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 p...

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...

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...

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 ...

 36" x 54", oil on canvas, 2011, private collection 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 fin...