Moraine Lake

The motivation for this one comes from a day trip to Canmore with the family. I was holding the baby like a football and walking while Di and the boys finished their hot chocolates. She wouldn't stop crying unless I got her away from her mom. She slept once I started walking, and my walking took me into a gallery. It was fascinating how the price of paintings depend mostly on their size. Di and the boys found us and started looking at the artworks too. Di expressed an interest in a big piece. We are so not in a position to buy a big piece of artwork right now.

When I got back to work in Ontario, I started wondering if I could do a big acrylic. My thing is usually watercolour. But a huge watercolour is beyond my competency. Acrylic materials are dirt cheap at Jysk. So I thought I'd give a little acrylic a try before getting a big canvas.

It's not like acrylic is super easy to get a good result. But there is the chance to paint right over mistakes. That's so not the case with watercolours where every brushstroke is permanent.

I added the grass because I thought it needed something in the foreground. But then I changed my mind after a few days. Also getting the perspective right on the canoe required more attention than it got initially.

I'm reasonably happy with this work as it is below. But something may start to annoy me as the grass did. Maybe it needs to be hung upside down or sideways for a few days too?

So producing a big work like Di wanted isn't totally out of the question. The challenge now is if I work on it in my free time in Ontario, how will I get it home to Calgary. Or if I work on it in Calgary, it would be taking precious time away from the family.

Perhaps putting an oversize piece on the flight home isn't as expensive as I imagine?

Family Canoe

This painting is one of the first attempts at a painting I made for my sister and her family. I'll ask my sister to take a snap of the painting i eventually gave them so you can compare this one and the final version.

This one has a higher viewpoint of the family in the canoe than i cared for. The lower viewpoint in the final version looked more like the perspective of the rear paddler in the canoe. I'm not completely satisfied with the cropping in the final version. But i was under a deadline, so i ran with it

The purpose of the painting was to create a family vision for my sister and her family. Bonnie and Troy adopted two little girls from Ghana. But the Canadian government was dragging their heels granting the girls visas. So the little girls and thus at least one of the adopting parents also had to wait in Africa for the visas to be granted. This painting was meant to be a reinforcing vision of the whole family together in Canada, in a canoe.

Update - Dec 19/08

Here is the version of the painting that i gave to the family. As you can see, it's certainly less abstract and the perspective is a little lower and the girls seem closer. Probably more like you'd see if you were actually in the canoe. It's funny the people look transparent and the water looks more opaque. It should probably be the other way around, seeing how water is usually pretty see through. I wish there was some slight difference between the inside sides of the canoe and the bottom of it. I wouldn't have cropped it so tightly if i could change that too. Oh well, live and learn.