Monday, August 14, 2006

Time flies....


....when you're having fun, or visitors. It's been a busy summer with lots of company - all of it welcome, but it sure did cut into my painting time. On the other hand, I had lots of opportunities to wander around assorted places with our nifty new digital camera, discovering the most incredible array of colours and patterns in the world of insects, spiders, and other little creepy crawlies.

Probably almost as much time was then spent, usually in the late night/early morning hours, scouring the bugguide website to figure out what it was I had all those pictures of.

The first subject from those excursions has made it onto canvas - a grass skipper, nectaring on dame's rocket. Hopefully more will follow - I have enough reference materials now to keep busy for a good long time, anyhow.

Friday, June 02, 2006

I do like Spiders and Snakes.....


....and thanks to our new digital camera, finally I'm getting some good pictures of both :-)

Here is today's star subject, a Northern Black Widow spider munching on a hapless Tiger Beetle who was foolish enough to get caught in her web. He had lots of company - already neatly wrapped for future meals were several honey bees and a dragon fly! Not too many spider webs will hold a dragon fly, but I think this girl built her web to last.


My son Patrick, age 11, is a big fan of all things creepy and crawly as well, and arrived back at the house triumphantly from his own first hunting expedition with our new camera with this picture to show for his efforts:

And finally, the snakes:

Milk Snake, closeup




Garter Snake



That's it for today!

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Signs of spring


We love spring in this household. Like many people, we have our personal favorite signs that spring is close, or has arrived - the usual things, the first snowdrops poking their heads through the last of the winter snow, the first robin singing his heart out in the big oak tree, the first signs of green leaves appearing. But in this household, the definitive sign that spring has arrived and is here to stay, is the first snake. Almost without fail, it is found, caught, and displayed to anyone present by my younger son, Patrick. That would be this year's unfortunate victim at the top of the page.

Though actually, the snakes seem to be rather unworried about the experience, and protest very little. Whether this is because they are still a bit sluggish from winter, or whether Pat's gentle but no nonsense approach just leaves them with no time to think about getting nasty, they never seem to bite or even struggle a great deal. After the snake has been duly admired (or inspected with horrified fascination, depending on who is present at the time), it is gently released wherever it was found. Spring has officially arrived.

On the art front, I've been busy making lots of ACEOs, and playing with coloured pencils. A few of my favourites from the last few weeks:



The first two are colored pencil, the others are acrylics. I hope you like them!

Simone

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Finished!


Finally finished "Stones" - this one was a lot of fun, but ended up a lot more time consuming than I expected. Those little stones each insisted on having a personality of their own! I think I am well and truly hooked on acrylics after this one - I really enjoy being able to come back to an area and develope it some more at any stage of the painting process, and that's something that can be awfully hard to do in watercolours.

"Stones" was painted from a reference photo I took several years ago on our family holiday to the East Coast - I took the picture specifically to paint from, but couldn't figure out a way to get the effects I wanted in watercolour. It's taken me this long to start tackling acrylics and get comfortable enough with them to feel I could do this little ocean-created still life justice. I rarely come back for another try at a failed painting, so I knew I had to get it right the first time.

It's not exactly what I had in mind (they all seem to take on a life of their own once they are on the easel, and I make changes as I go), but it's pretty close.

Enjoy!

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Beauty on my Windowsill


Outside it's still winter - ice and snow everywhere you look - but in my kitchen, it feels like the tropics have come to Canada thanks to my faithful Phalaenopsis orchids. Probably the easiest of orchids to grow in the average home without much special care and knowledge, we have four of these beauties gracing our kitchen windowsill. They seem to like the eastern exposure and reward us for our rather marginal care by blooming several times a year - and each flower spray usually lasts for several months.

Here are a couple of pointers if you should decide to try growing one of these amazing plants yourself: about the only way I have found to kill them, and quickly, is by overwatering. They can last quite a while without water, but wet roots will rot quickly and the plant will die. I usually repot ours in fresh orchid medium every year or two and water when I think of it - let the water run right through the pot for a minute or so, then put the plant back in it's place - voila, orchid care done for another week.

