From Alison’s garden
Posted: July 1, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, coloured pencil, flowers, neocolor 12 CommentsHappy Canada Day! I usually choose some red flowers to paint on July 1, but this bouquet from Alison’s garden was just too beautiful to pass up. I can’t name everything that’s in here but it’s exactly the kind of arrangement I love — a little wild looking and different from every angle. Thank you for thinking of me, Alison.
Since I haven’t even unpacked my watercolours yet (lots of garden projects to catch up on at my house), I decided to work in water-soluble pencils. I drew on a sheet of HP paper with a green pencil and then filled in with both coloured pencils and NeoColor sticks from Caran D’Ache. At the end I touched the wet brush to a few areas but mostly it’s just pencil scribbles. And if I have time before the bouquet fades, I may just unpack my palette and try it in watercolour.
Vignettes from Megève
Posted: June 25, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized 20 CommentsThe dictionary app on my laptop gives me these definitions for a vignette:
vignette | vinˈyet |
Noun
1: a brief evocative description, account, or episode
2: a small illustration or portrait photograph which fades into its background without a definite border.
3: a small ornamental design filling a space in a book or carving, typically based on foliage.
I hope that the vignette pages in my sketchbook (in this case of Megève) are a combination of definitions 1 and 2. Yes, they are small illustrations (in some instances with definite borders) that cover the page, but, seen all together, my aim is for them to create a brief evocative description of a place.
Recently I spent two days with my students in the cobblestone medieval centre of this beautiful town in the French Alps. In winter this is a posh ski resort with an interesting history. But in the middle of June, it’s a sleepy village with lots of interesting details and corners to sketch. We set up in the shade in front of Saint Jean Baptiste Church, facing La Chapelle Sainte Anne and just a stone’s throw from the main square and all the narrow pedestrian lanes.
The chapel made its way into most of our sketchbooks in some form or another, either in full or in vignettes of its wonderful details, both inside and out.
A highlight for me was when one of my students spotted a hummingbird moth on the red Valerian. If you have never seen these before, look them up. Of course they move too fast to draw them, so I found a photo later and added it to my sketchbook, to mark the first time I had seen one of these.
If you look down the narrow streets of Megève you’ll often see a lush green backdrop of alpine meadows and hills. I also loved little details of chimneys, shutters, doorways, window boxes and signs that make this a real Savoyarde village.
As always, when I teach I rarely get to finish the vignette pages but I took lots of photos and hope to add a bit more lettering from signage soon.
A few from Geneva
Posted: June 22, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Geneva, sketchbook, Switzerland, watercolour 15 CommentsI am still unpacking art supplies from my recent teaching trip in the French Alps, but my sketchbook is sitting on my desk and I’ve dusted off my scanner to begin the process of scanning all the sketches from the two weeks.
These first two are from the only full day we had in Geneva before heading to our workshop location. Drawing is always a great way to knock the jet lag out of your head, and fortunately Geneva is a beautiful and sketchable city.
Place du Bourg-de-Four is a cobblestone square lined with restaurants and cafés, as well as some good benches for tired travellers. It’s also just steps from the Caran D’Ache store, if you are interested in really beautifully presented art supplies.
My friend Evelyn and I also attempted to capture the famous Jet d’Eau de Genève, that giant fountain that throws water 140 meters above Lake Geneva. It’s not an easy thing to sketch, especially in watercolour. I used a bit of Schminke masking fluid in a handy dispenser bottle that I had just bought on a whim earlier in the day, and it was pretty useful for creating a white line for the centre of the fountain. The final sketch falls into the category of “been there, sketched that”, but that’s ok. It’s a lovely spot to sit and watch the boats on the lake as evening sets in.
Lino’s lilacs and a few tips to help you get started
Posted: May 26, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized 18 CommentsI don’t have a lilac bush (yet) in my garden but my neighbour does. I think this is the perfect week for lilac blooms, so I asked permission to cut a few stalks so that I could sketch them. But I hadn’t sketched in over a week, and it’s always hard to get started after a break. Here are a few tips that help me when I am feeling a bit rusty. Maybe these can help you too.
1: I clean my workspace. If the surface of my drawing table is clean then my head is clear too and I’m ready for a fresh start.
2: My palettes are freshly filled and the mixing wells are clean AND my brushes are clean and organized. I try to do that when I finish a painting session so that I’m ready for the next time.
