New Works
November 2024
I have a painting in the annual juried Painting exhibition by the John B. Aird Gallery. They used it for one of their advertisement so I'm posting both the ad and the original painting. You can see the show online.
This second painting from my series Listening to the birds was inspired in part by this article.
I'm creating less these days because I started teaching at an arts high school, and it's putting quite a demand on my time. I am still filling up my sketchbooks, but it's hard to get around to scanning them. I did do a painting in acrylic which is new for me. It was a demo for class. I was trying to convince them to paint bread. They responded that bread was boring and not colourful enough and they prefered to paint fruit. The point of the demo was to show them that bread does indeed have interesting colours. What do you think?
April 2024
It's been a long time since I took the time to photograph and upload my work. I've been exploring ink drawing, mostly of people and birds, and here are some of the better drawings.
You might recognize a few of the faces drawn here. I don't know any songs from Willie Nelson, but he has a great face to draw! There is also Félix Leclerc, a Québec folk singer. And others.
There are also a few ink drawings combined with black and grey liquid watercolour, which is a lot of fun! I haven't quite gotten to a place where I'm happy. But I'll get there!
August 2023
I've been playing around with different ink mediums, with mixed results. I have tried out ink and pen, brush and ink, and different brush pens. My favourite by far is the Pentel Color Brush! I love the tip on this one. The grey tones are done with brush dipped in diluted ink.
Why three drawings of the same blue jay? I liked all three for different reasons! I couldn't pick "the best" (one of four did not make the cut.)
Here are also a few sketches of student at De La Salle high school in Ottawa, see the entry for May.
May 2023
I got back to sketching birds. Here are blue jays, white-throated sparrows, and a great crested flycatcher (which have been hanging around our yard recently). They are mostly in ink, but also watercolour and painted graphite.
I also have some recent sketches of students from L'école secondaire De La Salle in Ottawa. They are mostly looking down at their phone or laptop, and young people don't sit still which is great for my visual memory!
More dancers from Powwow Life Drawing at the National Arts Centre, see previous post. Plus a few more gestures drawn at my son's hockey practices and a couple of ink brush studies from online photos.
