Review of 2020: Be Kind. Be calm. Be safe

Christmas in Innsbruck
Watercolour and crayon
©2018 Charlene Brown

This painting was one of the illustrations in Chapter 3 of the YA novel I finished this year.

The title of this blog post, 'Be Kind. Be calm. Be safe' the daily message from our Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, seems to have gotten British Columbia through this unprecedented year in better shape than most.

And here’s what I painted and wrote about on my blog in 2020. 

·     Travel painting: I’ve continued to paint locations I’d planned to see, 

although most of this year’s plans are still on my bucket list.

·        I finished a YA novel about the career planning and launching years in the lives of girls in six generations of my family—in fact I finished Chapter 5, part of which takes place in 2020, several times, as schools and universities opened and closed. Hoping it will be published before the 'I Read Canadian' children’s and YA book promotion in February.

·        Compilation of Christmas letters from 1990: I added a few paintings to the photos already in these letters, before editing them and putting them all together. This turned out to be a much larger project than I thought it would be, but with 2020 being the kind of year it was, I also had lots more time available to do it.  I was able to complete 30 years worth of letters – 95 pages!

Sparking joy without Marie Kondo

White-browed tit-warbler, native to the Tian Shan Mountains
watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

Having trouble with your 2020 resolution to de-clutter with Marie Kondo?   There are other ways to spark joy—the thought that 2020 is almost over sparks quite a bit of joy...

Or, according to Nicholas Wilton’s video, playing with colour sparks joy.  He says that colour “is pure emotion, and a stand-in for you and your feelings.”  Instead of choosing the ‘right’ colour to perfect your art, he says that if you always choose colours that say YES, you will always produce your best, most exciting work.

I’ve been doing that for a while, usually adding as much purple as possible to my paintings. But that's not what happened here.  White-browed tit-warblers look pretty much the way I’ve painted this one!  Don't you think that just knowing they exist sparks joy?

I remember just a year ago, thinking the relatively straightforward yellow-browed warbler was pretty terrific! 

Charlene on Instagram

 

Synchronicity between our art and our lives

‘Urban’ background for a page in a graphic novel
Computer-altered watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

In the podcast I mentioned last week ‘Why trying to be good is killing your art,’ Nicholas Wilton suggests you list great painting experiences and techniques you have really enjoyed learning. 

Here is my short list:

1.      Helipainting in the Bugaboos with Canadian artists Robert Genn and LizWiltzen,  beginning a painting by placing ten basic shapes, which summarize the whole thing, leading to an abstract but recognizable landscape, possibly with telescoped perspective and rearranged components

2.      Abstract collage workshop with American artist Louise Cadillac  in the Greek Islands

And he says you should also think about the painting projects you are now working on about which you are most enthusiastic.

3.      writing and illustrating books

Because of what Nicholas Wilton calls the synchronicity between your art and your life, keeping these factors in mind will energize your work in the direction of whatever you truly want. It certainly works for him. So I'll give it a try - with an abstract graphic novel.

Painting is more fun than ever now

St. Lucia 1 and 2
Mixed media
©2020 Charlene Brown

American artist Nicholas Wilton, in a podcast ‘Why trying to be good is killing your art,’ suggests you stop worrying about getting a painting ‘right’ – he believes ‘your best art will always come from finding your own way.’

Painting is more fun if you focus on the process of getting where you want to go, rather than the actual outcome.

Given the importance of looking back to get where we want to go, what time, place, and method in your past reminds you of how much you love making art?

My answer is 1986 St. Lucia: the first of my favourite painting trips (actually a surprise Christmas gift).  A technique I had a lot of fun with there was scraping paint out to create designs on cocoa pods, so I included some scraping in these paintings.

 

Another mountain background for a graphic novel—or not

On the Trail to Lake Helen

Watercolour and crayon

©2020 Charlene Brown

If I use this for a background in any of the illustrations in my next graphic novel, I’m definitely going to have to move the action out of town.  I can’t put anything resembling a town in this pass on the north side of the Icefields Parkway just opposite the Crowfoot Glacier.

I’m going to be working on abstract paintings for the next little while, so I might just rethink this whole graphic novel illustration  plan. I tried googling ‘abstract comics’ and discovered they do exist. 