3: I have pre-cut sheets of paper. Since I buy full sheets of watercolour paper but work on 1/2 or 1/4 sheets, it really helps to have a pile of paper that I can just grab when I am ready to paint. I spent several hours on a recent rainy weekend cutting up paper. I had full sheets of Arches Rough and CP, Fabriano, Strathmore Gemini and Saunders Waterford in a drawer but now they are all cut, stacked and labelled in my print drawers. Ready for studio or outdoor work.
4: I set time aside at the beginning of the day. If I don’t do that, other chores take over. But if I plan on one hour that is just for me, I can usually get something done. And I have to admit that if I get an hour of painting in first, the chores that I do have to do (like weeding my garden) are so much less onerous.
Anyway, I hope you get a bit of time to paint today too! I’m off to weed now!!
A few days of summer
Posted: May 21, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: boat sketch, hahnemuhle book, Lintner palette, Pointe Claire Village, Pointe Claire Yacht Club 26 CommentsLast week we enjoyed some glorious days of summer. The thermometer went up into the twenties (in Celsius, of course) and stayed and stayed and stayed. This week we are back to spring in Montreal, but that’s ok because I enjoyed the foretaste of summer while it was here.
Fortunately those days coincided with a visit from a friend, and I was able to tour her around the city and stop at my favourite sketching spots. She’s a sketcher too, so we made the most of the blue skies and spectacular weather. One of our stops was in Pointe Claire Village, where we bought some sandwiches, had a picnic by the lake, and sketched the just-launched boats at the yacht club. We were sitting in the blazing sun (who wants to sit in the shade on the first hot day??) so I sketched very quickly, but it gave me a good chance to try out my new Lintner palette too.
You can see the palette below. It’s a pretty cool setup but I’ve only tried it once, so I can’t it give a full write-up until I’ve used it a few more times. In the meantime, I filled the 8 full-pan wells with a split triad (a warm and a cool of each of the primary colours) plus Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna. That seemed to work well for most of the sketch but I had to dip into my friend’s palette for a few dots of turquoise that I needed for the sail covers. What I can say about the palette is that I appreciate having the full size pans for the colours I use most often AND the palette has deep mixing areas which makes me very happy since I often use very juicy washes when I’m sketching in my A4 Hahnemuhle sketchbook. More to come on this!
A few in blue
Posted: May 9, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chania, Crete, flower pots, flowers, Greece, plein air watercolour, pots, watercolour 19 CommentsIf you read the last issue of my newsletter “The Wheelbarrow“, you’ve probably already seen this little blue wheelbarrow. It’s one that my husband spotted tucked away in a corner of the Botanical Park and Gardens of Crete. It was so perfectly rusty and of course so perfectly blue, that I had to sketch it and add it to my collection of wheelbarrow sketches. A few people asked what blue I used to paint this. It was definitely a Holbein pigment because during this trip I was testing out that brand in my two palettes, but it wasn’t one single colour. I likely used a combination of Turquoise, Horizon Blue and Cerulean Blue, mixed in with a little bit of Burnt Sienna, of course.
I was fascinated by the rows of potted plants that people place outside their doors in the narrow streets of Chania, and of course by the shadow patterns their shapes create. On many occasions I saw these pots, as well as many others, being lovingly tended by their owners. This particular road was not much wider than the width of one car, but I set up my stool against the opposite wall and managed to wedge my easel in there too. Not long after I started to paint, a white van pulled into that narrow space, totally blocking my view and almost knocking over my easel. I was ready to pack up my gear and finish my painting indoors when a woman emerged from a door next to me. I understand a few words of Greek but language was not necessary in this instance. I understood from her gestures that she was telling the driver to move his van so that I could paint. With smiles of appreciation and my best efcharistó to both the driver and the woman, I happily finished my painting and moved on.
Seven port views plus a lighthouse
Posted: May 7, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: boats, Chania, Crete, Greece, harbour, plein air painting, watercolour 43 CommentsSometime after my first week of touring in Crete, I gave up on posting remotely. I am just never satisfied with images that are photographed from my iPhone. I much prefer to scan paintings on my trusty Epson Perfection V600 scanner, clean the images up in Photoshop (bring the whites back to white, make sure the colour matches the original, etc.) and then post them. So here I am, one week after returning home, finally over the jet lag and back at my desk scanning paintings and sketches.
