The Sentinel

This is one more for my lighthouse series! This is the Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The original tower at Portland Head was first lit on January 10, 1791. It's now set in a beautiful 90-acre park along the Maine coast. My dog Bran and I visited the park on my way home from Canada last week and I took a bunch of photos of the light.

Unfortunately my version of the light seems to have come out a bit shorter and sqatter than the actual light, LOL, but I'm still pretty happy with how the painting turned out anyway, as a painting.

It's on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum. One interesting fact. Portland Head Light is entirely white, yet no white whatsoever was used in the creation of this painting. :-)

Back from Birding

This is another of the paintings I did up at the farm this summer - done from life in our cozy farm kitchen, with my hat tossed unto the farm daybed, just as I would toss it after coming back from birding - something I often did up there. I love my Tilley hat which gives my eyes great sun protection.

As is typical for me these days, this is a 9x12 on Art Spectrum, and a variety of pastels. I love the colors of some of my new Terry Ludwigs - but they are so soft they eat up all the tooth on the Art Spectrum paper, so have to use the sparingly.

Cape Tormentine Light

I only got a few paintings done while up in Canada, and of those I don't think all are fit for public viewing, LOL. But this is one I was pretty happy with. I've been on sort of a lighthouse kick, and you can read about some of my other efforts in this regard starting here.

So this is one I did of the light at Cape Tormentine, which is where the old ferries to Prince Edward Island used to leave from, before the completion of the Confederation Bridge at Cape Jourimain. This is my typical 9x12 on Art Spectrum paper with a variety of pastels.

Southwestern Vista

Last night was my first week back at art class after being up in Canada on vacation for a few weeks. I admit my heart was not in it. My dog Bran died during the night last night. He was not quite seven years old, not an old dog, but he had been battling nasal cancer for the last 14 months, and was slowly losing the battle. I knew I was having to face hard decisions about him in the near future, but sweet Bran took the decision out of my hands.

But I was glad for art class last night as a distraction and a chance to see my friends there again. But I didn't feel totally up to painting either, so wanted to find something not too fussy or detailed to work on. In the end I came across this 40-year-old snapshot that I happened to have with me, taken on a camping trip across the American southwest with my family, when I was a teenager. It was old and sort of faded, Kodak Instamatic snapshot - but it had what I was looking for - simplicity.

So I began fooling around with it just to have something to do with my hands. I hated it initally, looking something like a 5-year-old's crayon coloring. Last I upped my estimate to maybe something a 10-year-old would have done. By the end of the evening I was actually not unhappy with it, and enjoyed the stark simplicity. It suited my mood for last night, and so totally different from the eastern landscapes I normally do.

So I was glad to get back to class. When I get more organized maybe I'll share some of the paintings I did up in Canada. In the meantime I'll close with a portrait I did of Bran in 2007, before he got ill, and so terribly disfigured from his disease.