Paint the County 2011

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, private collection

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, private collection

UPDATE: March 2012
Here's a larger version painted for my Barnscapes series.

Comments

Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi...

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co...

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th...

The Naked Silo

Search This Blog