Paintings

Advent Calendar Day 2: Flat Brush

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I rarely use square brushes for watercolor, so I included one in the advent calendar. This is a Winsor & Newton Series 995 3/4″ flat. It’s a good balance of soft and firm, and I liked used it for gouache and acrylic gouache. Today I decided to try it for watercolor, but since I was … Read more

#magrish_challenge_sky 2024

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For the third year in a row, I participated in Maria Smirnova’s sky challenge on Instagram (#magrish_challenge_sky run by @magrish). In November, she posts grayscale reference photos and the challenge is to paint them in the colors of your choice. Typically, Maria’s sky photos depict cloud-filled sunsets over Paris. I previously posted about by 2023 and 2022 challenges. So how did I fare this year?

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Introduction the $0 Art Supply Advent Calendar Challenge!

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My art discord was recently commiserating because art advent calendars cost so much. They’re also often full of items you don’t actually want, in retrospect. I have personally found that “mystery box” type purchases are exciting to anticipate, but ultimately disappointing. You rarely actually want the stuff in them. The best you can hope for … Read more

Photo to Painting: Late October Trees

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I feel like I was precipitate in posting Photo to Painting: October Trees, since I ended up painting more trees from photos at the end of October! So here’s another post. School Tree This one’s not exactly a “photo to painting”: I painted the tree from life, through the window. I am including it mainly … Read more

Monthly Retrospective: October 2024

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I spent much of October “convalescing in the countryside,” as I jokingly called it, on an extended visit to family in rural Massachusetts. From there, I did some job interviews in the city and wound up getting a job! I still have some business to take care of back in Vancouver, but very soon I will be back in Massachusetts to stay, and for many reasons I am feeling better about that than I felt about my attempt to move. I just love this landscape and I can’t explain it.

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Photo to Painting: October Skies

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After painting the aurora this month, I went back into the archive to paint photos from September as well as several cool skies from last winter. Now that I am back in Massachusetts, it feels a lot more emotionally possible to paint my old Massachusetts photos. Suburban Aurora Like many in North America, I was … Read more

Autumn Palette 2024 Revisited

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I’ve been using my autumn palette outside and in timely paintings for about a month, and I feel I have gathered enough experience to quickly review the colors and see if my expectations matched reality. Top Tier Colors I’m using these a lot: Also Good Borderline Not used as much as I expected What am … Read more

Photo to Painting: September BC Sunsets

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I’m back to painting some of my own photos! Many of these were intentionally taken as reference photos, to remind me of a scene that I wanted to paint more than to create great art in and of themselves. These are my favorite types of photos to show alongside the painting because it shows how it takes imagination and heavy mental editing to get to a scene from a snapshot.

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