Surreal Landscape Painting Video
The painting idea came to me in a dream I had while approaching my due date. The birth turned out to be harder than I could have ever imagined, but after 55 hours of labor my son was born healthy and strong. After using the painting as a focal point through hundreds of contractions, this scene is inextricably mixed with my memory of birth. It's now one of my very favorite paintings, although the mere sight of it made me feel sick for a few weeks afterward because it brought it all back so vividly.
The painting, entitled Origin, is not for sale but prints are available for purchase in my print store.
New Surreal Landscape Painting
I am taking several months off painting to have a baby, due any day now. I had a dream several weeks ago that the baby was at the top of a mountain, and I had to go on a long hike to get him. The scenery in the dream painting is loosely based on a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in the high Sierra mountains of California that my husband and I backpacked a few years ago. On one memorable stretch we spent a long two days hiking towards what looked like an impossible climb over a high mountain pass.
I filmed the painting for a video, which I will post in the new year. Here's a still:
Happy Holidays!
Forest Painting Video
You'll see I had a bit of trouble getting the lighting consistent throughout the video but I'm working on that. When I started the painting, I had made sort of a crude mockup of what I wanted in Photoshop, but the painting evolves thoughout the process into something different. The center area darkens and the tent becomes smaller and more central.
Surreal Forest Painting
My husband Travis and I are experienced backpackers and were well prepared for the week-long trek, but a big storm tested our limits one night. After fording frigid streams and walking all day in pouring rain that seeped through our raingear, I got hypothermia and began to hallucinate as we tried to get to shelter after dark. Fortunately we made it out safely without having to be rescued. This trail is one of the most awe-inspring places I have ever been. I wanted this painting to evoke the fear and magic we felt in this ancient forest and the way the woods seem like they can swallow you up.
I filmed video of the painting in progress, which I will post shortly. I have been working on incorporating more colors into my landscapes and getting away from realism a bit more to make the paintings more emotional.
This painting is for sale in my Surreal Landscapes gallery for $895. You can purchase prints from my Etsy shop starting at $12.00.
Island Lake Sunset Video
Island Lake at Sunset
These are the starting photos, one of the sky colors and one of the island:
Here's a closeup of the trees on the island:
I put in some subtle backlighting on the foliage to distinguish it from the dark land on the shore. I'm working on a video of the process.
Lantern Glow
The client who commissioned this painting wanted a mix of fantasy and reality, with some meaningful personal details. The painting is loosely based on a waterfall in West Virginia. We wanted the waterfall as a main focus, with signs of warmth and life.
Here's a detail of the glowing lantern next to the waterfall:
This is a detail from the other side, with a bridge and sign that captures a special memory:
I like the magic feeling to the painting. This reminds me of another firefly painting I did a long time ago from a dream I had as a little kid.
Light in the Desert
I like having multiple styles, and this one is definitely towards the surreal, abstract side. Here are some detail shots:
You can see the canvas texture in this one:
I've just posted this painting to my main print store, my Etsy store and my card store if you want to order a print.
Evening Tide
Below is a detail shot where you can see a bit of the canvas texture. I made the area around the boys' heads a bit brighter to indicate dusk and draw focus to them.
Prints of this painting are available in my Print Gallery.
An Unexpected Tribute
Last year, my in-laws lost their yellow lab to cancer. I loved him like he was family, and he was even in my wedding party. I was with him when he passed and I still miss him. He was the first dog I ever painted, long before I became a professional artist:
In the last few weeks of his illness, I was thinking about him a lot while I worked on my paintings. One of my current commissions was of Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, Oregon.
I didn't notice this until after I had shipped the painting, but many people pointed out that you can see his face in the rock:
Yellowstone Speed Painting
I've been working on my series of paintings featuring parks in Canada and the US. This painting is based on Yellowstone National Park, from a trip we took to a cabin in Montana with our friends last May.
As usual, I recommend you click on the YouTube icon in the bottom right of the window to watch the video in YouTube, then click the HQ icon to see it in high quality.
Chesterman Beach Video
This is my speed painting video of my Chesterman Beach painting from Vancouver Island, British Columbia. My sister Gillian took the photo while she was camping there with her husband. She and I grew up in a rural area north of here on Vancouver Island. It's a beautiful place.
Chesterman Beach
This is my new painting of Chesterman Beach on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. My sister Gillian took a photo of the beach while she was camping there last winter, and I thought it would make a nice painting.
Montana Painting Video
This is a landscape I painted after last month's trip to Montana. I took a photograph at my friend's cabin and then painted this when I got back to California. The forest cover in this valley is growing back after a large fire swept the area 13 years ago. Now that most of the mature pines are gone, the forest canopy is open, and much more of the mountain scenery is visible. The area is very green and filled with birds and wildflowers.
