Cloudscape 1
March 22, 2022
There’s a compositional rule advising painters that if the sky is the main element in a painting, then what lies below it ought to be kept simple and less important; and, conversely, if it’s the landscape which is the focus, then the sky should be suggested and there merely as a compliment to the rest of the painting. Of course, there are plenty of excellent paintings where this rule has been ignored. I think of Van Gogh whose complexities and intricacies fill every inch, and cause one’s eyes to dance around and be rewarded with a richness of technique.
Personally speaking, it seems better to go by that rule’s wisdom than pretend to be of the calibre and passion of a virtuoso like Van Gogh. Those who, like him, are driven body and soul to express their inner selves via their art aren’t likely to be ones who go by sensibility and convention in life as well as art. Those who, like me, have to screw up their courage in order to even put brush to paper, are appreciative of sound advice and guidance. And so, with this painting, I followed that compositional rule:
watercolour on Arches 140# Hot Press Paper, by Lance Weisser
[sold]
Winter Watercolours II
January 8, 2022
Seneca Park in Rochester, New York, was sledding paradise in the 1950s. Only the James Dean wanabees–cigarette-flaunting attention-starved teens–did Dead Man’s Hill: a rocky, tree-stumpy, pretzel-twisted cliff-face down into oblivion. The story went that some guy ripped the Red Flyer from a little kid and went down it standing up and got squashed against a blue spruce. What we all did was the one right beside it–Pine Tree Hill–with its rollercoaster steep drop, and triple-humped finish, ending nearly at the edge of Seneca Park Pond.
“Come home when the snow turns blue,” was our only caution before heading off–that magical time when the sun turned orangey-gold and dropped just below the fir tops, the shadows going from light grey to a rich cobalt. By the time we schlepped home, there were yellow lemon reflections over the deep violet yards beneath everyone’s dining room windows, and we knew we were just in time for supper.
Rosh Hashanah 2021 con’t…
September 6, 2021
As described in yesterday’s posting, my interest in making a Jewish New Year card has centred around recreating the atmosphere of a 19th century Eastern European shtetl (yiddish for ‘village’) where the Jewish community developed a rich heritage of customs, including a unique style of musical tradition called klezmer.
Here is a taste–more likely a reminder–of what klezmer sounds like, being rich in the minor keys and featuring clarinet, violin, accordion and trumpet:
And here is the initial painting of my Rosh Hashanah 2021 greeting card….
A Winter’s Eve
February 23, 2019
It snowed yesterday, the kind which floats down like sifted icing sugar, giving the impression that it can’t possibly amount to much, except it simply stayed that way for the entire afternoon and into the evening. And as I was cooking dinner, I glanced out and saw a van spinning its wheels, barely able to crest the top of the hill just below our house. That icing sugar now lay a significant number of inches deep, making the mule deer tracks under the bird feeders in our red maple appear as quilted dimples, leading off across the whited bedspread of the yard.
The mule deer–a party of three–come down from our backyard mountain ridge and go to town on the neighbourhood’s cedar hedges around four in the morning. Now, I’m not one to get all soft-hearted and nostalgic over having deer around, simply because they dine on just about anything except what mother nature provides in ample supply up beyond our neighbourhood: emerging tulips in the front–all manner of vegetables in the back–and everyone’s cedar. The other morning around five one of them confronted our little dog Elmo in the predawn pitch dark as we did our morning walk. Neither of them moved for a great while until the young buck got bored and sauntered off with its two pals to see what other landscape deconstruction they could manage before daybreak.
The Old Rookery
February 21, 2019
EVERY SO OFTEN I go truant and abandon my blog, but at least this time around it hasn’t (quite) been an entire year (!) I might be alone in this, but my temptation is to spend so much time daily exploring the interesting posts of fellow bloggers that I end up spending less and less time actually painting. My solution to this apparent addiction is to leave my own posts in limbo until enough progress has been made to once again continue.
In any case, thank you for your patience and understanding, and here is my latest painting entitled ‘The Old Rookery’, depicting a scene from my imagination, drawing on the spirit of book illustrators from the days of my youth:
Thank you for reconnecting with me and I hope your Winter is going well for you!
….composition exercise 2
January 17, 2016
Continuing on with an attempt to test out the compositional dictum known as ‘the rule of thirds’, which was conceived and named by John Thomas Smith in 1797 :
“. . . Analogous to this “Rule of thirds”, (if I may be allowed so to call it) I have presumed to think that, in connecting or in breaking the various lines of a picture, it would likewise be a good rule to do it, in general, by a similar scheme of proportion; for example, in a design of landscape, to determine the sky at about two-thirds ; or else at about one-third, so that the material objects might occupy the other two : Again, two thirds of one element, (as of water) to one third of another element (as of land); and then both together to make but one third of the picture, of which the two other thirds should go for the sky and aerial perspectives. . . “
To illustrate its basics…..
Once again, this is the drawing I did initially, to put this into practice….
And this is the first go at painting the scene….
And now today, here is the progress so far, attempting to locate some visual interest at each of the four intersections within the piece, the barn being the first and the pine being the second and the creekbed being the third…..
The darkest darks and greatest contrast will remain with the barn, for that is the intended focus for the picture, when completed.
The ‘rule of thirds’, as stated above, holds that generally two-thirds of a landscape be devoted to the sky, with one-third given to the land below (the sky being such a vast and dominant feature). In this case two-thirds is dedicated to the land and a very high horizon means that the one third is devoted to the sky area.
heatwave relief
June 24, 2015
IT IS BARELY PAST the first day of Summer and temperatures here in Southern British Columbia, Canada, are scheduled to climb to 40C (104F) and stay there. It is feared the heat and drought affecting California is heading North, Along with such heat, thunderstorm probabilities rise, and they become fire starters. By August there’ll be what weather reports term ‘local smoke’–a haze hanging over everything–accompanied by the sound of helicopters and planes working to douse flames in affected regions close by.
My favourite month is November. It is both an exciting and contemplative month–exciting because any day, any moment I might step out to feel those fortifying winds suddenly becoming the first snow squall. Contemplative, because the fog rising from the closeby Thompson River mixes with wood stove breathings and the last of the leathery oak leaves falling to join the others, invites thoughts on things ethereal and eternal.
“Logging along Jamieson Creek Road”, watercolour, 20cm x 25cm, (8″ x 10″) Arches Hot Press 140 lb Paper, unsold
As a child, there was nothing more beautiful than what I called ‘purple snow’–that snow which signalled to us that we’d best take only one more turn sledding down Dead Man’s Hill (many years prior, legend had it, a man went down its twists and turns standing on his sled and smacked into a maple–back in the old days, when men apparently went sledding). Purple snow meant dinner. Purple snow meant finally discovering just how cold our digits actually were– thawing under a running cold faucet–pins and needles hot pink cold.
And even now, there is nothing to me more beautiful than purple snow. On this 40C second day of Summer, all I can say is, Lord get us through to November.
weisserwatercolours 