Lately I've come to admire the work of Rob Carey, an artist whom I stumbled upon through the Urban Sketchers web site. I love the free, yet detailed way that he captures a scene; first in ink, then adding even more information through watercolour. I've noticed that I can get too bogged down in detail in my sketches and paintings, and Rob's work (particularly his sketches of architecture) has given me inspiration to focus only on details that are most essential.
I've included my first attempt at a looser, freer style below.

Here's another brief sampling of flowers from Mary's garden... Wee!

On the weekend we went to brunch at our friend Mary's house. Among her other many and varied talents, Mary is an exceptional and passionate gardener. I took lots of photos of various plants in her garden to use as reference for future work, and over the past couple of days I've been enjoying flipping through them. Thank you Mary for providing me with such an abundance of artistic inspiration!

We spent an afternoon in Fish Creek Park on Friday, enjoying the sun and taking pictures. I sat by the roadside and tried to capture a sunlit meadow as quickly and loosely as possible. Although this was definitely a quicker painting than my other plein air work, it still took over an hour. My ongoing challenge is to paint in a much more fluid, free way, but I still have a long way to go!

It was Jim's birthday yesterday, and to celebrate we went on a Captain's Cruise on the Glenmore Reservoir - a two-hour cruise on the S.S. Moyie paddlewheeler. The best part of the boat ride proved to be the spectacularly dramatic weather we experienced - from sunshine to ominous cloud to hail and rain and thunder, to sunshine again. Mother Nature certainly put on a show for Jim! He and I braved the elements out on deck and got some great photos in return.
We began the cruise bathed in warm sunshine, then noticed the clouds gathering in the north:

And then all heck broke loose - rain, hail the size of large marbles, and lots of wind:


The whole storm lasted no more than fifteen minutes, and we were rewarded with a rainbow and some truly impressive clouds called Mammatus clouds. I've never seen cloud formations quite like it:


Finally, the clouds blew over and we saw the sun again, just as it was setting on the horizon. Just as we were docking they played the Canadian version of Taps, called Sunset - so appropriate!

A sketchbook offering today, as I am busy working on a couple of commissions.
Sepia, black and white conté on brown packing paper.

I was asked to make a birthday card for my aunt who is turning 91 this year. I've been wanting to use some of our Edinburgh vacation photos as painting reference, so for this card I used a photo from the Royal Botanic Garden. My favourite part of this piece was working wet into wet with very intense colour.
This painting is 14 x 9cm, and will be incorporated into a larger card.

The best thing about plein air painting is going somewhere new to work on location. Yesterday it was the Glenmore reservoir - a familiar place, but one I've never painted before. I sat on the big rocks just up the hill from the boat club and painted boats coming into and leaving the docks. The biggest challenge was getting down my initial sketch quickly, before the subject matter sailed away!

I've discovered just how challenging it is to paint a violet pansy in watercolour. The subtle way that sunlight illuminates the petals, the near-black of the petals in shadow, and the velvety texture of the flower are all so very difficult to capture. Certainly not impossible, but man, I had a hard time of it this afternoon! This is by no means the best work I've done, but here it is anyway. Onward!

This watercolour study was an attempt to try and keep some of the white of the paper, to use complimentary colours for visual punch, and to not fuss too much! I'm still working quite small, this time in a 14 x 9cm watercolour field book.