A Pond in Northern Ontario

I have been saving this photo for a while, and this week I decided the time was right. This is an oil painting on a 16x20 gallery canvas. It was one of those paintings that seemed to paint itself and I thoroughly enjoyed creating it. Fall, north of Lake Superior, with those northern spruce and the golden aspen. It doesn't get much better than this.

                        

FOR SALE $250

If you are interested in this or any other painting on my blog, you can contact me at

       hazelspleinair@gmail.com

Castries Market,St. Lucia

What an adventure to visit the busy local market in Castries. It is a six day a week operation, with Sunday's set aside for church services. Everyone seems to have their own spot and they must have to provide their own tables and seats and umbrellas. As you can tell from the oil painting, these are local farmers who eke out a subsistence existence for their families out of selling their produce at the market. The umbrellas are many times propped on some else's umbrella and most are cast-offs from the resorts, but they provide some shade from the hot sun for the produce and sellers. It's a noisy, busy place and is set beside the craft market, which on the day we visited was very quiet, probably because there was not a cruise ship in port.

                                    

More Pansies

Here is my last post from St. Lucia. I am looking forward to getting back to my oils and creating some oil paintings taken from photos of this beautiful island.

                                  

Pansies

I have been using my watercolours in St. Lucia and finally I think this is the one I like best. These pansies have a softness and delicacy about them that is appealing. It's interesting that my favourite flower ends up to be successful in watercolours. 

                        

Peonies

Of the flowers I have completed, this is my favorite.

    

                         

When I looked at this watercolour on my blog, I realized the painting did not "read" properly. This is a painting term that means some thing in the painting did not work. In other words something did not make sense. Look at the first painting, then look at the corrected one below and see if you can spot the change.   

                                

Hibiscus

More flowers using the same technique as previously.

  

                        

St. Lucia flowers

This painting with watercolours was fun!! I thoroughly enjoyed the w/c as I dripped the colors I had chosen on a wet sheet. When they  had dried, which took a while in this humid climate, I spent a an interesting half hour trying to see what possibilities for blossoms and leaves and composition were there. Using the same colours I darkened some petals, added details, but much of the time I concentrated on lost and found edges.  Overall, I wanted a very soft, suggestion of flowers so that the viewer could find for himself the interesting areas. I think I succeeded. I included two photos of the painting, one when it was just starting and one finished.