Monthly Archives: July 2014

Visiting Margaret

17 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Art, Flowers, Plein Air, Sketch, Urban City Scape, Watercolour

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Mary and I went to visit our friend Margaret today.  Margaret is the co-founder at the Windsor & Essex County Plein Air Society.  She and I founded the group back in 2009.   She’s been laid up with a broken leg for over 6 weeks, and we all miss her.

I first got the watercolours out after having them tucked away since fall.  The pot was sitting in the shade, and lack of sun made it difficult to give it depth.  I should have put a cast shadow in, but I forgot.  Oh well.  It was just a quick sketch.  You always see your mistakes once you photograph your work.  I don’t go back in and fix my plein air paintings in the studio.  Why?  Discipline.  My mistakes will glare at me and hopefully make me get out of bad habits.

I also brought along my vintage Sheaffer fountain pen to try out. Everything was going swimmingly, until I tried to add watercolour. OOOPS!! The ink was not waterproof. So… I rescued the sketch by washing the ink. It was fun. Need some waterproof ink though.  There is no one who sells it around here, so I will have to go online and have it shipped in.  That of course raises the price beyond reasonable.  *sigh*  … and people wonder why artists charge so much for their work.

Ambassador Bridge at McKee Park

14 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Art, Landscape, Oil painting, Plein Air, Urban City Scape

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Had a lovely sunny day on Monday July 14th.  I found some more 8″ x 8″ canvas’.  I’m really liking the small square format.  Unfortunately, McKee Park is over run with Canada Geese.  They are quite bold, and will hiss at you.  I shooed them away, but geese can be quite aggressive.  My brother was attacked by domestic Geese when he was in his teens.  They left huge blood blisters all over his legs.  I was trying to eat my sandwich and they had me surrounded!  While I was painting, quite a few people came down and fed them entire loaves of bread.  Bread is not good for them.  People… don’t feed the geese!  Not only does it make them un-afraid of humans, they make a mess of our parks with their poop.  Did you know that one goose can poop out 1.5 POUNDS a day??!!  Do you know what that’s doing to our parks, lakes and streams?  When you cry that you can’t go in swimming because the ecoli count is too high, look around, are there geese on the beach?  I swear the Canadian Geese and the racoons are going to take over the world!  (Thank you Jack Miner, Walt Disney, and the bleeding hearts of the world.)  McKee Park needs to change its name to Goose Poop Park.

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Kingsville Lakeside Park

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Art, Landscape, Oil, Oil painting, Plein Air

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It was difficult trying to get out last week.  Everyday the weather decided to do something new.  We ended up rescheduling our paint out from Monday to Thursday July 10th.   I headed out around 9 A.M. on a bright sunny day.  It’s an hour drive out to Kingsville, if you stop for coffee, and I MUST stop for coffee!  It was so sunny that I had to cover my left arm and face or I would have fried.  Looking ahead of me the scene was very different.  I was headed south to Lake Erie, and the clouds were dark, ominous and massive.  What to do?  It looked clear to the west, and that’s the direction the storms come from, so I continued.  I was also concerned that someone else might be headed out there too, as the leader I had to be there to greet them.

As I pulled into the parking lot at Lakeside park it was just sprinkling.  Maybe it would blow over?  Then it hit!  A deluge, I was thinking we may have to build an ark!  I started to text our members telling them it was a washout.  Most would be coming from the lovely sunny northern part of the county, so they, like me would be unaware of the storm.  One member, Wendy, was at the outskirts of town when the storm hit.  She had voice to text on her phone and told me it was not bad at the edge of town.  By the time she got to the lake it had blown over.  But the news she brought was a bit disconcerting.  She thought she saw a funnel cloud over the lake on her way to me.  Well, we found out later on the news she did indeed see a funnel cloud.  In fact there were several of them that touched down on the lake that morning.  They call them water spouts.  They pull the water up into the air and it can cause very bad flooding on land.  They are not as strong as a tornado, but can be dangerous to boaters.

We hunkered down in the park’s gazebo to paint just in case it started to rain again.