Summer Camp V

Virginia Falls, Nahanni National Park, NWT

Watercolour and Photoshop™

©2016 Charlene Brown

The Creative Content Camp Challenge V, to put together an Editorial Calendar, would have sounded like quite an undertaking before I started this on-line art blogging course, but has turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. Mine is simply going to be an annotated version of the Challenge II list of image ideas for the next six months, indicating which Challenge I category (or categories) each post fits into, expanded to include columns for other social media (in my case, just Pinterest and Facebook) and hyperlinks to other posts.

Virginia Falls is a computer-stylized haiga illustration of another 'found’ haiku about clean energy.

Re-living the Dream with better lighting

Opabin Plateau

Watercolour and crayon

©2016 Charlene Brown

When my daughters and I climbed to the Opabin Plateau in 2009, I sketched the surrounding mountains and plotted the locations on an interactive Google map of the area, These sketches reflected the weather that day (a little) more accurately than today’s painting.

I’ve put this painting, which has sunlight and shadows I found in other photos of the Opabin plateau, on my Pinterest board, Living the Dream, together with a photo of me starting the sketch. In that photo there is mysteriously little sunlight and shadow... (It had just stopped raining and everything, including my hair, is soaking wet.) I haven't actually explained that on the Pinterest board – which contains location paintings and photos of the artists painting (or at least starting) them on location – but I thought I would mention it here on my blog.

I need more Pinterest Followers!

West of Mount Washington

Watercolour and crayon

©2016 Charlene Brown

If you read my post last week about Creative Content Camp, the on-line art blogging course I’m taking, you’ll know I have a started a new Pinterest board called ‘Living the Dream’ about plein air painting.  I only have 2 followers – some people have hundreds!  I sure would appreciate it if you’d click here and then click the ‘Follow’ button which should show up in the upper right of my Pinterest board. I’m hoping to get up to at least 3 followers by the end of today.

This is the view of Strathcona Provincial Park from above the Mount Washington Alpine Resort. Mountains that can seen include the iconic Comox Glacier on the far left and Mount Albert Edward, named after Queen Victoria’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales who later became King Edward VII.  Mount Washington itself, unlike just about every other ‘Washington’ in North America, was not named after George Washington, but after Rear Admiral John Washington, official Hydrographer, British Royal Navy, while charting the west coast of the Colony of British Columbia, before it became part of  Canada. 

Summer Camp IV

Living the Dream in Durnstein, Austria

Pinterest pin (watercolour sketch + photo)

Charlene Brown

The Challenge at Creative Content Camp this week is to make 15 active connections on social media.  Easy for some, but my social media repertoire consists of:

·       a Facebook account where I follow a few friends as quietly as possible, commenting occasionally, but just about never initiating anything.
·       two Pinterest boards where I’ve been pinning only what’s sent to me (by some random interest-generator that has confused me with someone keen on DIY) and never creating pins.
·       a fear of LinkedIn
·       a dumb phone and no plans to upgrade, which rules out texting, Twitter and, I’m guessing, Instagram
·       an iPad I use only for reading magazines when I’m traveling
·       a Youtube Channel that I last updated about seven years ago with A Year in a Victorian Garden after which I decided computer-painted videos were way too much work.

.... so basically, tremendous potential for improvement!

Here is the beginning of one of my 15 ‘connection’ efforts – a new ‘proactive’ Pinterest board called 'Living the Dream.'   

Summer Camp III

Angkor Wat

Watercolour and crayon

Charlene Brown

After returning from Whistler last week, we headed up-island for the Canada Day weekend and I was AFK for the second live Q&A session of Creative Content Camp, but did get a start on CCC Challenge 2 (Brainstorming image ideas for the next six months, based on planned events, travel etc. – keeping in mind how they will fit into the categories defined in Challenge 1) and downloaded Lesson 3 only one day behind schedule.

One of the categories I defined in Challenge 1 was ‘Real and imaginary travel painting adventures’ and one of the image ideas I thought of in Challenge 2 was the locations I will find in the Virtual Paintout each month.  Full disclosure: this is not a ‘new’ idea – I have participated in almost 100 of these paintouts. The idea of writing a book in which the virtual adventures are combined with real ones is new. Trust me, finding a virtual location to paint on Google Streetview is sometimes quite an adventure. The Virtual Paintout is in Cambodia this month.  Here is a link to the Google Streetview I painted. (This one was actually pretty easy to find.)

CCC Challenge 3 is to develop 10 ideas for stories about our studios, and publish one of them.  My story is about my one-colour studio...

I do not in fact have a painting studio at home. I can prepare paper and draw and mask pictures, but almost all my painting is done at a seniors centre where there is a huge studio with a tile floor and big windows opening onto a patio, flower garden and forest. A family of fallow deer are frequent visitors, but this is a bad thing.  In fact here in Victoria, grazing deer are considered to be a threat to civilization as we know it, but I digress...

At home, the only surfaces in rooms suitable for painting are the kitchen table and the counter in the guest bathroom. Both these have just enough room for my painting board and one small saucer, and I like to work with a palette that is almost as big as a half-sheet painting.  I do have a couple of tiny little palettes with carefully rationed portions of maybe eight colours, but these are saved for painting hikes and other transportation challenges.  So I’m stuck with one saucer with one colour squeezed out on it. 

Oddly enough, this is not a bad thing.  I find that one colour is exactly what many paintings (Angkor Wat, for example) need when I get them home and look at them with ‘fresh eyes.’  And the one colour is usually purple.   

Summer Camp II

Audain Art Museum in Whistler

Watercolour and crayon

©2016 Charlene Brown

When Whistler Village was built, wide swaths of timber were cut to provide parking near the pedestrian-only lodge and lift base areas.  In contrast, the recently-opened Audain Art Museum is so well suited to its densely-forested setting that only one tree requiring a removal permit was cut to make way for the beautifully-designed building.

   
I returned to Victoria from the Vancouver/Whistler trip just in time to get a start on Creative Content Camp Challenge 1 (Mind-mapping content categories), and download Lesson 2. The Activities involved in Lesson 2 all relate to gathering pictures of yourself and your art and related locations and activities.  It was suggested that you take at least 10 pictures every day… Well, I’ve certainly got a head start on that!  Some days I take 10 pictures every 10 minutes.