"Ducky!"

The duckling is finished! Or, more accurately, the water around the duckling is finished. The water is what seems to have taken the longest to do. It's been some time since I've done water but as it happens watercolour lends itself very well to the subject matter. Shocking, I know.

The challenge with painting the duckling's reflection was to blend the blue of the water into the yellow of the reflection without introducing any unwelcome green. Now as I look at the image on my computer monitor, the blue grey in the background seems to have picked up a greenish tinge, but I'm here to tell you I don't know where that came from because it's not in the original. I guess it's time to make better friends with the colour correction tool on photoshop.

I can't post a picture of this painting without mentioning that Clarence is in love with "ducky." While I was painting this, Clarence would shout "ducky, ducky" and then take his small stuffed animal duck and throw it at me over the baby fencing that protects my work space from his little grasp. Very cute. I'm going to send this watercolour out to have prints made, but after all of Clarence's enthusiasm for ducky, I think the little bird had better find his home in Clarence's room.

The Miscellaneous Portfolio

Now that I've participated in the last Holiday Makers' Market for 2010, I'm refocusing some energy on sprucing up the ol' website. As I've alluded to before, the technology side of things isn't my strong suit but I do find it helps to do computer related things at night. Daylight is for painting. Clarence has gotten back into monster naps, as I like to call any nap that goes beyond 1.5 hours, which has allowed me to get a fair bit of painting done during the day. So I suppose I can't begrudge the computer for keeping me from watching lousy sitcoms and reruns of design shows at night.

I'm finding the challenge with the website is how to organize the images, especially when there's a piece I'd like to show but not very many examples of that kind of work. Case in point is this oil painting I did about three years ago for the Dundas Valley School of Art Annual Auction. I did this from a photograph I took of the city as I looked out from the Wentworth stairs near Concession street.




I suppose one solution is to do more paintings in this style. I suppose that's one of the good things about art: you can always look forward to doing more.