Ah, to sleep in on a Monday morning after a full weekend.
Oh my gosh.
Does it ever get any better than this?
We even caught some sun on a 5 km stroll along the sea.
Life is good.
Now it is time to get back to work.
This week I must get my books and paper work to the accountant so the taxes can be done. While I am in town, Miss Prissy (my 1991 Ford F150 4X4 pick up) will be scheduled for a check up.
There are also some unrelated-to-art projects in a crucial stage that require my full attention.
So with this in mind, my intention for the week is to finish one small painting I started last week, do the underpaintings for a couple of tiny canvases and pick up some large canvases when I am in town. We shall see. Friday will tell the story.
Sprout question: What are you glad you set aside this week so you could play at life?
In a studying the shades of blue this painting of ONE has been the most demanding so far. It required the ability to work with four different blues to create the rich depth and reflections. I have little to say other than I am pleased with the results.
Palette for ONE
Beginning to work the underpainting
Working it a bit more.
Starting to get a feel for it.
Many hours later.
Making some minor corrections and time for a rest.
I came back to the painting the first thing the next day and finished it…. ta da!
ONE 24 X 36 inch cotton canvas original oil painting by Terrill Welch
This painting will be shown as part of solo summer exhibition opening at the end of June. If you are interested in purchasing in advance of the show please contact me directly via email at tawelch AT shaw DOT ca . The price of this work is $2,400 unframed.
UPDATE: Painting is now available in the ART OF DAY online gallery HERE.
Sprout question: What creative work is currently pushing you to the edges of your abilities?
NOTE: Last evening my original oil painting WHISPER sold to a couple in celebration of their wedding anniversary. I’m happy see it going to a most loving home.
We have been issued a wind warning by Environment Canada this evening: Sustained southerly winds of 70 to 100 km/h with peak gusts from 100 to 140 km/h will develop Wednesday morning. So if you don’t hear from me for a bit… it is only because the electricity is out.
I was going to post this painting on Friday along with another I painted this week. But the title of this painting is “Storm Coming.” I decided it would just have to be a Wednesday painting post. Seemed like a perfect day to share its progress.
Starting with the most yellow orange underpainting
I carefully selected a few colours. I’ve decided to capture my palettes for each painting and thought you might like to see.
Everyone has their own methods of organization.
I am not big on organizing my paints in a certain way. I think about what I am going to need and organize them in a manner I will use them.
For example, I am left handed and often work counter clockwise on my palette. Generally I work the whole canvas at once but this painting developed a little differently.
I chose my main brushes and palette knifes often having two brushes and a palette knife in my hands all at the same time.
STORM COMING 8 X 10 inch cotton canvas original oil painting is resting. It may be ready by Friday but maybe not.
Sprout question: What creative storm might be coming your way?
Seeing that it is the last day of February and it has been unusually cold with snow and wind and rain here on the southwest coast of Canada, maybe if we say “SPRING” all at the same time it will come true. What do you think? Shall we give it a try? Here is a photograph of a couple of tulips to help get us into the mood.
Ready? SPRING!…. Hum, let’s try again SPRING!!!! There! That should do it!
This week is a painting week. It is the first painting week in about a month. I have these two 8 X 10 inch canvas underpaintings ready to start working.
And this 24 X 36 inch canvas underpainting ready as well. I am about to begin what may possibly be a series of paintings in a study of blue using seascapes as my contextual reference.
You might ask why I am doing my underpaintings in lemon cadmium yellow and it is a fair question. First I am not fond of a white canvas. Second, I like to create layers of depth through hints of underpainting colours coming through. However, to work for blues, the underpainting must be well set. Otherwise it just becomes a muddy mess. It does seem take longer to complete a painting using underpaintings but I like the end results.
Note: I am likely going to work on these three paintings and begin at least two more this week. I do NOT anticipate having much for process images but we shall see. I provide this warning in advance so that you are not too disappointed on Friday.
Sprout question: Can you tell us about a creative series you want to do in the future?
Some weeks just seem to have a life of their own. I am going fess up first thing and let you know – not one print or painting was properly cataloged into my inventory. There. I have said.
What I did do was get an awesome chance to go “Hunting Waves” which, if you haven’t seen the photographs yet, you may enjoy. I picked up a couple of tubes of paint for my study of blues and two new brushes.
I took some shots at dusk that I am happy with. I fear they may too personal to have wide appeal but I thought I would share them with you anyway.
These images are the exact tone and feel I have been working to get through my new learning with Kat Sloma in her photography e-course “Finding Your Eye.” I wanted to capture just the right amount of light to feel the dusk and still be able to make out some of the detail. I wanted the viewer to feel that lull – the hush before darkness overtakes the day.
I didn’t paint this week but it was still amazingly creative.
Sprout question: What new learning did you apply to your creativity this week?
Best of the weekend to you! Oh, just in case you didn’t notice we went over 30,000 views here on Creative Potager. Thank you for the pleasure of your visits.
Every once in a long while, on the inside passage of the southwest coast, high winds and sunshine meet, bring in high waves to our sandstone shores. Yesterday was one of those ideal days. About 2:30 in the afternoon I went hunting for waves. Enjoy!
The warmth of the sandstone against the blue of the sea with the waves rolling in. I took another photograph.
My heart soared and sang to the rhythm of the sea. This is an image of Active Pass looking from Mayne Island to Galiano Island at the lighthouse.
