The Naked Silo

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

22" x 15", watercolour, 2002, private collection 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 Alphonse Mucha .

22" x 15", watercolour, 2002,  private collection 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. AW-016 is another great example of my love of contrast (also featuring Ashley). 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 w

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 bala