Artistic license to operate a cable car

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Peak2Peak at Whistler

Watercolour, crayon and marker

©2014 Charlene Brown

The artistic license mentioned in the title refers to the fact that, although the P2P gondola spans the distance between Blackcomb and Whistler Mountains, you can’t actually see the towers, let alone the cable, from the spot the reference photo for this picture was taken on the other side of the valley.

I’ve included the Olympic Sliding Centre, just to the left of the centre of the painting. Not surprisingly, it can’t really be seen from that distance either.

I wrote about the Peak2Peak gondola back in 2009 (the title of the post was ‘72 days to go!’ referring to the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics held at Whistler). Here’s the picture I painted at the time – I used to paint more carefully.

      

Why should oil painters have all the fun?

Banff Springs Hotel
Watercolour, and crayon
©2014 Charlene Brown 

My first impression of red underpaintings was that they were something of a make-work project for artists working with oils or acrylics. But then I noticed that there are wonderful effects to be achieved by leaving just the right flashes of an underpainting exposed, and of course, I wanted to try one.

As this technique is not really open to watercolour painters, I decided to try something that might simulate the result… Starting by drawing the picture in a complementary-coloured wax (paint-resisting) crayon. Given the colours I planned to use to complete the painting, orange seemed like a better choice than red for the fake underpainting, and Banff Springs Hotel is the result.

Virtual Paintout in County Kerry, Ireland

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East of the Leahill Bog

Watercolour and crayon

©2014 Charlene Brown

The Virtual Paintout is in CountyKerry  this month. I found this lovely scene, looking east toward Bantry, very quickly after a short drive along a promising-looking stretch of coastline. Here is a link to it inGoogle Streetview. 

After adding a few people and dogs to the small group that was already there, I decided to put in some heather as well.  There wasn't really any heather that close to the water – it came from the Leahill Bog, which is inland a ways.

Another great day in the Gulf Islands

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Saturna Vineyard

Watercolour and crayon

©2014 Charlene Brown

The Associates of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, a fund raising group to which I belong, organizes several events throughout the year. These include an annual house tour, interior design lecture series, fashion shows, antique appraisals and auctions, and my favourite, the art travel program.

Our group has organized two to three week art tours to St. Petersburg, S.E. Asia and India & Sri Lanka, tours of up to a week’s duration to Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, New York and San Francisco, and day-trips or over-nighters closer to home to Vancouver, Seattle, all over Vancouver Island and throughout the Gulf Islands. Previously I have written about Campbell River, Quadra Island, Hornby Island, Denman Island, SaltSpring Island, and the west coast of Vancouver Island.

On most of these shorter excursions, many of the participants have visited the locations many times previously but enjoy our unique perspective and an inside look at artists’ studios. Saturna Island, however, being some distance off the main Victoria-Vancouver ferry route, was new to almost all of us.

Bridging the gulf of mutual ignorance II

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Multi-disciplinary bridges

Watercolour, marker and Photoshop™

©2014 Charlene Brown

My first post about bridging C.P. Snow’s ‘gulf of mutual ignorance’  included the introductory paragraphs of Chapter 5 of ‘The Fine Art of Physics.'  

Here is the Table of Contents listing for what is currently in the rest of that chapter.

(This could still change. The file containing the book is still labeled ‘First Draft.’)

Bridging the gulf of mutual ignorance         

Educational Institutions

• Interdisciplinary Programs
• Applied or Integrated arts and sciences

Private Sector Firms

• Internships/career assignment programs designed to reward breadth of experience
• Multi-disciplinary research and development teams
• Innovative organizational culture
• The next Leonardo

Individuals: Being the next Leonardo

• Education
• Interdisciplinary teams and work-study programs
• Tangential thinking capability
• Intuitive abilities
• Predicting the future of work