If you are buying a plant from one of the many non-specialty shops that carry these orchids now, make sure the leaves are firm and bright, and repot as soon as you get it home, even if it is in full bloom. Many of these plants are shipped with spagnum moss wrapped tightly around the roots - often most of the roots have rotted before the plant even gets to the store. The flowers may still look lovely, but the leaves have begun to wilt due to the dead roots. Cut off all dead roots, repot in fresh growth medium, and resist the urge to water lots, and the plant may recover. We lost a couple before I learned about this, but the ones we have now have been healthy and blooming continually for several years, getting bigger and showier blooms, and more flower spikes, with each passing year.

On the art front, I finished a couple of ACEO's today. Here is one featuring my first ever cat, Trixie. She came to live with us as an inquisitive kitten when I was 16, and I lost her to kidney failure 14 years later. From the day she came to live with us until the day she died, I never knew her to be anything but affectionate and loving to anyone she met. The barest touch of a human hand was enough to set her purring so loudly she would sound like she was about to explode. She was a brilliant ambassador for her species, even people who didn't like cats found it hard to dislike Trixie.

Until next time,

Simone

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Stones

That's what I'm still working on. Here is a progress pic, as well as a closeup of the bottom right corner, which is the only part that is pretty much finished at this point. All the big shapes are blocked in, now it's just a matter of adding layers and layers of glazes to make everything look three dimensional, and then tweaking the values and colours so it all fits together. This is the fun part, as the painting begins to emerge - but it's also fiddly and slow, as I have to wait for one layer to try before adding another. Of course, acrylics dry fast, but there's still a certain amount of sitting and waiting time involved.



In the meantime, I'm playing with some more ACEO's. Perhaps because there is so much grey in "Stones", I'm feeling the urge to splash on some colour - here is one of this week's examples:




The ground in our forest is still covered in a solid layer of snow and ice, but the sun has some real warmth to it now, so spring has got to be just around the corner! At least, I certainly hope so - winter has its own beauty, but for me, it's always about 2 months longer than I think it really needs to be.

Until next time,

Simone

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Spike's big surprise



The big surprise of the day was courtesy of our Mali Uromastyx lizard, Spike. We awoke to find his - ummm, make that her - cage covered in eggs. By the time she was done, she had produced 11 eggs! No wonder she was looking a little portly around the middle lately.....here she is looking very maternal, but honestly I think she was just using the egg as a handy pillow. This one was number 9, and I think by then she was getting more than a little tired of the process.

On the art front, I finished a couple more ACEO's and got a fair bit of work done on "Stones". Here's one of the ACEO's, this is ornamental corn. So much fun to work with all these bright colors, especially as "Stones" is going to be mostly greys with just hints of color showing through.



And here's the other ACEO - an acrylic of one of my cats from years ago, Penny. She looks a little tough on this picture, but it was all an act - she was as sweet as they come.

Unitl next time,

Simone

Monday, March 13, 2006

Welcome to my blog!

"Itchy" - art card, acrylic, 2 1/2" by 3 1/2"

I'm looking forward to sharing with you a little about my life, and my paintings.
I'm currently working on my first acrylic painting (other than a few art cards I've done in acrylics in the last few weeks), and I hope to have an "in progress" picture of that uploaded soon.
I've been doing a lot of "art cards" in the last little while. These are trading card sized tiny paintings - just 2 1/2" by 3 1/2" - "Itchy", at the top, is an example. While they hardly qualify as "serious" art and are unlikely to ever hang in a museum, these are an awful lot of fun. They're also a great opportunity to experiment with different subjects and media without spending a fortune on supplies, or a huge chunk of time.
In my spare time, I like to hang out with the big love of my life (after my family, that is). Justin is a 7 year old Cheval Canadien, Canada's National Horse. I've had him since he was 11 months old, and we've learned a lot from each other. There is also the menagerie in our home, which currently consists of dogs, birds lizards and a pet rat. And of course, there are the woods around our house and everything that grows and lives in them, and ever present source of inspiration and contemplation.
I'll end this with just one of the inhabitants of our little corner of the world who caught my eye and provided fodder for my brush:




"Praying Mantis" - art card, watercolor
Until next time - Simone