 

Paintings from the early days of this blog

Under cover of darkness, Lake Issyk-kul, graphic novel back/front cover illustration
Computer-altered watercolour
©2010 Charlene Brown

Arrival at Lake Issyk-kul, background illustration for Chapter 5 of graphic novel
Original watercolour, unaltered
©2010 Charlene Brown 

These paintings are from a graphic novel I wrote about ten years ago. You’ll see next week why I’m posting them now.

 

  

Except for a herd of Bighorns, we had the pass to ourselves…

Near the top of Piper Pass
Watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

I think I might use this and other non-abstracted paintings I posted earlier this month as backgrounds for drawings in a graphic novel I’ve started writing.  I used the paintings of mountains in Kyrgystan that I posted last week in the first graphic novel I wrote.

But there’s a problem.  Although a (fictional) Canadian mountain pass is involved in this new graphic novel, most of the action takes place in town.  It just wouldn’t be right to fit a town in beside Boom Lake or in the Ptarmigan Cirque or up Piper Pass, so I guess I’ll have to move some of the action out of town.

 

 

Five Years Ago

Switchback 26
Watercolour and crayon sketch
©2015 Charlene Brown

Our return to Tokyo via Lake Chuzenji at the top of the spectacular Kegon waterfall (three metres short of Niagara, 20 switchbacks up and 28 switchbacks down) was quite fantastic. This sketch shows the incredible number of switchbacks visible through the interwoven evergreen and brilliant red foliage on our descent through the precipitous mountain forest.

I participated recently in a podcast by American artist Nicholas Wilton, ‘Why trying to be ‘good’ is killing your art,’ and will be writing about it next month.   A point he made about ‘tracing an intuitive path, winding, and out of bounds if it seems appropriate’ to get around ‘blockades’ in your painting process, reminded me of the above blog post almost exactly five years ago. 

How different from today’s restricted adventures, when we seldom venture more than a kilometre from home!

 

Here’s a place I’ll never be…

Lake Louise from Mount Fairview
Watercolour and oil pastel
©2020 Charlene Brown 

This painting is based on pictures taken from the same almost inaccessible (in my opinion) mountaintop as the photos I used for my September 9 and October 7 blog post paintings.

In this view, the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise can be seen on the right at the north end of the lake.  In the upper right, the Icefields Parkway snakes off to the northwest.

A secret lake even Google hasn’t heard of

On Pocaterra Ridge

Watercolour and oil pastel
©2020 Charlene Brown

I sometimes research National or Provincial Park websites and the many sporty blogs available to find info and comments about the mountains in the pictures my daughter sends me. With no intention of ever attempting most of the climbs they do, entries such as the following, about Pocaterra Ridge don’t scare me a bit:

·         A really challenging climb, the descent is ever harder than the climb up. Take poles and microspikes.

·         There are four summits to climb along the ridge, with the first one being by far the hardest from the aerobic standpoint. Once on top you can see the best route very clearly—which couldn’t have been a happy moment for the next commenter...

·         When we finally made it to the top, we discovered it was just the first of four summits, and the path went down and then up forever.

Everyone, depending on the time of year, raved about either the carpets of wildflowers or the dazzling fall colours of the larch.

Maybe next year...

Boom Lake
Watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

This is another place my daughter and her family have been this summer, and unlike most of their hikes, this is one I hope to do myself, sometime when we’re getting out and about more.

The mountains in the Continental Divide in the background of this painting were identified in a hikers’ guide as Boom Mountain (Alberta), Chimney Peak (British Columbia) and Mount Quadra (British Columbia).  

Curious to see if Mount Quadra was named after Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, like a lot of places here on the west coast (in the 1700s Vancouver Island was originally named Quadra’s and Vancouver’s Island) I checked it out. Apparently it was mistakenly thought to have been named after him but was actually named Quadra in 1910 because it has four peaks.  

The four peaks are not obvious in the Boom Lake view, but from Consolation Lake, it looks like my painting on the right.

I was always under the impression that mountain was named Bident.  Turns out only the peak on the left (in the centre of the painting) is Bident, and it’s in Alberta.  Who knew?

 

High alpine cirque reached with minimal effort

  Ptarmigan cirque

Watercolour and crayon

©2020 Charlene Brown

I decided to paint the cirque I mentioned in my September 16 blog post.  I Googled Ptarmigan Cirque and one of the comments about it on a hiking website, “Excellent for kids!” reminded me of what I’d said about another comment a few years ago. 

