Virtual Paintout still in Greenland

(click on image to enlarge)

Playground at Aqqusinertaaq

Watercolour and CP

©2015 Charlene Brown

The Virtual Paintout is in Greenland for the month of March, and I have found it so fascinating that I've painted another Greenland picture and started on a third! It seems the place has captured the imagination of a lot of other artists, and there are a large number of entries.

I thought this northern-themed playground was wonderful.  You can see it yourself and drive around it on Google Streetview to check out the unique details in the play structures.

Draw me a mountain/Dessine-moi une montagne

(click on image to enlarge)

Climbing Mont Royal

Watercolour, crayon and CP

©2015 Charlene Brown

My South African artist friend, Cathy Gatland, told me about a call for on-line entries for an exhibition ‘Draw me a mountain/Dessine-moi une montagne’ a show of sketches created on-or-of Mont Royal in Montreal.

In my reply to her email, I mentioned that I loved the ‘splash-sketch-paint’ method she had used to draw people on a street lined with jacarandas, in the book People and Motion.

I added that I’d been trying to think of another subject that would be as well-suited to this lovely technique, given we have so few jacarandas here in Canada. Much later, I put the two thoughts together and it occurred to me that some pictures I took on the steps leading to the plateau on Mont Royal were perfect for a splash-sketch-painting.

I won’t be entering ‘Climbing Mont Royal’ in the show because it doesn't really fit the plein air/urban sketching theme of the exhibition. Not only is it based on those photos which were taken 30 years ago when my daughter was at McGill at the base of the mountain, but I added some buildings that weren't even built then. 

Twentieth Century Flashback

(click on image to enlarge)

Mt. Kenya

Watercolour monotype and Photoshop™

©1996 Charlene Brown

I decided I’d like to see this originally-vertical monotype in a square format, so I distorted the jpeg image in Photoshop. This is actually a little better representation of the shape of the mountain than it was before the Photoshopping. 

And it’s now quite similar to the outline of another mountain I painted three years ago Mt. Baker – not surprising, given they’re both volcanoes. The main difference is the Mt. Kenya is extinct and sports dozens of precipitous volcanic plugs, left when the rest of the mountain was eroded during two periods of glaciation. The much more recently-formed Mount Baker, still thermally active from time to time, is heavily glaciated and has a much more streamlined appearance.

Virtual Paintout in Greenland

(click on image to enlarge)

Kapisilinni Nuussuarmi

Watercolour and CP

Charlene Brown

The Virtual Paintout is in Greenland this month  – quite a change from last month’s location.

I'm guessing that in the history of intercontinental travel, nobody has ever taken  the direct route from Bangladesh to Greenland. Suddenly now, all the participants and followers of the Virtual Paintout  are making the trek! 

Here’s the link to the Google Streetview of the location I painted. 

I haven’t yet been to Greenland for real, but I did some painting in Pangnirtung and Auyuittuq National Park 25 years ago.  That part of Nunavut, in Canada, is about 700 km west of, and similarly paintable to, Kapisilinni Nuussuarmi.