Skip to main content

Taylors' Tractor

15" x 22", watercolour, 2016

I've extensively detailed here how watercolour was the medium that ignited my lifelong passion for painting back in the fall of 1988, and I still refer to it as "my first love." Thing is, while I've painted almost 400 paintings (in oils and in inks) since moving to Prince Edward County and setting up my studio/gallery here at Small Pond Arts in 2010, I'd done only one significant watercolour painting, Tim's Home Run –and that was four years ago!

So, what kept me from my first love? Long story short, I find framing works on paper troublesome, but I recently had a breakthrough –a turning point, even– and decided to just get back into watercolours and not worry about anything but the actual painting of the pictures because that's what makes me happy.

And it's making me extremely happy.

This tractor at Honey Wagon Farms in Picton is one of 13 new watercolour paintings I'll be working on over the next couple of months, so stay tuned for more...

I still love oils and will continue working in that medium (inks, too), but watercolours are now fully and joyously back in the mix.

This tractor's scoop can just barely be seen as the "seat" for Ed and Sandi Taylor in my portrait of them from 2011 –and that shed is in the background, as well.





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
5 comments
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
2 comments
Read more