But it is this next image I went hunting for. It happened early on in my shoot. As you know, Reef Bay is incredible most days. I crossed my fingers that it would be even more so today. The tides are low. Long stretches of the reef are bare. I need to leave shore to get the shot I want. I walk out on the reef with waves thundering beside me. It was safe but loud when the breakers hit. My heart pounds.
Caught in the arms of the blue sea I am swept across the shoreline – stepping, reaching, giving….
I have an idea for a series of smaller paintings exploring the many shades of the blue sea. These two images keep coming to mind but there are others.
However, my intention this week is to take care of art business. There are new phtography prints and paintings to inventory, a new portfolio page to develop and such things. I may start on some new paintings but that is not my intention. We shall see. Friday’s post will tell the story.
Sprout question: How do you keep your balance when the creativity waters are running fast?
Announcement: Creative Potager host, Terrill Welch, has a new venue displaying her photography in collaboration with fellow photographer Barbara McIntyre at the Green House Restaurant on Mayne Island.
We are very excited. Our shows of Gulf Island framed prints and canvas prints photography will change every one to two months. Please drop in if you are in our neighbourhood. You can’t miss it. The Green House Restaurant is on the right hand side just before you crest the last rise into Miner’s Bay.
The menu is diverse and delicious. In winter, there is all the cozy charm of home. You might even find me sitting at the closest table to the small fireplace sipping a glass of wine waiting for my dinner to be served.
In summer there are large decks that catch the late afternoon and evening sun. This is a great place to enjoy a quiet meal or visit with friends and take a long deep breath of Mayne Island relaxation. Make sure you slip inside to see what new we have on show.
Gerry always has a smile for you.
Owners Doug and Gerry decided to call the new restaurant the “Green House” because it was once the site of several green houses operated by the Japanese family before the Second World War. The house dates from about 1910, builder unknown. Kumazo Nagata bought it in 1921, and enlarged it in 1937. [Source: Ovanin, Thomas K. Island Heritage Buildings. Islands Trust, c. 1980.]
We are thrilled to have our photography on show in this historic building.
Of course for those readers from far away, you don’t have to come all the way to Mayne Island to view and purchase our photography.
Barbara McIntyre has a new redbubble account so feel free to drop on over and have a look there as well.
As many of you know, my work can be foundhere on redbubblewhere this new image “Shades of Blue” is available.
So glad you stopped in. Come on back anytime.
Sprout question: Where is your creativity showing this week?
First, my intention for this week is to brush my way into an oil painting using one of my charcoal figure sketches as a guide. It will be difficult as I have only the one sketch to work with and I have a particular setting in mind that has been inspired from a passage from The Underpainter(1997) by Jane Urquhart. Regrettably, I am reluctant to share more than this with you at the moment. It is an image that is perfectly clear in my mind’s eye with shifting tones and composition every time the painting whispers for me to begin the process to stillness on canvas. I will honour last week’s principle of waiting to be invited… but act immediately when asked. This way, with luck, the image won’t slip away like mist in the afternoon sun.
Now, allow me to introduce the most extraordinary Street Photographer Vivian Maier with the most unusual passage into notoriety. Her work was discovered in 2007 by a 26 year old, real estate agent/entrepreneur/historian – John Maloof – after he purchased a box of her negatives at an auction for $400. According to this brief excerpt about Vivian Maier in Wikipedia:
In 1951, at 25 years old, Vivian Maier moved from France to New York, where she worked for some time in a sweatshop. She made her way to the Chicago area’s North Shore in 1956 and became a nanny on and off for about 40 years, staying with one family for 14 of them. She was, in the accounts of the families for whom she worked, very private, spending her days off walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs, most often with a Rolleiflex camera.
John Maloof, curator of Maier’s collection of photographs, summarizes the way the children she nannied would later describe her:
She was a Socialist, a Feminist, a movie critic, and a tell-it-like-it-is type of person. She learned English by going to theaters, which she loved. She wore a men’s jacket, men’s shoes and a large hat most of the time. She was constantly taking pictures, which she didn’t show anyone.
Between 1959 and 1960, Maier traveled to Los Angeles, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Egypt, Italy, and the American Southwest, taking pictures in each location. The trip was probably financed by the sale of a family farm in Alsace. For a brief period in the 1970s, Maier worked as a nanny for Phil Donahue’s children. As she got older, she collected more boxes of belongings, bringing them with her to each new post. At one employer’s house she stored 200 boxes of materials. Most were photographs or negatives, but Maier collected other objects, such as newspapers,and sometimes recorded audiotapes of conversations she had with the people she photographed.
Towards the end of her life, Maier may have been homeless for some time. She lived on Social Security checks and may have had another source of income, but the children she had taken care of in the early 1950s bought her an apartment and paid her bills. In 2008, she slipped on ice and hit her head. She did not fully recover and died in 2009 at the age of 83.
Do you remember when my post “Dramatic Seas” from the end of December 2010? Well, it is the inspiration for the third painting I have been working on and I have now finished.
The underpainting starts with something from my memory.
But I decided to print a photograph to loosely assist as I built up the vibrancy of Orange Sea. I boldly go with the oranges of orange and started working in some cloud and mountains in the distance.
Finally it begins to take shape.
The painting comes to rest still surging with movement.
I think I am done. I post it on redbubble. I look again. Darn!
I change the painting slightly but it is crucial to the overall work. I dislike it when I find something that needs editing only after viewing it when posted. But I have come to respect that it is a different part of my eye that sees the image once it is up – kind of like seeing your home through the eyes of your guests.
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