I taped my work and sped it up into a 5 minute speed painting:
I'm getting a little better at my video technique, though I need to learn how to paint without standing in the way of the camera. You can see the lights flickering as I move around the canvas, blocking the different spotlights. I'm just happy I haven't backed up and crashed into the tripod yet.
You can see much more detail in the video if you click through to YouTube and select the HQ icon on the bottom right to view in high quality.
United Way Auction
One of my landscape paintings, Arch Rock/Passageway is being auctioned off today at a private function in San Francisco. All proceeds will be donated to United Way.
Here's a closeup of the sunset coming through the hole in the rock:
Winter Camping Painting
This painting was inspired by a night I spent in the mountains a few years ago in British Columbia. I worked with thin layers of interference colors to bring out the glow on the tent and the snow on the mountains: Read the rest of this post...
Alpine Lakes Painting
This one features a mountain peak above the clouds:
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Ruckle Park, British Columbia
Here's another painting in the series:
This painting has special meaning to me because it is painted from a photo taken on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, on the morning of my sister's wedding. She had a beautiful outdoor ceremony and after dinner we sat around the campfire with this view. My husband Travis and I camped in the park before and after the wedding. Travis crawled out of the tent at about 6:30 am to take some sunrise photos, and when he took this one he said he could already picture it as a painting. Read the rest of this post...
Tent at an Alpine Lake
This is detail shot of the tent's reflection by the water:
To make the northern lights, I painted in the highlights in the sky in white, let them dry and then brushed Pthalo Blue over top.
I like using a tent that contrasts with the sky but I'm considering trying a limited palette as well. The tent makes an interesting focal point but it could also be good to hide it a little bit, so that it's not the first thing that you notice when you look at the painting. Read the rest of this post...
Sequoia National Park
This is a painting of a rock in an area called Big Five Lakes in Sequoia National Park, California. This area is several days hike from civilization and up around 10,000 feet elevation, so the stars were pretty incredible. We didn't camp on this rock, but I added the blue tent to provide a contrast with the orange sky.
Next are a few detail shots from the painting. Read the rest of this post...
Mt. Whitney
I greatly exaggerated the color of the rocks to contrast with the blue of the sky. To make the shadows between the rocks, I used a glaze of Payne's Grey blended with glazing medium. Payne's Grey is a favorite of mine for making shadows. It is actually a blend of black and UItramarine Blue, the primary color I use for skies. Read the rest of this post...
Details from the Jurassic Sea Painting
The dinosaur painting I posted the other day is quite large and detailed, so I've added some closeups. This painting reminds me of a painting I did ten years ago of an underwater scene from the west coast of Canada.
I had fun painting a warm water scene this time, and although I wish there were more plants to work with I decided to keep it simple and focus on the animals. These pictures are slightly smaller than life-sized (er, relative to the painting, not the dinosaurs) and you can see the canvas texture.
Jurassic Sea Finished Painting
Several months ago I started working on a painting of dinosaurs from the Jurassic. I initially chose a land scene with the focal point being a group of Diplodocus grazing. However, after doing some more research, I discovered that I had painted the neck position incorrectly on the dinosaur in the back, and it was bothering me. Changing it would have thrown off my composition, so I decided to start over with a different scene.
Jim's Glider, a Story in a Painting
This is a painting I painted earlier this summer using a story as a reference. I usually work from photographs, so it was a bit of a challenge to put all the details together properly, but I like the way it turned out.
It is August 1929, on the North Shore of Vancouver, Canada, my favourite city. My husband's grandfather Jim is taking off in a glider, while his friend tows the glider in the car. Their wives, my husband's grandmother and her best friend, are looking on and waving at Jim in the plane.
Plein Air at Echo Lake
I brought a small selection of my acrylic paints, a pad of palette paper and a canvas small enough that I could just put it on my lap (12" x 16") while I sat on the shore. The water patterns kept changing as I painted, so I waited for one that I liked and tried to remember it as well as I could while I painted it in. Read the rest of this post...
Snowy Coastal Inlet
I wanted it to look like an imaginary nighttime coastal scene with snow falling across the inlet. It's painted in mostly a mixture of Payne's Grey and white, but the thing I did differently was to add a layer of clear gloss medium at the end to simulate different water patterns.
I used a thick mixture over the rough areas of the water and made bumps in it with my angle shader brush. Where the water was calmer, I used a thin coat of the same gloss medium, but in smooth linear strokes. This effect was not visible face on, (and it's not easy to see in the photo) but it looks neat on the wall where the painting catches the light. Read the rest of this post...
Dinosaurs!
