Year-end Review

The Garden at Government House, Victoria, BC

Watercolour sketch

©2009 Charlene Brown

Using this mid-October sketch as a starting point, I have computer-painted in both directions through all seasons and put the series together in a video that runs just over one minute. If you’d like to see it, click on A Year in a Victorian Garden

And speaking of Years… Here is a review of my first year blogging 1150 Words…

I originally named my blog ‘Weekly Painting Worth 1150 Words’ to commit myself to painting and writing regularly, and to keep my entries short – the reasoning being that the picture would be worth 1000 words and I’d only write 150 more. I hoped the brevity of the entries would increase the likelihood that my blog would actually get read – as well as the likelihood it would ever get written. And it worked!

1150 Words is for sharing ideas about watercolour, computer, and video painting, and that has worked beautifully as well! The ‘sharing,’ however, has been pretty one-sided. I’ve learned a great deal more from other people’s blogs, especially Katherine Tyrrell’s Making a Mark than I have been able to pass on.

In fact, the only post I can think of where I actually described a useful technique that was new (to me anyway) was about masking back-lighting effects on figures in a landscape viewed ‘almost directly into the sun.’

Another post I’m quite pleased with is about painting on the Opabin Plateau at Lake O’Hara in the Canadian Rockies.

Click on Opabin Plateau to see these sketches on an interactive Google map

Merry Christmas!

Christmas in Banff

Computer painting based on a webcam shot, used with the permission of Banff Gondola. The current picture on the live webcam can be seen by clicking on Banff right now

I’ll be away from my computer for a few days as we’re going to spend Christmas in Calgary and Banff – hoping for a Chinook, needless to say. Banff has been at least as cold as it looks in the picture above for about two weeks now!

I had a very pleasant surprise today when I discovered I’ve had the ‘Over the Top’ award passed on to me by Mary Paquet! Mary’s blog, Art Adventures really is an adventure, and a real treat to follow. Have a look – you’ll love it!

I started blogging on January 2, 2009, and I’m planning to be back in time for a year end review – Would love to hear from anyone who would care to comment, especially if you can tell me what you likedmost (or least) about 1150 Words, or if you had a favourite post...

Hope you all have a happy and safe holiday season

Virtual Paintout in Mexico City

Las Brujas at Liorna, Mexico City

Watercolour, crayon and marker

Charlene Brown

Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout is in Mexico City this month. It’s been surprisingly cold the last couple of weeks (just above freezing here in Victoria, and much worse in most of the rest of Canada) so such a lovely warm location makes the virtual paintout an even better idea than usual. I managed to stick with my plan to find a relatively simple street scene on Google Streetview this time, unlike my previous adventures in Halifax and Belfast both of which were a little crazy-making.

72 days to go!

From the Peak 2 Peak Gondola

Watercolour

©2009 Charlene Brown

This is the Overlord Glacier in Garibaldi Provincial Park, as seen looking SE from the new Peak 2 Peak gondola. The gondola cable car spans the valley between two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb. You can see live (updated every 15 minutes) webcam pictures of the two terminals at the Peak 2 Peak website. And if you happen to look at it just before 8am or just after 4pm Pacific Time you might catch a terrific sunrise or sunset this time of year.
With just 72 days to go, this is the last of my 2010 Olympic venue paintings, for a while anyway... I need to get to work on some other projects with even fewer days to go (Chistmas, for example).