Holiday in Cuba

We had a short holiday in Cuba recently, and here are a couple of the typical scenes that I painted in watercolour. Someone came up to me when I was painting and said"Why are you working when you are on holiday?" I replied that I just liked painting. It is also nice to have a painted record of the trip- not just photos. I tend to paint watercolours on holiday, even though I am not that good at them, as it is easier to carry them than heavy tubes of acrylics and canvases.

The flowers in the foreground are Bourgainvilleas whose brilliant colours are everywhere.

Local art for the tourists is not that great, as they appear to be mass produced with the use of a lot of primary colours and way too much "straight from the tube" green. However, I understand that paint and materials are very expensive for the locals to buy, so they probably use the oil paint left over from painting buildings.

Talking of buildings, there were some great murals on the walls of the hotel lobby and bars.

They were mostly semi-abstracts or fantasy paintings. One was a type of "trompe d'oeil" which depicted a staricase leading to no-where. One girl got a little drunk and someone tried to march her up the painted stairs for a joke. She was going along with it until someone pointed out the stairs weren't real!

Mandy Bing's workshop on animal painting

Here is a painting by Mandy Bing, who is relatively new to the Belleville area. She was invited to give a workshop on animal painting last Tuesday at the Belleville Public Library, Parrott Gallery. Every Tuesday morning from 10 -1p.m, the Gallery hosts an "Open painting" session for area artists to get together.

I attended Mandy's workshop and was fascinated to hear about her techniques for making these colourful images of animals -mostly cats an dogs. She went into details of how she deals with the customer when doing a commissioned portrait. She also pointed out that in some ways, painting animals was more difficult than painting people, but that taking life drawing classes helped her a lot.

One way she differs from me considerably in her painting method is the amount of preparation time she spends on each piece. She uses a variety of different photographs and edits some of them with photoshop to play with different colour combinations and edge treatments. She then carefully draws every little detail on her prepared canvas (she uses several layers of gesso first -to get a smooothe effect.). Next, the painting begins with adding exaggerated colours.

Tweed Heritage Centre Xmas Arts and Crafts

The second annual Tweed Heritage Centre Arts and Crafts sale will be held from 26th November 2009 till Dec 5th 2005.
I wll have a few smalll paintings and felted fibre art works there.
See picture on the right.
Most items are reasonably priced to reflect the economic downturn!
20 percent of the proceeds of sales help to keep the Tweed Heritage Centre going.
Please come and visit us and support the museum and art gallery.

Stockdale Mill for fine dining

Yesterday, my husband and I went to Stockdale Mill for dinner. This was a great experience. At night and in the snow with nicely positioned lighting, the old mill looked wonderful. We chose a table with a view of the water. The food was great and very reasonable prices. All home cooked. No alcohol licence as yet, but it is in the works. So is music.
Anyway, the visit inpired me to try and do a painting from a photo I took last year (see above).
I will try and post the stages as I go along. This is the first stage- actually the second- as I began by painting the whole gallery canvas (24ins X 24ins) in a light cadmium yellow.
Bear in mind that I took the photo inside with a flash (never a good idea) and the picture was just propped up against a cabinet, so there are some bits of furniture visible behind and the sides aren't straight.

The Mill is located west of Frankford on Stockdale Rd. It is just north of Trenton, Ontario.