Springtime in Victoria

Mt Baker from Cadboro Bay

Watercolour and crayon

©2011 Charlene Brown

We’re hoping what passes for winter is finished here in the warmest place in Canada. A few hardy trees are beginning to blossom, and I’ve only exaggerated slightly the number of sailors out on Cadboro Bay. (Like the more intrepid gardeners and golfers in Victoria, they never really stop, except on days we actually get snow.) What I have exaggerated quite a bit is the proximity of Mt. Baker. We like to think of it as our mountain, but in fact it not only isn’t right here in town – it isn’t even in Canada. Mt. Baker is part of a series of inactive volcanoes (Rainier, Saint Helens, Hood, Shasta) running through Washington, Oregon and California in the United States).

I hope you’ll take the time to have a look at a new blog in which I’m participating, A Postcard from my Walk. We’re just introducing ourselves this week, but will begin showing actual postcards we receive in the mail from other member of the group in early February.

Virtual Paintout in Boston

Charles River Bike Path

Watercolour and CP

©2011 Charlene Brown

I wanted to include water in my painting, so I searched out Edwin H Land Boulevard / Memorial Drive for this view of Boston, location of the Virtual Paintout for the month of January. The map labels it Charles River Bike Path, but it seems that, in the home of the Boston Marathon, bike paths have been taken over by runners. Here’s the link to this view – have a look along it and you’ll see what I mean.

BTW, I'm really looking forward to participating in a new sketching project called A Postcard from my Walk I’ve seen other group projects like this, and always thought it would be great to be invited to participate… but the idea of adding something to a sketchbook already containing several spectacular paintings was pretty scary! A postcard from my Walk has the advantage that each postcard will be created separately. The first ones will be mailed out next week and will start appearing on the blog in February when they arrive at their destinations.

Indigo and Opera is the new Black

Where the volcano meets the sea…

Watercolour and crayon

©2011 Charlene Brown

Like last week’s painting, this is one of the places my grandchildren went swimming along the spectacular road to Hana on the island of Maui, part of the Hawaiian chain.

The view from the top of the cliff was fantastic, and when I made my first sketch here, I wondered what the chances were of actually conveying this wondrous sight in watercolour… I had no trouble deciding what colour to use to capture the effect of the waves crashing against the rocks – Prussian Blue usually behaves this way whether I want it to or not! Making the rocks and beach, composed almost entirely of black lava, look like anything other than the entrance to a coal mine, was another matter all together. Finally, I settled on a mixture of Indigo and Opera.

The Plan for 2011

(click on image to enlarge)

Swimming in Haleakala National Park

Watercolour and crayon

©2011 Charlene Brown

Jane Dunnewold wrote an interesting post about focussing on her blog Existential Neighborhood, in which she said Don’t be the old woman in the shoe – with so many projects you don’t know what to do. Think about each project, and decide what you want to do MOST right now. Think about concentrating your efforts on one interest – either for a specific period of time… or until you’ve finished it or mastered it. So I’m keeping The Plan for 2011 simple and, as steps 4 and 5 are kind of experimental, I’m going to complete 4 before I start 5.

1. Paint more spontaneously (beginning with Swimming in Haleakala National Park).

2. Do more journaling: I have a couple of expeditions planned for 2011, a July trip to Israel with one of my grandchildren, and river cruising on the Danube and Rhine in October. I hope to continue journaling my travels and will have more flashbacks as well.

3. Continue to participate in group blogs such as Virtual Paintout and The Art of the Landscape:

4. Write more how-to articles. My next ‘how-to’ project will be about poster production, involving a combination of computer collage and lettering – during which I’ll be learning how myself!

5. Paint more videos. I’m planning on putting together some how-to steps for producing computer-painted videos for Youtube. I hope to composite video clips with my drawn and painted videos, and am looking at the travel plans I mentioned to decide on backgrounds.

