Don't Replace Our Bridge!

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Blue Bridge, Victoria

Watercolour, crayon and ink

©2009 Charlene Brown

This double lifting span bridge between Vic West and downtown Victoria was designed by Joseph Strauss, who also designed the Golden Gate suspension bridge in San Francisco. The narrower span has a rail line and a bicycle lane, and the wider span has three car lanes and a pedestrian walkway. When the bridge opens, the spans are moved one at a time – the rail span goes up first, and when it is all the way up, the car span is lifted. They are lowered in the reverse order, to minimize the delay for cars and pedestrians. This picture shows the bridge just after the lowering process has begun. We sometimes complain about it being opened every time someone takes a notion to sail over to the Upper Harbour, but now that they're talking about replacing it with a higher span, we've all grown quite fond of our 85-year-old bottleneck.

American Sketches

Skagway, Alaska

Watercolour and computer painting

©2005 Charlene Brown

Happy 4^th of July to all of you in the States!

This painting was done following a cruise to Alaska in 2005. I started with a photo I’d taken of the main street of Skagway – that’s our ship, the Veendam, docked at the end of the street – on a day when the clouds completely obliterated the mountains. I lightened and filtered the image in Photoshop, printed it on an A4 sheet of Hahnemuhle Digital Fine Art inkjet watercolour paper, then put some colour back into the street scene and added the mountains with watercolour. I have added this painting, and some small sketches of Alaska and Hawaii to my website www.painteverymountain.ca

Canada Day!

Canada Day in Victoria

Watercolour, crayon & ink

©2007 Charlene Brown

This is the view of Victoria’s Inner Harbour from Songhees Point, named for the Songhees First Nation from whom the land was purchased about 100 years ago. I producedd a video of this picture for the ‘My Victoria’ one-Minute Video competition a couple of years ago. To see the whole video, click here.

Blog Address Change:

My next post, on the 4^th of July, will be at a new address http://charlenebrownpainting.blogspot.com/ If you have a link to 1150 Words, please make a note of this new address in case your link doesn’t change automatically – I wouldn’t want to lose any of you!

Westsong Walkway

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Summer Planting

Watercolour, crayon & ink

©2009 Charlene Brown

This is where I’ve been doing my sketching and walking since joining Sketchercize a couple of weeks ago. As I’m the only sketcher in our walking group (and I don’t seem to have the gumption to get out there on my own) I usually only sketch one thing per day. Today, however, I decided to put a whole picture together including the spectacular mountain backdrop we have here. (Actually it isn’t here; it isn’t even in Canada – it’s in Washington State, but we have a great view of it.) ‘Summer Planting’ shows a City of Victoria parks crew changing the flowers, something they do four times a year throughout the city. It’s about the only time wheeled vehicles are allowed on the 3km Westsong Walkway – okay, I’ll admit they had a snowblower down there a couple of times last winter – so it’s a perfect place for drawing and painting.

BTW, here's one of my single-subject sketches - which actually took two days!

Arbutus at Lime Bay

Whitewater rafting in Peru

Urubamba River Rafting
Watercolour, crayon and ink
©2009 Charlene Brown

This painting is based on a photo of a wonderfully calm stretch of the river. The waves are totally a product of my Masquepen-fueled imagination. But they did happen. Three times!

I used a surprising amount of masking fluid on my paintings of Peru. This one, where it was used to preserve the white in whitewater, and the painting of the Potato Farmers, in which masking was used to bring out backlighting effects, were painted since I returned from my trip. But the 30ml applicator bottle of Masquepen – that I didn’t know I had with me, but found in my painting purse – turned out to be just what I needed to paint the overlay design of the Incan cross and quipu, later used in the overlay painting I posted June 12.

Postcard from Peru

Here’s the finished version of a postcard I (barely) started painting on location in Peru last month – I mailed it to myself with the terse message, ‘Finish this!’ It shows the jagged walls of Sacsayhuaman, an Incan ruin on a mountainside above Cusco, which can be seen in the background. The huge stone blocks weigh up to 200 tons, and nobody knows how they were cut, moved and fitted (perfectly) into place!
The following is the little Drama of Painting Plein Air that took place when I started this postcard, and one of the other grandmothers in our group turned out to be a Roving Art Critic...

RAC: VIVA El Peru? That's amazing! How can you possibly read that from here?

Artist: Well actually, I can't.  I thought maybe there were some words, so I asked our guide, and he told me what it says. (Drama added June, 2012))

Painting history in North Africa

Carthage overlaid with Phoenecian alphabet
©2009 Charlene Brown

This computer painting was created by overlaying two photographs taken in Tunisia -- the Punic ruins at Carthage and a stone plaque at the Bardo museum. 

The main advantage of using a computer to create overlays is that by selectively brightening or sharpening sections of each layer, or altering the layer blending mode, unlimited possibilities are made available. This is of course its main disadvantage as well.

Different Strokes Challenge: Summer Vegetables

DSFDF Challenge: Summer Vegetables
Watercolour & crayon



This is my entry in the Week 37-38 Challenge on Different Strokes from Different Folks. In the reference picture put up for us to use, all the vegetables are in a bowl. And so far, everyone but me has left them in the bowl, or at least piled together. I like them better lined up.