Closing the Circle

Well, I was digging around in the closet the other day, binning some old photos and generally trying to lighten my load, and I came across these pics, taken on my old 35mm compact. A couple of beauties from a bike blast I did through Cache Creek, Merritt and Douglas Lake, back in, say '97. Of course, my ever vigilant eye saw possible paintings--I mean, that is why I took these photos, but had forgotten about them. So I'll be working up a series over the coming months. I have some perfectly iconic images here.

So I got busy last Saturday on this one, and managed to finish it last night. The surface quality and colours are very similar to what I was painting like at that time 10 years ago, and of course, so is the subject matter. This is very gratifying, since I have been longing to return to those days, both aesthetically and technically.

"Bend in the Road, Douglas Lake" 18 X 24"

A few small touch-ups to go, though, and maybe I need to wrangle the clouds a bit, but finished enough to post here. This was shot in indirect natural light, out on the balcony.

I finally got my priming (gesso) situation sorted out now, and that has helped immensely, returning a bit of the old delicacy to things. Also very happy that my 3-colour system can perfectly match what I was doing with the 10-12 colour palette I was using back then.

End of the first session, shot on the easel.

My palette, squeezed out. I like to start nice and neat, 'cause things tend to get messy fast. Even though my system depends so much on mixing, I am pretty concerned with keeping my colours pure... .

The same palette after 5 hours of battle. You can see the crossover I do between green and brown. That area just back of the thumb-hole is for those mixes and gradient colours. I keep the top row for the pure primaries and secondaries.