Asleep in a Foreign Soil

28" x 20", oil on wood panel, 2014

Since the theme of this year's Doors Open is World War One, there's going to be an exhibition of artwork with a poppy theme at the Wellington Town Hall (just down the road from the museum). The painting above (part of the "Remembrance" section of of my War Project) is my submission to the show and is inspired in part by this quote:

"For the first time the British army lost its spirit of optimism, and there was a sense of deadly depression among many officers and men with whom I came in touch. They saw no ending of the war, and nothing except continuous slaughter such as that in Flanders."
–notes from a war correspondent

detail

I thought about including a helmet or rifle, but I didn't want to indicate which side this soldier is/was on; he's meant to represent all who died in the war.

Welcome!

On my last two (of 10) painting sessions in Prince Edward County's five museums I was at the Wellington Heritage Museum which used to be a Quaker Meeting house (which I painted this museum last year as part of my County 101 marathon). Speaking of Quakers, I have two Quaker-based paintings in store for my War Project, inspired by stories related to them being conscientious objectors during World War One and the disturbing repercussions of that stance.

And now houses a pretty impressive collection of canning items from the county's rich canning past...

I like this doorway.

Cool canning gear.

There's lots of great stuff to see here, especially if, like me, you're fond of vintage label design.

By the sheet.

I like old cans.

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

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

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

The Naked Silo

Search This Blog