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Saturday, August 11, 2012

Plein Air Paintings from the Summer of 2012

Once again this year a bunch of us artist friends went up to Whitefish Falls, Ontario, in the heart of the LaCloche Mountains, to paint 'en plain air.' We stayed at on the island at Bayvilla Lodge... Cabin Nine ... which has so many lovely views of the surrounding landscape! The Island But sometimes you needn't look to the horizon for beauty... sometimes it's as close as the parking lot, which is where I sat one afternoon and painted this: BayvillaCabin Just down the road from the lodge is a wonderfully ramshackle old garage. On the Tuesday of that week I took all my gear down to a shady grove across the road from that building. Three hours later, I had this piece mostly done... FarquharsonsShack Backing up, on the Monday of our week in Whitefish Falls I started a painting of the bay inlet - a view from right outside our cabin on the little island... First Painting, Part 1 Above, sketching the scene in paint - below, laying in broad swathes of colour with a palette knife... First Painting, Part 2 ... and brush... First Painting, Part 3 After about 3 hours, I arrived at a satisfactory conclusion... well, not exactly "satisfactory." Although I wasn't unhappy with how I'd blocked in the scene, the full daylight look just wasn't working for me. So I turned this painting to the wall. First Painting, Part 4 That evening we enjoyed a most spectacular sunset. This is the scene I felt I really wanted to portray! I returned to this painting on our last day in Whitefish Falls and painted it over from the memory of that sunset. InletSunset One other painting came out of our week in Whitefish Falls; this "View to the Willisville Mountain," also as seen from just outside our cabin on the island - except turning to look more to the North. ViewToWillisvilleMountain Returning home to Hamilton, I still had the plein air painting bug. One spot I'd wanted to paint for a couple of years now is a farm at the corner of Puslinch Townline Rd and Victoria Rd. So one evening I drove out there and set up in the corner of the farmer's field. VictoriaRdPleinAir The following weekend I travelled back up north for my annual fishing trip with a great group of pals. I spent the Friday night at my buddy Mike's cottage, and that provided the perfect opportunity to do a little painting! PaintingtheSharmaShack Mike has done so much for me over the years that I was delighted to be able to present him with a small token of my appreciation: this painting of his cottage, which he seemed really pleased to receive. SharmShack Travelling further on up north to the Oxtongue River, to our friend Wade's family cottage, where we have held the fishing derby for many years now, I spent about eight hours over two days painting in a little grove of pine and hemlock trees. This view of the Lovell family cottage is the result. WadesCottage And finally, upon returning home to Hamilton once more, I painted this view of a storm sewer - that's right, a storm sewer. It's in a tiny, forgotten meadow near here... so jarring to see it in the middle of such a beautiful, natural environment... I've wanted to paint it since last year. Last Tuesday I did! MeadowStormSewer Today (Saturday August 11th) I'll be bringing these paintings and quite a few others I painted last summer to the Locke St. Art Market, 211 Locke Street South, Hamilton, Ontario If you're in the area and have some time, please drop by and say hello!

Friday, March 09, 2012

A New SiRobot Painting

Here's a little digital painting I did a couple of weeks ago based on Simon's robot character design.

  SiGuyRobotPainting.sm

 I did this in about two hours in Corel Painter. Hope you like it!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Super Simon Sunday: Robots & Ogres!

Its been quite some time since I posted any of Simon's work. For those of you who were wondering, "I wonder what Simon's been drawing lately?" Well, here are some recent drawings. SiGuyRobot SiGuyOgre SiGuyTopHatCyclops SiGuyLosRobots SiGuyBowlerTongue

Friday, February 10, 2012

A New Magazine Cover Illustration

This month I was commissioned to do a cover for Mac Times magazine, McMaster University's Alumni Association magazine.

The client asked that I create something that would convey the idea of many generations of a family being McMaster graduates. They mentioned that a "family tree" of graduates was something they'd like to suggest... so here are a couple of thumbnail concepts I came up with based on that theme.

They liked the one on the left.

  TimesRoughs

One sunny Sunday last autumn I had taken a bunch of photos while out walking the dog over at the golf course, and these photos served as inspiration and visual reference for the look I had in mind for this illustration.




I really wanted to try to get a bit of that gorgeous Bernie Fuchs "sunlight filtered through leaves' quality in this illustration. When I Google Image Searched Bernie Fuchs, this image came up.

Perfect.

I began roughly painting the base colours in Corel Painter. I used the Oil Pastel tool to lay in the beginning of my colour scheme.

  step02

 Here's how it looked after I'd 'painted' in the base colours, building up some tonal contrast.

  step03

Next I began adding filtered light (à la Bernie Fuchs)...

  step04

... and textured the whole thing with one of my favourite Painter tools; the Scratchboard Rake.

Final touch: some "lens flare" effect (although NOT using an actual Effects filter - just oil pastel).

  step05

 Here's the graduation cap (or "mortar board") painted in a separate file.


  step06

The finished piece, after dragging in, resizing and rotating many copies of the mortar board.

  step07

Here's how the finished piece with text in place looked once the magazine was printed!


You can see more of my editorial art here and some of the other magazine covers I've done are here