Beaubassin

When I was in Canada this summer my neighbor told me I should visit the Beaubassin Research Station located on the Tantramar Marsh along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, and used mainly for research on wetlands and waterfowl.

I'm an avid birder, and I've always loved salt marshes. The Tantramar has long been a favorite place of mine, but I had never seen the section where the Beaubassin station is located - a large white house located far out on the marsh. I went out there a number of times and loved looking at the marsh and the sky and the various birds.

It just seemed like a natural for a painting of some sort, so this is the one I came up with, of the long road going through the marsh out to the Research Station standing all alone and far from anyone.

Done on 9x12 Art Spectrum Colourfix, various pastels.

Maritime morning

Every summer I take my pastels up to Canada with me and VOW I will do lots of painting, and yet I never seem to get as much done as I think I would. This year was a very low year and I only did TWO.

Actually three I suppose, all on Art Spectrum Colourfix, 9x12. However the first one was just so completely dreadful that after an hour or two I just rushed into the kitchen and rinsed everything off under the sink! I was left with a sheet of Colourfix paper that had stains of various colors on it faintly, so I began playing with pastels to enhance some of the colors to see what happened, then enhancing some of the shapes as the colors took place.

So this is what I ended up with, very different from my usual style and way of working!

Tidnish Life sessions

 Once again I enjoyed going to the Life Drawing sessions at the Tidnish Bridge Art Gallery on Monday evenings, 7-9 PM.

 The format was the same as in previous years, working from a life model. We first started each session with a series of 30 second poses.

 Thirty seconds causes you to have to work fast! Figure drawing is not my forte, and is very unforgiving, as opposed to a tree, LOL. But I always figure drawing from life is a valuable experience.

 From 30 seconds we moved on to a series of 60-second poses.

 After that we moved up to 2-minute poses.

 Two minutes felt like quite a luxury after the initial 30 seconds!

 After that we moved to 5-minute poses though I don't seem to have any available here.

 The last hour we finished with a couple 20-minute poses, and then often a 15-minute pose at the end.

I still don't consider myself a figure painter! But I definitely enjoy going to these sessions! Looking forward to next year with Bob Morouney.