I decided to use that post again, including the title, High Alpine cirque reached with minimal effort:

I found the ‘minimal effort’ comment on a Kananaskis Country website, probably written by one of those sporty Boomers I’ve had problems with before.  He (or she, but probably he) was referring to the already high road access… The Ptarmigan Cirque trailhead is at an elevation of 2206 m on the Highwood Pass, the highest drivable mountain pass in Canada. I’ve only climbed up to the Ptarmigan Cirque once, and I don’t recall the effort being particularly minimal.

 

 

Remembering 2019

Click on image to enlarge

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of four watercolour paintings of Newfoundland, Puffins at Witless Bay, Brigus, L’Anse aux Meadows, and Cape Spear.

Abstracting in the fourth dimension

Mount Temple from timberline on Mount Fairview

Watercolour and oil pastel

©2020 Charlene Brown

The photo I used for this painting was taken near the same spot as the ones I used for the painting of Victoria Glacier that I wrote about on September 9.

My daughter’s family climbed up there in July, almost a month before the first heavy snowfall and two months before the larch trees that border the timberline had even started to turn orange. The space-time continuum is just one more factor to be abstracted in a painting.

    

Remembering 2018

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour painting of the Ink Pots above Johnston Canyon in Banff National Park.

The most spectacular route to Lake Oesa

Lake O’Hara and the Opabin Plateau from the Wiwaxy Gap Trail

Watercolour and oil pastel

©2020 Charlene Brown

Having mentioned that my daughter was sort of confined to Alberta this summer, I should admit that the Wiwaxy Gap trail is in British Columbia, just barely—about 2 km southwest of Victoria Glacier, which is in Alberta.  But it’s okay because the pictures I used to paint it were taken last year.

In fact, Lake O'Hara is much less accessible to everybody this year.  Parks Canada is not operating the Lake O'Hara shuttle from the TransCanada Highway and an 11-kilometre hike is the only way in.

Remembering 2017

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of three sketches of Iran – the Takhte e Soleyman fortress in the Alborz Mountains, the Soltaniyeh Dome at Zanjan, and Naqsh-e Jehan Square in Isfahan as well as a watercolour painting of Connemara in Ireland.

‘Moderate’ Day Hike that would probably take me three days

Headwall Lake #1 above the Smith-Dorrien Trail
Watercolour and oil pastel
©2020 Charlene Brown

I’ve never climbed to this stunning little lake and I don’t think I ever will. Although the trail is said to be one of the ‘best day hikes in Kananaskis,’  it’s a steep 16k up and back, and before you even get to the trailhead you have to drive more than 40k on the unpaved Smith-Dorrien Trail.  

All very spectacular of course, but I’m quite happy to just keep abstracting the pictures my daughter sends me of the places they get to.

Remembering 2016

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour painting of the Aerial Tramway in Palm Springs, California.

Recognizable Landscape Abstracts

On Pocaterra Ridge above Highway 40
Watercolour and oil pastel
©2020 Charlene Brown

As I’m a little short of recent mountain photographs of my own, I am using photographs sent by my daughter as references for a series of ‘recognizable’ landscapes.

Although I have climbed to Ptarmigan Cirque on the other side of the Highwood Pass (just east of Elbow Lake which can be seen across the highway in this painting) I have never been on Pocaterra Ridge, so I was unconstrained by any personal recognition of this view while putting together this 'recognizable' abstract.

 

The Rewriting of 2020

Montreal January 2021
Computer-altered mixed media
©2020 Charlene Brown

In December 2019 I received a manuscript evaluation of the first draft of my book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, and began making some of the changes they suggested.

The book is about the years in the lives of girls in six generations of my family when they finish school and decide what to do next.  The first four stories, about my grandmother, my mother, myself, and my daughter, hadn’t changed since that first draft.

But the fifth story is about my partly-fictional granddaughter, Fiona, during the years she finishes school and goes on to university.  2020, the year she graduates from high school, unfolded smoothly in that first draft. It was the most exciting year in Fiona’s life.  And then 2020 actually happened. 

In March, when I sent the second draft to the editors, I made some references to COVID-19. But the narrative in that story still jumped directly from a December 2019 high school dance in Edmonton to Fiona’s arrival at McGill University in Montreal in September 2020.  And the illustration I had asked to have inserted was this one:

Montreal September 2020
Watercolour, crayon and marker
©2015 Charlene Brown

The book has been back and forth to the publisher a few times since then.  I have made many additions to the fifth story, as 2020 literally fell apart.  Fiona’s arrival at McGill University has been delayed until January 2021—hence the picture at the beginning of this blog post.