As you may have noticed, I’ve temporarily turned off ‘Comments’ on this blog. I love hearing from you, and I’m happy to say some of you have found ways around this – mainly emails direct to travelpainting@shaw.ca or Robyn Sinclair’s unique approach, one of my favourites. I plan to re-instate Comments, partly for the excellent reasons outlined in Alyson Stanfield’s ArtBiz blog, and will decide when to proceed with this based on the feedback I’m getting from various directions…

2010 Year-end Review

Royal Roads
Photoshopped watercolour
2010 Charlene Brown

Here's how I think I did with repect to following my plan for 2010:

Paint more spontaneously - very little progress here though I was pleased with the way Mt. Assiniboine turned out in September. When I began abstracting paintings of the Victoria area, I found I had to resort to computer 'abstracting' to get results I liked. The abstracted version of Royal Roads University, originally posted October 27, is an example of this. Do more journaling - I wrote 'illustrated journal' posts about a trip to Mexico in February, a Panama cruise in April-May, a trip to the Rockies in July, and flashbacks to the twentieth century using excerpts of articles published in the 1990s. Continue to participate in group blogs - I completed 12 Virtual Paintout entries and was pleased to see Places to Paint: Charlene Brown's Rockies featured on The Art of the Landscape. Write more how-to articles - I wrote The Extreme Sport of Watercolour Painting for Empty Easel in April. Finish graphic novel and learn how to use Wacom tablet - Yes! I published my comic book in October... but as for using the tablet, I discovered outsourcing! The characters in Counter-Espionage Disinformation for Beginners were drawn by my grandson, Philip Hogg . I did eventually learn how to use the tablet in the Animation and SFX class at the Gulf Islands Film and Television School. Paint more videos and learn how to use Adobe Flash - I learned the basics of this at film school, and completed videos about archaeology (the First War Movie) and A Year in the Butchart Gardens
I'll write a post early in the new year, showing how my goals for 2011 reflect those set out for 2010 (or not).

Butchart Gardens: the video

Winter in Butchart Gardens
computer-painted video
Charlene Brown 2010

I liked the way Photoshop 'abstracted' my painting of Butchart Gardens so much that I made it into a 0ne-minute video showing what this magical place looks like year-round. This picture shows the sunken garden as it looked (briefly) a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the Christmas illuminations, featuring the Twelve Days of Christmas, have been turned on, and Day Five is in this part of the garden, as you will see if you have a look at the video on Youtube.

Virtual Paintout in County Clare

I hope this is County Clare!

Watercolour and crayon

©2010 Charlene Brown

It’s pretty easy to find lovely landscapes in County Clare, the location of this month’s Virtual Paintout. I did have one problem (mentioned by some of the others who have sent pictures in to the Virtual Paintout) – sometimes there’s no way of knowing if you’ve driven into another, equally-lovely county. Limerick, for example.

It was only when I started to draw this scene and zoomed in on the Streetview picture to get a better idea of some of the details, that I even noticed the herd of cows and the buildings! Here’s a link to it – have a look and you’ll see what I mean.

The first war movie

Battle of Kadesh

Bas relief mural

13^th Century B.C.E.

This mural, on the second pylon of the Ramesseum near Luxor in Egypt, is said to be a multiple image representation of Ramses II driving a chariot into battle against the Hittites at Kadesh. I decided to break out the ‘moving’ parts and use them to computer-paint a ‘war movie’ video. 

(Another theory about the mural has it that the multiple legs simply indicate there are two horses pulling Ramses’ chariot, but I prefer the ‘action shot’ version of the story…)

The only gaits that the precisely spaced bas relief legs lent themselves to were bounding and pacing. Bounding doesn't work for horses and I don’t think horses rear up on their hind legs while pacing… So both possibilities need modification. What we have is either a rearing pacer or a mincing bounder. 

You can see the resulting 30-second video on Youtube … and assuming Ramses didn’t scatter the Hittites driving a pacer, his horse must be bounding (carefully) into battle…

BTW, history tells us that Ramses wasn’t as victorious at Kadesh as his murals would have us believe… Maybe he really did have a pacer pulling his chariot!