In all, I painted 8 views around the Old Venetian Port of Chania, Crete (mostly 16″ x 12″). I originally thought it was seven but then realized that my final painting of the lighthouse is really the entrance to the historic port so I added that to the count. There would have been a ninth view if it hadn’t rained on my last day. Forgive me if you have already seen a few of these but the colour is not accurate in the previous images so here they are again.
I could paint this port for a year or more and never get tired of it. If you look it up on Google maps you’ll see that it has several bays. The one on the western side is lined with shops and restaurants and it has a wide strolling promenade. The eastern side is where you’ll find the docks and the boats — little fishing boats, great white yachts and catamarans, speedboats that you can charter to take you to beaches inaccessible by car, and strangely, a mini red submarine that allows you to have an underwater view if you choose. You’ll also find the remaining Neoria there. These are the old Venetian shipyards with the peaked facades that you can see in the third painting below.
On the outer edges of the port there’s also a long, narrow seawall that takes you to the lighthouse. I painted in a shaded spot along that wall for several of these paintings. In all of these, I tried to convey a sense of architectural history (bits of the remaining Byzantine and Roman walls, the clay-roofed colourful Venetian buildings, the only remaining Ottoman mosque that forms the corner of the Western section of the port) as well as a sense of what the port is like at different times of day. I was there during the period around Easter when it’s quite crowded so I included lots of people, but I imagine that a place as beautiful as this is crowded well into the autumn.
It was wonderful to live a bit like a local for a few weeks in Chania — to set off in the morning with my palette and easel in my backpack, not knowing where in the port I would stop to paint. I don’t think I’ve ever had the luxury of so much painting time in any other place.
In the next post: the sketches from our frequent road trips to different villages in western Crete.
A good Friday for painting
Posted: April 18, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: boats, Chania, Crete, Greece, harbour scene, watercolours 8 CommentsEach day it has been getting a little warmer in Crete, which means that the snow on the White Mountains will soon be gone. I wanted to have those distant peaks in at least one of my paintings so today I walked out to the Old Sea Wall and painted in the shade of the St. Nicholas bastion. From that perfect spot, I had a view of the harbor and the constant stream of pedestrians enjoying the holiday here in Greece. I could just as easily have painted the bastion itself, from a spot on the promenade across the way, but that will be for another day. There’s no shortage of things to paint here. Painted this one on a pad of Arches CP paper, 16” x12”.
Kalimera
Posted: April 14, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chania, Crete, Greece, harbour scene, watercolours 14 CommentsIt was a good morning at the Old Venetian Harbor in Chania. The sun was hitting the buildings at just the right angle AND I found a shady spot with a clear view across the bay.
I love painting these types of scenes. Lots of complexity, obvious value contrasts and plenty of opportunity for calligraphic brushstrokes.
It’s the start of Easter week holidays in Greece. Whereas last week it was a little quiet in the old part of town, this week the restaurants are filling up, the narrow streets are crowded with people and everyone seems to be strolling along the harbour.
I painted this on a pad of Arches CP paper, 16” x 12”, and I can say with much certainly that I used almost every colour on my palette for this one.
A few from the island
Posted: April 12, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized 27 CommentsSorry for the delay in posting some new drawings here. We were getting ready for the long journey to Crete which became even longer because of a national strike in Greece (including air traffic controllers) that happened to be on the day we were supposed to land in Athens. We rescheduled our flights to arrive a day early but had to backtrack to Toronto first to get to Greece. Now that we are here, though, all of that is forgotten as we enjoy the sun and the endlessly beautiful views of the Old Venetian Harbour in Chania.
This is not a teaching trip. Just a good old holiday with lots of touring and exploring the island. From our rental apartment I can walk down to the harbour every day with my sketchbook and watercolours. My hope is that I can fill it my book with scenes from Chania, as well as surrounding villages. There’s a lot to see in Crete.
Today I started with a few warm-up sketches of the fishermen having a good gab on the dock. From that same spot I sketched a few of the floats and ropes on the side of one of their boats, and my final sketch on that page was of one of the many well-fed stray cats that hang around the harbour. I know the front paw looks like a chicken leg but that’s just my bad drawing. The cat is perfectly fine.
I sat in the shelter of a low wall, fighting the wind to get in another drawing, this time of the lighthouse at the entrance to the harbour. I have a feeling I will paint this many times from different vantage points around the harbour. It’s interesting from every angle, and there are always people on both the upper and lower walls to give it scale.