I am embarking on a very exciting new project, a painting for my cousin Andrew. My assignment was to paint some dinosaurs of the Jurassic era. Since I don't know very much about dinosaurs, I did a lot of research and decided to paint a group of Diplodocus grazing in a fern prairie at the edge of a forest. I am a big botany enthusiast and I wanted to try something with a lot of exotic vegetation. I am trying to resist the temptation to make the painting cluttered with too many species, I want to keep it clean and focused.
This painting will be a challenge because I'm used to working with photos, and naturally there are no photos of the Diplodocus. I have read about these dinosaurs and looked at many other artist's depictions, based on skeletal remains. Here's my rough sketch:
Three Glacier Series Paintings
Read the rest of this post...Day/Night Glow Landscape
I've been experimenting with a new type of paint over the last week because I wanted to try creating a landscape scene that changed from day to night. One of my favorite parts of going backpacking is getting out of the city and sleeping under the stars.
This is an idea I have reworked several times in the past, but I was always disappointed with the result because of the old glow paint, which didn't glow for very long and came only in lime green. The new generation of glow pigments are brighter and longer-lasting than the traditional glow-in-the-dark paints. Best of all, they come in many colors and are available as pure powder pigment, so you can mix them with your favorite kind of paint or gel medium. You can buy phosphorescent pigment through online specialty shops such as Ready Set Glo.
Half Dome Painting Show
Here's the exhibit wall:
There are eleven paintings on display in total. If you're in the area, go check it out and let me know what you think.
Here's the other painting I entered in the Lay of the Land juried show, the legendary Half Dome, in the Yosemite Valley of California:
Read the rest of this post...Arch Rock and the Berkeley Show
This is one of the two paintings I submitted to Lay of the Land:
It's a rock formation called Arch Rock, located on Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur, California. I tried to make it look like the tide was going out instead of coming in, by making the sand closest to the waves appear wet and a bit reflective. Read the rest of this post...
New Glacier Series Painting
This one is called "Wander"and it is part of my northern-inspired glacier series. It is one of the biggest paintings I've ever done, at 30" x 40." I had to paint most of it sideways because it wouldn't fit on my easel in vertical format. It's quite imposing in a small room. For parts where it had to be right side up for me to see what I was doing, I put it on the mantle in the living room, but then I couldn't reach the upper half of the painting this way. For the upper half, I put it on the floor leaning against a wall and sat on the floor to paint.
For the areas around the moon, I used interference blue, which is a semi-iridescent color that looks clear on white and pale blue on dark colors. I am thinking about touching up the woods area a bit but I kind of like the way it looks rough.
Brush Techniques for Grass and Trees
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Three Labs, Finished
This photo looks a lot like a place where I lived when I was very little. Our family had a black lab named Peggy then and I wonder sometimes if I paint all black labs to look like her without meaning to.
The finished painting:
It's quite a large portrait (24" x 36") so here's a detail of the black labs' faces:
I had a good time with this portrait. I really like the way the lines of the landscape naturally draw attention to the dogs in the foreground. Read the rest of this post...
Three Labs Portrait, Background
Before starting the background, I painted over the labs with masking medium, to protect my original painting. I like to use masking medium so I can paint right up to the edges without too much fiddling.
I painted in the grassy area with a thin wash of Green Gold and Sap Green Hue. I deliberately left some texture so it wouldn't look too flat. I painted the mountains with a mix of Titanium White, Dioxazine Purple, Carbon Black and Burnt Umber, adding shading with Payne's Grey.
The next phase is the time-consuming task of adding the individual trees and grass texture. To do this efficiently, I used several different brushes, in different sizes, to make the individual marks. I mixed several different shades of green and alternated strokes in different areas to show depth. I put in the texture of the grass and flowers in the foreground using a fan brush. I painted grass over the dogs' feet, and put in some flower detail against their coats.
I painted in a thin glaze of Nickel Azo Yellow and over the grass to warm up the painting a bit. Read the rest of this post...
Plein Air Painting in Glen Aulin
This is a watercolor painting I did while backpacking in Yosemite last weekend:
Hot Press vs. Cold Press Paper
These two paintings were both painted in watercolor. The first painting is of the Peace River in Alberta, Canada:
Transparency
This is a commissioned painting I finished last week of Loyalsock Creek in Pennsylvania. This was a very difficult painting and I've posted it because I learned some useful layering tricks.
Fireflies in Watercolor
This is a watercolor painting I did from a childhood memory of fireflies in the woods behind my mother's farm in Ontario. I did a post on masking medium and a post on masking tape a little while ago, two of my very favorite techniques. Unlike with acrylic paint, in watercolor you have to leave blank, unpainted spots in the paper to show white areas. This requires a lot more planning.
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