to take photos of them for reference (with my trusty 35mm film SLR (digital point-and-shoot only as back-up)), so, with the enormous help of Vicki Emlaw (one of the subjects to be painted), I started compiling a comprehensive contact list of over two dozen farmers. My initial goal was to paint 15 portraits (36" x 24" each) by June 2011, so I only needed that many farmers to agree to be painted, but about halfway through, I realized I could only complete 12 before May (in order to properly promote the show). That dozen took four months, the last one still only 99% complete as I type this. Also, although there are only 12 paintings, there are actually 16 people represented, since there are several portraits of couples.

Unsurprisingly, my enthusiasm for this series comes mostly from my growing interest in farming (my parents both come from farms in Macedonia and Krista and I have a nice garden of our own at Small Pond) and my previous artistic explorations with our often disconnected relationship with the origins of the food we eat. Meeting these farmers would reinforce my opinion that they are an extremely important part of human survival: no farming = no food. Period. To emphasize this importance, I've had the farmers fill out a brief questionnaire about their farming life (how long they've been doing it, what they grow/raise, contact info, etc.), which will appear underneath their portrait.

The entire month of May will be dedicated to this series and the farmers that comprise it. I won't feature any full paintings, but, rather, I'll show the works in progress and various details, talking a bit about the painting process, challenges I came across, the farmers themselves, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I'll approach this alphabetically (instead of the order in which I painted them --this blog is Random Access Murtanovski, after all), starting with Geri and John Della Bosca in my next post.

Reception: June 2, 5-9pm

Exhibition runs through 2011

Angéline's Restaurant & Inn

433 Main St., Bloomfield,

Prince Edward County, ON

613.393.3301

Elaine on Stage

2011-04-27T10:42:00.007-04:00

36" x 26", oil on canvas, 2002

With the opening of my Field to Canvas show of local farmers portraits just over a month away, and since I'll be previewing that show during all of May with details and in-production images, I thought I'd wrap up April with the last full-image painting you'll see here until June.

This portrait is of Elaine Secord, lead singer of Squirm, a five-piece Toronto band that played the clubs in the '90s and recorded one CD (for which I created the artwork) before disbanding by the year 2000 or thereabouts. I used to see them perform a lot; we were friends, but I also thought they were quite good and enjoyed each show (no matter how smoky the venue).

I planned to paint more rock 'n' roll pictures with Squirm as my subjects, but I never got around to that. However, I took dozens of photos for the CD and decided to use many of the shots of Elaine in a whole bunch of paintings (like this one) and possibly more to come.

This painting's made up of two photos: one of Elaine, and a separate one of Tim Martin, guitarist, which adds much-needed interest (and rock 'n' roll ambiance) in the background.
Also of note: this is among my first figurative works in oil made right after my Interiors series and you can see that I'm still figuring out the medium.

World Cat & World Chair

2011-04-22T11:02:00.023-04:00

each: 40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2005, NFS (recycled)

Happy Earth Day!

I did these two paintings live in front of an audience while my friends (in their band at the time, Uncle Seth) played raucous rock music. It was part of a regular event in Kensington Market in Toronto called Pedestrian Sundays, where various streets in the neighbourhood are closed to cars so people can walk, bike, dance, skip, and/or frolic about freely (click that link for much more info).

So my friends set up their gear on the sidewalk underneath Krista's then-apartment above the then-egg-shop on Augusta Ave. and I set up my gear just off to the side. I roughed-in the pencils for these paintings beforehand so I would have some kind of guide and then went at it with the paints while the band played and people watched. It was a lot of fun.

My inspiration for these "live paintings" was the master of live painting, Denny Dent, and I hope to one day try his fantastic approach. As it was, my own live paintings were quite controlled...but still very fun, especially with the loud music right next to me, urging me on. Did I mention that it was a lot of fun?

Being Pedestrian Sunday, I wanted my paintings to reflect my interest in and concern for the global environment, so I chose two images based on sculptures from the Kensington neighbourhood that featured globes (there are other such sculptures decorating Kensington, but these two were the most appropriate).

World Cat's text is a line from the R.E.M. song Can't Get There from Here (from their album Fables of the Reconstruction), and World Chair's text is the opening line from the Midnight Oil song Warakurna (from their album Diesel and Dust).

In keeping with the theme of environmental concern, these two canvases were eventually reused and now are host to two new and different images (but I don't know which new paintings they became).

PS: Yes, Krista and I stencilled a bunch of "David Suzuki for PM" shirts and sold out that weekend.

52

2011-04-08T23:24:00.015-04:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 1998

This was painting number 52 during the year that I forced myself to paint one picture per week (previously mentioned here). With it, I had reached a milestone in my practicepracticepractice project --which I ominously named "Operation: Waterstorm," to help instill in me a sort of military-like discipline to achieve my goal. I reached #52 early (some time in the fall, I think) and had time (and energy) for eleven more for a total of 63 paintings in 1998 (all watercolour; I had yet to explore oils).
[type in 1998 in the search box waay in the top left and peruse many of my paintings from that year]

I noticed over the course of the year that my skills were gradually improving. Not every painting was a gem, and there were some even in the later weeks that were not so hot (or had areas of not-so-hotness), but, overall, practicing watercolours day after day for a year taught me a lot about the medium and a lot about myself.
The main thing it taught me was that I did not have a gift and I was not lucky; if I wanted to be a good watercolourist, I had to paint and paint and paint. Whatever "talent" I had was most likely determination, commitment, passion for the medium, and lots of patience (watercolours demand patience).
Watercolours are hard. But I love them.

Note: this is the same model (wearing the same top) as the one in the previous post below.
Also note: subtle matrix background.

Another milestone of sorts:
I started this blog three years ago yesterday with a post about my Dad.

Finest Worksong

2011-03-31T13:47:00.011-04:00

22" x 15", watercolour, 1998

Starting in a couple of weeks I'll be teaching a watercolour workshop at an art supply store here in Picton. I'll be trying to demystify watercolours inasmuch as I want the students to feel less intimidated by the medium an learn to accept its often mercurial nature; the mantra being "Don't Panic."

For example, I'll try to show how to avoid such "errors" as in the painting above (unblended areas like the red circle on her cheek, her left hand knuckles, and her right hand), as well as mixing colours so they're not "muddy," controlling the paint to avoid the need for masking, and various techniques I've learned over the decades, among much else. Since I'm largely a self-taught painter, I'll be taking a fairly non-textbook approach to teaching.

Workshop details:

Thursdays: 14 April - 12 May*

6PM - 8PM

$35 per person, per class, for six weeks

7 Elements Artists' Materials & Studio

230 Main St. Picton, ON

613.476.7696

*we'll likely add a second class on Monday nights since there seems to be a big demand

I took the title for this from an R.E.M. song of the same name from their Document album. The song is a sort of call to arms: "The time to rise has been engaged..." (appropriate, since I painted this specifically to use on my first image-based business card). Incidentally, Document, Fables of the Reconstruction, and Lifes Rich Pageant are the three R.E.M. albums I listened to exclusively in the fall/winter of 1988 when I first began painting, and those songs are forever linked to my watercolour "origins."