Another road test

(click on image to enlarge)

Panorama from Dallas Road

Watercolour

©2015 Charlene Brown

This is the view looking south from Dallas Rd. as it passes Beacon Hill Park here in Victoria.  The photo I used was taken in April when Beacon Hill, and every other Garry Oak meadow on southern Vancouver Island, is bright blue with camus flowers… and the grass is still green. We are in the ‘rain shadow’ of those mountains you can see across the Strait on the Olympic peninsula of Washington State.  Our summers are pretty dry, and grass is only green from October to May.

The panorama format of my new watercolour book is working okay here in Canada… we’ll see how it goes in Japan. (I’m taking some small square sheets as well.)

I have scheduled a series of posts about my Haiku project to be published on this blog while I’m away, and will be back toward the end of November with paintings of Japan.

Road-testing art supplies

Panorama from Moraine Lake Road

Watercolour and crayon

©2015 Charlene Brown

In preparation for my up-coming trip to Japan, I was going through my travel painting supplies, and realized I needed a new Carnet de Voyage (Arches Aquarelle® travel book, containing 15 coil-bound 6 x 10 inch sheets of watercolour paper). I went to the shop where I purchased my last three Carnets and the Millennials in charge had never heard of them, so I settled for a Strathmore® travel book (12 coil-bound 6 x 12 inch sheets). I’ve used Strathmore small sheet paper before, and have no problem with the brand, but found their book to be alarmingly less expensive than Arches, for only slightly less paper... I wondered if the paper might buckle under a splashy wash, or if the surface might not take masking fluid (neither of which I use much while traveling, but you never know)... I also had my doubts about the panorama format.

What better place to road-test my new panorama-format book than on a road? As it happens there is a more panoramic view of the peaks along the continental divide from this point on the road to Moraine Lake than from the lake itself, in the world-famous Valley of the Ten Peaks.  

The book holds up just fine to lots of water and masking fluid too.

A memorable group shape

Boarders and Skiers at Lake Louise

Watercolour, ink and crayons

Charlene Brown (based on a photograph in the Globe & Mail)

The guidelines for adding figures to landscapes that I mentioned in my blog post about boarders and skiers at Park City, Utah  included the suggestion to look for connections between people in terms of relationships and body language and identify the big shape that is the group of people, rather than the shapes of individuals.

That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw this photo - the shape of the group.

The second thing I thought of was that when I was a kid learning to ski the then-new (and still regarded with awe) Banff Chairlift, if any of us had flopped into a chair like that, totally ignoring the safety bar and footplate, we’d have been sent packing back to the rope-tow.

Virtual Paintout in the Philippines

The Jones Bridge, Manilla

Watercolour and crayon

Charlene Brown

The Virtual Paintout is in the Philippines this month.  I looked for a ‘populated’ streetview again, and it was a lot easier to find groups of people out and about here than it was in Utah last month! Here is a link to this Streetview of the Jones Bridge in Manilla. 

And here is some interesting information I found on Wikipedia:

After floods damaged the original Puente de Espana on the Pasig River, construction of a replacement bridge was started in 1916 by the American Colonial government. It was named Jones Bridge after the principal author of the Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916. This ornate Neoclassical concrete arch bridge was bordered by pillars topped with a series of statues called La Madre Filipina. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by bombs during World War II.

After the war, the bridge was reconstructed by the American and Philippine governments under the Philippine Rehabilitation Act. The replacement span is relatively bare in design, but the three La Madre Filipina statues that had survived the bobing were preserved and moved to other locations in Manila.