Plein Air Painting

Painting out in the wild has it's own difficulty level. One thing is the perspective, and figuring out how much view to include in the canvas. That's why people make those little finger-thumb boxes to frame the shot. The other is that it's important not to have the canvas in the sun, as the colors are all off and will be very muddy once looking at the painting in normal light. I set up my easel under a big umbrella.

This is my first attempt at plein air painting up at the cottage.

In class 5 of us went out with Chui our teacher to a park, and painted this view:

First, a sketch on a scrap of paper. Looks easy, but getting the perspective is not that obvious.

Chui pointed out that the path was darker far away, and lighter towards us. Purple grey for the path, with almost pure orange and white for the sunlight shining on it. He told me to mix very yellow green on the hillside, as it was, with the sun shining on it. I was surprised at how yellow it was. He added the fluffy leaves, and then used light blue to make the sky come through the tree. And that bright blue in the water that is not in the sky is something my dad always said, that the water sees the sky first; i.e. the sky is darker in the water than it is looking at the actual sky.

Wakefield Bird Watching

At the end of May, these little sweeties fly over from Mexico. It is my belief that if you see a hummingbird, it means you're having a good day.

We heat 1/2 cup sugar in 1.5 cups water in a saucepan, cool, and then fill in this great feeder which I got at an expensive bird store, but then found out that they're cheap at Canadian Tire. Or any hardware store. Birds need their sugar.

These are wild turkeys, which we're seeing a lot. With all of the coyotes running around, I'm surprised that there are any of these left. 

This summer we had barn sparrows above the front door. Which seemed charming, until they made the welcome mat less welcoming.

Then they started kicking out the babies. First 3 were on the porch. Then two huddled together. Then finally this one little guy was left and he stayed exactly there on the porch all night. Our cat and dogs left him alone. His mother came down to feed him:

Great Grey Owl

Saw him in our back yard while skiing in March. We feed him chicken skin. We get about 100 chicks in the spring and grow them into chickens and they get sent off to be killed plucked gutted bagged and weighed. So there are lots in the freezers and I defrost one every week, and it's easy to have lots of loose skin with no plans for it. We just put it in a baggie and go skiing and then wing it into a tree branch and it just clings there. The next day it is gone, no tracks around. We then found some spare sheep kidneys and a heart in the freezer. The butcher sends back everything when we send our sheep. So anyway J decided to thaw that out, usually I barbecue it up for the dog but instead he wanted to sacrifice that to the owl as well. So we go out into the woods, and J spears the heart on a branch and then the two kidneys. It looked really weird. Anyway it freaked out the owl, because even he wouldn't touch it.

Still Life with Copper Pot

This is from still life class. Here is Chui setting up the composition and explaining it. 

He's saying that you have to find the darkest part of the composition, and compare that and use it as a reference for the rest of the light/dark, as well as the lightest part of the composition. He's also pointing out the warm vs. warmest colours  and that we should compare these to the colder. He says that we should use the apples as reference colour also; he notes that the coldest part of the composition is the inside of the spout of the copper pot, which is a cold Prussian blue-grey. He says "il faut faire les croquis;" we must work on our draughtsmanship,  drawing. To also compare relative size of the objects. The first night, we sketched out the still life with burnt sienna and solvent. Chui corrected each of our compositions  where needed. It was hard at first to figure out how to correctly fit everything into the canvas space. From a picture, it seems so obvious. Harder to do free-hand.

This photo was taken by Denise, it's the second night that we worked on these. Mine is second from the left. Chui kept telling me that my pottery pot needed more cadmium yellow. He has an amazingly accurate eye for colour  as did my dad. The top reflection of the pottery is light purple, which I really didn't see, with darker purple for the shadows on that pot. Underneath the copper pot's spout is crimson and blue, very dark which Chui mixed and applied and it made it more 3 dimensional.

And then the third night:I had a bad time with the drapery. Mine's second from the left. It's hard to get into doing it until the last night, because it is different every time we set up the objects. In fact everything moves around a little from session to session.

The reflection flare in the pot is a series of colors each mixed with white. Cadmium yellow and white, cadmium red with white, and orange with white, all very pure.There is a lot of ochre at the top, and violets in the reflections towards the left. The inside of the pot is very cold blue. A lot of crimson in the handle's reflection. The reflection of the apples is a lot of crimson and some blue as well.

1950's Time Capsule

Blue Lake cottage was  built and decorated in 1956 by Ally and Paul, my great aunt and uncle. It has had few (if no) updates since, like a 1950's time capsule.

It has glass all around, with these great fishermen's net curtains. The Noguchi paper lantern has always been there but the original fell apart, and has been replaced with an Ikea one.










I've recently seen the designer Marni copy the chairs. The furniture is mostly from the AKA store in Montreal, which my aunt co owned. My aunt kept it more or less this way, with the Finnish hand made rug hung on the wall. Check out the Calder-like mobile. The chess table top is propped in the corner. The beam was added to stop the roof from sagging.

Rearrangements have been made. My mom got the atom rug from a garage sale. Sadie is relaxing on the day bed.

The dining table and chairs, all AKA furniture. 

The kitchen, with its mini fridge that I loved as a child. I thought it was for me. Turquoise poodle curtains framing the window that looks out over the forest.

The table that Paul built just so that he could play chess on the balcony:

Ancient radio and 1950's Estonian dolls. The driftwood piece was a decoration my uncle Paul made.

Liivi's cottage is seen here, her father, the other AKA co owner, built their cottage back when all of the Estonians built up there and woud meet up on weekends and play bridge all night long.

The sauna, a good place for Porter shandies and gossip.

The pond, which my dad painted many times.

From the outside