I am still hoping to have the book available in time for Christmas, so I’m just going to guess what happens for the rest of the year and get it into the production process as quickly as possible.

 

Painting something that’s been painted a million times before -- from a new angle

 Victoria Glacier from Mount Fairview

Watercolour and oil pastel

©2020 Charlene Brown

We’ve all been doing a lot less travelling this year, and I’m fresh out of recent location sketches or photos of my own to use as references for painting landscapes.

Fortunately, one of our daughters and her family have been similarly encouraged to stay in one province and have ventured out (and up) to places in Alberta even they had never set foot on before, and they’ve sent lots of pictures.

This painting is an abstracted version of the view of much-photographed and painted Victoria Glacier from the top of Mount Fairview. 

Remembering 2015

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of three watercolour sketches from an art tour of Japan - Shirakawa, Descent from Lake Chuzenji, and the Golden Temple, and a watercolour painting, Christmas in Balboa Park.

Is Spring Break over yet?

A year like no others

Watercolour and crayon diptych
©2020 Charlene Brown

These paintings, based on photographs of one of my real granddaughters, illustrate some scenes from the story of my partly fictional granddaughter in my soon-to-be-published book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years. 

The paintings won’t appear in the book, but will be in “Re-writing in Real Time” an article I am writing for Medium Publications.  The article is about all the changes that I have made in the book during the last few months, because of the shutdowns and cancellations required to control the pandemic.

Remembering 2014

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour sketch of Samuil’s Fort on Lake Ohrid near the Macedonia/Albania border.

Rewriting in real time

 Bankhead 2002, Watercolour and crayon, ©2020 Charlene Brown

I have rewritten the collection of short stories, The Starting Out Years, about six generations of girls in my family, many times since COVID-19 hit.

The main character in the fifth story is my (partly fictional) granddaughter, Fiona, born in 2002 and introduced in a blog post on July 2   She finishes high school and goes on to McGill University in 2020 — a fairly smooth transition when I completed the first draft last year.  Because of the pandemic school shutdowns, I’ve been re-writing this story in real time throughout the spring and summer.

The fact is that none of my grandchildren was born in 2002.  This storyline complication was entirely self-inflicted by my whimsical idea to work the Chinese zodiac into a subplot running through the short stories.   I was born in 1942, the year my grandmother turned 60, and I had read somewhere that horoscopes based on the Chinese Zodiac attach great significance to connections between a grandparent and a child born in the year that grandparent turns sixty. The two are said to have similar character traits, capabilities and life fortunes.

The above painting shows one of the things that actually happened in 2002.  It is based on a picture taken during a weekend in and around Banff when my daughters and I celebrated my 60^th birthday that year.

I’ve rewritten the sixth story almost as often.  It is set in 2042 when my (really fictional) great-granddaughter and her friends are in their starting out years, reflecting on the weird situation their parents found themselves in, back in 2020.

 

Remembering 2013

Click on image to enlarge

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour sketch of the enclosed part of Monet’s Garden at Giverny in France, and a painting of the view of La Défense from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. 

The Self Portrait Competition

Heli-painting in the Bugaboos

Watercolour and crayon

©2020 Charlene Brown

A call for online entries to an Artist & Selfie Painting Competition included an ‘Artists en Plein air’ category so I decided to enter a painting based on a photo of me taken on the heli-painting trip I mentioned in a blog post a coupleof days ago.

There was no requirement to mount, frame with glass covering, pack and ship the painting, and the entry fee was only USD 37. That ended up being CAD 50.78, which had risen to CAD 51.06 by the time it was posted on my Visa bill, but still… not having to ship the thing, usually a big problem with watercolours, was compelling.  And, there was no requirement to have your face appear in this portrait, also compelling.

Remembering 2012

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of two paintings from Bugaboos Provincial Park in British Columbia.

Winter Watercolour Weekend in the Wild

Edworthy Falls

Watercolour and oil pastel

©2020 Charlene Brown

I had been planning to re-write a story I started (and abandoned) several years ago, Did She Ever Return? about a painting workshop, ‘Winter Watercolour Weekend in the Wild.’ I was going to start as soon as I got my autofictional collection of short stories uploaded for a final proofreading.

Thinking I might do this as a graphic novel, I began a series of winter scenes near Calgary with this painting.  It is a composite of two locations (that aren’t particularly close together) in Kananaskis Country. 

