Where the 16 September 1810 call to arms triggered the Mexican War of Independence

The Cry of Dolores
crayon, watercolour ink
©2025 Charlene Brown

The Baroque Parroquia Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, sometimes known as the Grito Church is directly across from the Plaza del Grande Hidalgo and Independence Garden in Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico. 

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was a Mexican Roman Catholic priest, best remembered for his speech, the “Grito de Dolores” (“Cry of Dolores”), which called for the end of Spanish colonial rule in Mexico. Today, Hidalgo is celebrated as “the father of Mexican independence.”
 

Will I ever be able to pronounce Guanajuato?

Guanajuato
crayon, watercolour, CP
©2025 Charlene Brown

Guanajuato was founded by the Spanish in the early 16th century and became the world's leading silver-extraction centre in the 18th century. The historic Baroque and neoclassical atmosphere is preserved by routing traffic through subterranean streets along former mineshafts.

We were told by our guide that students can attend the famous Guanajuato University free of charge by maintaining high grades and doing volunteer work aimed at preserving and beautifying the colorful residential areas and parks of this World Heritage designated city.

San Miguel de Allende ̶ possibly the most delightful place in all of Mexico

Alicorns* in the arts & crafts market
watercolour and crayon sketch
©2025 Charlene Brown                                                                

In addition to cool inner courtyard gardens, many of the restaurants in San Miguel have umbrella-shaded rooftop dining areas from which you can see the flower-framed doorways and balconies, market stalls, and jacaranda forests leading up to the cathedral-like parroquia (parish church) de San Miguel Arcángel. 

*The winged unicorn or alicorn is my favourite species of alebrije, the brightly colored, fantastical creatures of Mexican folk art.  In case you didn’t spot them right away… There are three alicorns under the lace-trimmed white umbrella in the centre foreground of this watercolour sketch. 

My 1000th blog post on 1150 Words!

Cañada de la Virgen

watercolour and crayon sketch

©2025 Charlene Brown

My daughter and I were in San Miguel de Allende last week enjoying a wonderful Road Scholar trip.  One day we visited a nearby archaeological site, Cañada de la Virgen. One of the northernmost step pyramid sites in Mexico, it is situated on the MesoAmerican border north of which people were more nomadic and did not build such enormous structures.

The original name of this Otomi celestial and moonrise-aligned ritual and ceremonial location, dating from around 300 CE, is unknown. The Spaniards renamed the (by then abandoned) site Cañada (canyon) de la Virgen when they arrived in about 1540 CE. The virgin to whom the name refers is the Virgin of Guadalupe  ̶  Mary, the mother of Jesus  ̶  who appeared to a man in Mexico in 1531.  

 

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2010

County Clare, Ireland

Rio de Janeiro from Estrada do Sumaré

Revueltas, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

  Diamond Head Rd, Honolulu HI, USA

Looking south from GC-210, Canary Islands 

 Lutsiveien, Stavanger, Norway

 Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA USA 

Albertacce, Corsica 

 

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2011

 The Bank of Eureka & the Savings Bank of Humboldt, Eureka, California, USA

Via Verdi in Talana, Sardinia

St Louis Cathedral from Decatur Street, New Orleans, LA USA

 Koyukuk River crossing, Alaska, USA

North of Glenorchy, Otago, New Zealand  
 

Ave. de Verdun, Eze, Alpes-Maritimes, France

Table Mountain from Leeukloof Drive, Cape Town, South Africa

Thermovoltaic systems

Lafarge Exshaw - the largest cement plant in Canada

watercolour and coloured pencil

©2025 Charlene Brown

Thermovoltaics is a technology that converts heat into electricity. Waste heat is everywhere. Globally, of the energy used to power the industries that the world needs such as cement and steel, approximately 60% is simply lost as waste heat. 

Industrial activities account for about one third of total energy consumption and urgently need to cut CO2 emissions.

