Marks that match the mood of the room

My studio shares a space with the only tv in the house. I’ve been trying to remove myself from the excitement of those last few Olympic finals that Canada was in by painting some flowers that I have on my drawing table. But the mood in the room was not conducive to painting anything delicate. I finally gave up and grabbed a big fat clutch pencil holder and a Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook. Scribbling in the booking instead of watching the games was very calming. I filled six spreads with pencil drawings. Here are a few of them.

When Alice moved, I just started again. She moves a lot right after a walk but then settles down into one position.

As I drew, I think my drawings improved a little bit.

My favourite is the last one. She was calmer and so was I. I think this one was the most successful in capturing the weight of her on her big Ikea cushion.

Green house on Main

I can’t bear the stress in the house when Olympic hockey is on. This morning I escaped to the glass bubble of my car studio and painted in silence. It was unusually quiet on Main Road in Hudson. I suspect other tv sets were on in the vicinity.

The viewpoint that I chose features a curve in the road, a bit like the one I’ve painted often in Pointe Claire Village. Like yesterday’s sketch, I used another limited palette from my Schink swatch sheet. This time it was Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Red and Ultramarine. I love the soft tones and warm browns that you get from this triad — perfect for winter scenes on overcast days. As for the hockey game, it worked out well for Canada so I guess I will be out painting again on Sunday.

Colour experiments

I love trying out pigment mixes, and this month is perfect for that. The warmth of my studio is a great alternative to my cold car during this very long winter.

If you read the most recent issue of my newsletter The Wheelbarrow, you may have seen my short blurb about Christopher Schink’s book Mastering Colour and Design in Watercolor. I’ve been experimenting with some of the pigments that Schink uses. My first exercise was to search through my paint drawers and find the same (or similar) pigments, and create some swatches. Although some of my paint tubes are very old, I managed to squeeze out enough pigment for my experiments. I divided them into the same categories as he does in the book: transparent non-staining, opaque and staining.

From this list, you’ll find some pigments that I use frequently, but I never use Indian Red (too opaque!), Phthalo Blue (too staining!), nor do I use Cadmium yellow or orange, nor Winsor red or yellow.

With the little blobs of remaining colour on my palette, I decided to sketch the supplies on my table. I used primarily transparent staining colours for this: Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Phthalo Blue and Winsor Yellow. Using a triad of pigments allowed me to get to know them really well. I love the vibrant shadow colour that I mixed from Phthalo Blue and Alizarin, as well as the rich grey that came from adding some yellow to the mix.

Winter is not over yet, which means I still have time for lots more experimentation with staining, transparent and opaque triads from Schink’s list.

Recent people drawings

I’ve been keeping up with a promise to myself to draw more people on location. I just discovered a few airport sketches from our trip to Arizona in January as well, so thought I’d share those as well.

I also did the quick one below in Tim Horton’s this morning. I seem to always pick sad sack looking men to draw.

These are both in my tiny Etchr hot press sketchbook, using my Preppy pen. It really has become a favourite pen for quick sketches. It glides beautifully over the smooth paper plus I like the very fine nib for putting in light crosshatching. I look forward to spring when everyone I draw is not wearing a puffy jacket.

Back to winter

I’m catching up on winter by painting in studio this week during yet another colder than cold snap. I’ve been collecting photos while out on walks in the woods with Alice, and I figured that this would be a good week to experiment.

Today’s limited palette includes Daniel Smith’s Lunar Blue — a blue/black very granulating pigment — along with Cobalt Blue, Burnt Sienna and Holbein Umber. I painted this one wet-in-wet because the damp paper allows me to layer the darks to create the depth in the woods. Painted on a quarter sheet of Saunders Waterford CP 140 lb paper.

Alice at work

Alice has three beds in the house, plus one big cushion in the basement for when she is watching tv. Each bed has a purpose. Today I drew her at work in the office. She also has a bed in the kitchen/dining room. She uses that one for digesting. Her third bed is next to my bed. She uses that one for sleeping because working and digesting are very tiring.

I haven’t drawn her in a while but there were some dog drawings in my inbox from the New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly. In her Substack today she shared some dog cartoons, in celebration of Westminster dog week.

The old homestead

I’ve spent the afternoon scanning sketches from my recent teaching trip in Tucson with Madeline Island School of the Arts. It was a jam-packed two weeks of sketching both on the Tanque Verde Ranch property and at various locations nearby.

Sketching at the old homestead is always a highlight for me, and I hope for my students too. The stone building is perched atop a hill, surrounded by the Rincon and Catalina mountains and bordered by Saguaro National Park and Coronado National Forest. If you’re lucky, the javelinas might drop by while you are sketching, and you will definitely see (or hear) a Gila woodpecker or two.

I’ve sketched the homestead many times from a shaded spot down the hill just next to the campfire. The logs are where the wranglers sit during the Thursday pancake breakfast, but we were there on Wednesday, so no wranglers, no pancakes and no campfire for us. The elements that I always try to include to give this a sense of place are: a big blue Arizona sky, distant purple mountains, tall saguaro, the black elbows of mesquite trees, a campfire pit surrounded by stumps, and a rocky foreground with some horse droppings. If I can get that all in, I am a happy girl.

With my second group of students, we found a different spot to sit (this time in the shade of the chuckwagon) and sketched with a limited palette of Cobalt Blue, Quinacridone Rose and Hansa Yellow. I love the gentle range of neutrals you can mix with this transparent triad. Perfect for the muted colours of the desert! I didn’t get to include the campfire from this angle, but I loved exaggerating the curves of the hilltop setting.

If you’re interested in joining me for a very fun week of sketching the saguaros, the ranch, the desert, the weathered carts and the wranglers, I’ll be back there next January. Tanque Verde Ranch is a very special place and MISA does a wonderful job of taking care of all of us. Here’s the info.

Tuesday morning at the hardware store

This scene caught my eye today: the back lot of the local hardware store on a busy morning. Trucks pulling in and out, dropping off loads of stuff or picking up orders; a tractor plowing the remnants of yesterday’s dump of snow; and some of the store workers loading up the blue dumpster. It was a busy scene full of all kinds of junk that I love to paint.

Fresh snow adds a lot to a complex scene like this. The layer of white helps to separate a series of dark surfaces like the wooden pallets and the piled tires. When I first saw the scene there was no one at the dumpster but as I snapped my reference photos, the two guys showed up. Lucky me.

I had planned to paint from my car but there were so many trucks crisscrossing in front of me that I decided to paint in studio. In the end, I’m glad I did because there were lots of small details in the scene that would have been hard to paint in the car. My surface was a quarter sheet of Saunders High White 140 lb paper, and I used a variety of blues and oranges to capture the muted winter light.

With lots of teaching trips ahead of me in 2026, I have been filling my palettes and taking stock of what I will bring with me. I just posted about it in my newsletter, and also updated my Art Materials page on my blog. Have a look here.