Sunday, March 23, 2025

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2010


County Clare, Ireland

Rio de Janeiro from Estrada do Sumaré


Revueltas, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico


 
 Diamond Head Rd, Honolulu HI, USA

Looking south from GC-210, Canary Islands 


 
Lutsiveien, Stavanger, Norway


 
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA USA 



Albertacce, Corsica 

 

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2011


 The Bank of Eureka & the Savings Bank of Humboldt, Eureka, California, USA

Via Verdi in Talana, Sardinia


St Louis Cathedral from Decatur Street, New Orleans, LA USA


 
Koyukuk River crossing, Alaska, USA

North of Glenorchy, Otago, New Zealand  
 

Ave. de Verdun, Eze, Alpes-Maritimes, France


Table Mountain from Leeukloof Drive, Cape Town, South Africa

Sunday, March 9, 2025

Thermovoltaic systems


Lafarge Exshaw - the largest cement plant in Canada
watercolour and coloured pencil
©2025 Charlene Brown

Thermovoltaics is a technology that converts heat into electricity. Waste heat is everywhere. Globally, of the energy used to power the industries that the world needs such as cement and steel, approximately 60% is simply lost as waste heat. 

Industrial activities account for about one third of total energy consumption and urgently need to cut CO2 emissions.

In 2022, the energy intensity of the cement sector reached 100 kWh per tonne, with fossil fuels as the primary source of thermal energy. Globally, iron and steel manufacturing consumes 8% of total energy demand, contributing to 2.6 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) of CO2 emissions annually. 

Addressing the emissions from these industries and finding ways to capture and productively use the vast amounts of industrial waste heat are critical steps in the fight against climate change.


Sunday, March 2, 2025

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2012


 Lomnický štít, Tatranska Lomnica, Slovakia

Water Street, St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, Canada


Højbro Plads, Copenhagen, Denmark

Mahamakut Buddhist University, Chiang Mai, Thailand 



Breckenridge, Colorado, USA

  

Sunday, February 23, 2025

Favourite Google Streetview Virtual Paintout ‘locations’ from 2013


 Corner of Calle dello Spezier and Calle Fondamenta Megio, Venice, Italy


Þjóðvegur, Iceland 


Rua Jorge M. Reis Machado, Azores

Via Roma Destra Bridge, Lido di Jeloso, Italy



Gedimino prospektas, Vilnius, Lithuania


Prospect Hill, Douglas, Isle of Man



Friday, February 21, 2025

Second round of my AI painting adventure


Admitting Defeat - Photoshopped Hellebores
Charlene Brown 2025

At the end of my February 5 blog post, I promised to keep you posted on my ongoing attempts to improve my hellebore painting with AI Image generation software.

Using Adobe Firefly™ I started with the instruction:  purple hellebores about 10 inches high with light dusting of snow and evergreen forest background

Which yielded the above suggestions.  Without pointing out that if I’d wanted magenta hellebores I’d have said so, I continued the operation using only the first picture.  (or not, as it turned out)

I uploaded my original hellebore painting as a composition reference. Then I asked for some special effects  ̶  baroque, geometric, doodle and science fiction.  Here’s what I got instead.


They all seem to be edging toward the composition I requested… but have lost their forest backgrounds!  And their baroque, geometric, doodle and science fiction instructions.

Apparently I still have to ‘educate’ the Firefly AI using my language and my pictures.

Or I can admit defeat and just use Adobe Photoshop™ (see above).  I’ll try again, probably not with Firefly, and keep you posted.

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Favourite Google Streetviews from 2014


 Trädgårdsföreningen, Gothenburg, Sweden

Jinsha Township, Taiwan, ROC



Georges Pierhead, Liverpool, UK

Lake Jasna, Slovenia

Pershing Park, Washington, DC USA




Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Thawing Permafrost

Melting glaciers and thawing permafrost on Bylot Island NU
watercolour and crayon
©2025 Charlene Brown 

As the Arctic warms faster than any region on Earth, attention has largely been focused on the rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice. But major changes are also taking place on land, and one of the most striking is the thawing of vast swaths of permafrost, the frozen layer of soil underlying the Arctic tundra and taiga. 

This thawing compounds the effects of climate change by releasing vast amounts of GHGs.  It is already changing the Arctic landscape, causing landslides, draining lakes, altering vegetation and even beginning to shift animal and bird species habitats.  Ecosystem changes make it increasingly difficult for subsistence indigenous Inuit and Arctic animals to find food. 


Lakeside permafrost slumps  ̶  an increasingly frequent occurrence
watercolour and crayon
©2025 Charlene Brown

Permafrost slumps result when the ice in the permafrost melts and the soil collapses.  As slumping expands, parts of the landscape are being transformed into nothing but mud, silt, and peat.

Some areas in the Arctic appear to be emitting even more carbon than they are storing, worsening climate change impacts by increasing the frequency of extreme weather events and wildfires.