However, delays in the production of my short story collection, caused by the need to rewrite the fifth story (which takes place in 2020) in real time, have made it necessary to abandon the Winter Watercolour Weekend again.

Remembering 2011

Click on image to enlarge

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of watercolour sketches of Ohe’o Gulch on Maui, Durnstein in Austria and Marksburg Castle in Germany, as well as paintings of a coffee plantation and the Mayan archaeological site of Copan in Honduras. 

The girl from the sixth generation

Click on image to enlarge

In my recently completed autofictional book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the sixth story begins in 2042, and is of course the most fictitious of all. 

Pictured on the left is Alexandra, my great-granddaughter to be born in 2027, as she will appear on the book cover, along with the other five girls.

Should you be wondering, she’s road-testing experimental electric-assist bounding boots...

Remembering 2010

Click on image to enlarge

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of two watercolour sketches I did during a Panama Canal cruise, and a watercolour painting of Magog Glacier in British Columbia by Doris Livingstone. 

The girl from the fourth generation

Click on image to enlarge

In my book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the fourth story is about Lisa Browning, a composite character who is (almost entirely) one of my daughters.

Lisa, who was born in Colorado in 1972, is pictured on the left, a drama student at Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga, as she will appear on the book cover, along with the other five girls.  She probably didn’t wear jeans and floppy shirts all the time, but the arts school students sure dressed more casually than we ever did, and may even have been prescient in adopting the 21^st century designer look, sporting holes in everything.

The story of the girl from the fifth generation, Fiona Livingstone, was in my July 2 blog post, Phase 2 of BC’s Restart Plan. Next week I’ll talk about the girl from the sixth generation.

Remembering 2009

Click on image to enlarge

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of some paintings of Peru, including a watercolour titled Rafting on the Urubamba River, a painted postcard of the archaeological site of Sacsayhuaman, and sketches of the Moray Agricultural complex by Nick Klimchuk-Brown (age 10 at the time) and me (age 67 at the time).

The girl from the third generation

Click on image to enlarge

In my book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the third story is about Mary-Jean Grayson, who was born in Banff in 1942.  She represents my generation of the family.

Mary-Jean is pictured on the left—a student at the University of Alberta in 1960, as she will appear on the book cover with the other five girls. 

What did you do in 2008? Did you write it down? Here's what we did.

Click on image to enlarge

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour painting of Qualicum Beach, here on Vancouver Island and a watercolour sketch of the Temple of Edfu in Egypt.

Yet another of the parts less painted

The biggest cave in Canada?

Watercolour and crayon

©2020 Charlene Brown

Unlike many of the spectacular locations in British Columbia, this is a ‘part less painted,’ giving it a fascination similar to Robert Frost’s ‘road less traveled.’  I’m thinking of combining this painting with other blog posts about spectacular parts of BC that are less often painted until I have enough for a book. This could include the Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed,  Hot Springs Cove, the Burgess Shale, and The Towers.

Besides being ‘less painted’ this very recently-discovered and not yet named cave has the distinction of being much less even seen, despite having the huge entrance pit shown in the painting.  And BC Parks is planning to keep it that way, with fines of up to a million dollars a day for anyone venturing into the area, located in a remote part of Wells Gray Provincial Park.

What did you do in 2007? Did you write it down? Here's what we did.

Click on image to enlarge

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour sketch of the Trout Pub at Wolvercote in Oxford, and a painting of Balaclava, the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade, in Ukraine.

The girl from the second generation

Click on image to enlarge

In my book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the second story is about my mother, Mary Thomson, the last girl appearing in the book with her real name.

Mary, who was born in Banff in 1910, is pictured on the left, a student at Mount Royal business college in Calgary, as she will appear on the book cover, along with the other five girls.  She probably didn’t wear those strappy little heels to school every day, but she was certainly wearing them in any pictures taken during the late 1920s that I’ve ever seen.

Get rid of one of the 'Heritage' Northern Junk buildings

Click on image to enlarge

The good Northern Junk building

Watercolour and crayon

©2020 Charlene Brown

Eleven years ago when I first started this blog, I read some blogging advice about writing post titles that made bold statements.  So I produced “Don’t Replace Our Bridge!”  I wasn’t really as fond of “our 85-year-old bottle neck” as I let on (and I think that the new bridge that replaced it is beautiful). 

But this time I mean what I’m saying about the Northern Junk buildings.  To the right is my letter to the Victoria Times Colonist published last week.

The good building is the one with 12 windows at about 3 o’clock in the painting on the left.