In 2022, the energy intensity of the cement sector reached 100 kWh per tonne, with fossil fuels as the primary source of thermal energy. Globally, iron and steel manufacturing consumes 8% of total energy demand, contributing to 2.6 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) of CO2 emissions annually. 

Addressing the emissions from these industries and finding ways to capture and productively use the vast amounts of industrial waste heat are critical steps in the fight against climate change.

Favourite Google Streetview ‘location’ paintings from 2012

 Lomnický štít, Tatranska Lomnica, Slovakia

Water Street, St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, Canada

Højbro Plads, Copenhagen, Denmark

Mahamakut Buddhist University, Chiang Mai, Thailand 

 Riga, Latvia

Breckenridge, Colorado, USA

  

Favourite Google Streetview Virtual Paintout ‘locations’ from 2013

 Corner of Calle dello Spezier and Calle Fondamenta Megio, Venice, Italy

Þjóðvegur, Iceland 

Rua Jorge M. Reis Machado, Azores

Via Roma Destra Bridge, Lido di Jeloso, Italy

Mosque in Smolevo, Bulgaria

Gedimino prospektas, Vilnius, Lithuania

Prospect Hill, Douglas, Isle of Man

Second round of my AI painting adventure

Admitting Defeat - Photoshopped Hellebores

Charlene Brown 2025

At the end of my February 5 blog post, I promised to keep you posted on my ongoing attempts to improve my hellebore painting with AI Image generation software.

Using Adobe Firefly™ I started with the instruction:  purple hellebores about 10 inches high with light dusting of snow and evergreen forest background

Which yielded the above suggestions.  Without pointing out that if I’d wanted magenta hellebores I’d have said so, I continued the operation using only the first picture.  (or not, as it turned out)

I uploaded my original hellebore painting as a composition reference. Then I asked for some special effects  ̶  baroque, geometric, doodle and science fiction.  Here’s what I got instead.

They all seem to be edging toward the composition I requested… but have lost their forest backgrounds!  And their baroque, geometric, doodle and science fiction instructions.

Apparently I still have to ‘educate’ the Firefly AI using my language and my pictures.

Or I can admit defeat and just use Adobe Photoshop™ (see above).  I’ll try again, probably not with Firefly, and keep you posted.

Favourite Google Streetviews from 2014

 Trädgårdsföreningen, Gothenburg, Sweden

Jinsha Township, Taiwan, ROC

Russky Bridge,Vladivostok, Russia 

Along Ruta 7, Southern Parks area of Chile 

Georges Pierhead, Liverpool, UK

Lake Jasna, Slovenia

Pershing Park, Washington, DC USA

Thawing Permafrost

Melting glaciers and thawing permafrost on Bylot Island NU
watercolour and crayon
©2025 Charlene Brown 

As the Arctic warms faster than any region on Earth, attention has largely been focused on the rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice. But major changes are also taking place on land, and one of the most striking is the thawing of vast swaths of permafrost, the frozen layer of soil underlying the Arctic tundra and taiga. 

This thawing compounds the effects of climate change by releasing vast amounts of GHGs.  It is already changing the Arctic landscape, causing landslides, draining lakes, altering vegetation and even beginning to shift animal and bird species habitats.  Ecosystem changes make it increasingly difficult for subsistence indigenous Inuit and Arctic animals to find food. 

Lakeside permafrost slumps  ̶  an increasingly frequent occurrence

watercolour and crayon

©2025 Charlene Brown

Permafrost slumps result when the ice in the permafrost melts and the soil collapses.  As slumping expands, parts of the landscape are being transformed into nothing but mud, silt, and peat.

Some areas in the Arctic appear to be emitting even more carbon than they are storing, worsening climate change impacts by increasing the frequency of extreme weather events and wildfires.

Favourite Google Streetview paintings from 2015

 Jones Bridge, Manilla, Philippines

Market Square, Tallinn, Estonia

View from the Castle Garden, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

Sarqaq, Greenland

Nazimuddin Rd. Dhaka, Bangladesh 

Lemon Hill Dr., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA