Month: October 2015

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius.
You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
— Gertrude Stein

Well today I arrived earlier at work and decided to draw this out sitting in my car. If someone had been watching me, they could have wondered what I was doing for such a time… as I am pretty sure that I appear to be doing nothing.
I work on a beautiful campus, and there are many little hidden gems just waiting for me to discover them. Here is one of the roads on part of the McGill Campus leading up to an intersection of sorts that leads to my part of the campus. There was a very soft light today juxtaposed to the harsh angles of the buildings that called out to me. The leaves are falling now and not many remain…

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook
Fountain Pen: Twisbi Classic EF
Ink: Noodlers’ Lexington Grey
Location: John Abbott College, Québec, Canada

Humans who spend time in the wilderness, alone, without man-made mechanical noise around them, often discover that their brain begins to recover its ability to discern things.
— Robert Anderson

Finally I was able to paint my beautiful home mountain. As some of you know, I went out to paint it last Sunday and a squall of winter weather charged in and took all of the beautiful autumn colours and transformed them to soft pastels. What you did not know is that I went back today and painted it again, in its full glory… humph! Maybe that I was a tad overly enthusiastic with my colours, but here it is.

Paper: Arches 140 lbs CP
Colours: QGold, Burnt Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine
Location: Rigaud Mountain, Québec, Canada

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely… but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Today is an important day in Canada as it is the federal election day. I live in a wonderful old town (1783) named Rigaud that has a population of 7566 and its mountain covers 47 square kilometers. Last weekend it was the Festival of Colours celebrating autumn’s colours and 50,000 people came to view the vistas provided by the peak on Mount Rigaud. From there you can see the Ottawa River, the Lake of Two Mountains, Lake St. Louis, Lake St. Francis, the Laurentians, Laval, Oka, Montreal, the south shore to Beauharnois and west to St. Anicet. And there is this singing maple that stands tall and proud, looking over its constituents.

Aujourd’hui est un jour important au Canada car c’est le jour des élections fédérales. Je vis dans une vieille ville (1783) nommée Rigaud qui a une population de 7566 et sa montagne couvre 47 kilomètres carrés. Le week-end dernier, c’était le Festival des couleurs et 50,000 personnes sont venues voir les vues du sommet du mont Rigaud. Du haut point, vous pouvez apercevoir la rivière des Outaouais, le Lac des Deux Montagnes, le Lac St-Louis, le Lac St-François, les Laurentides, Montréal, Oka, Laval, la Rive-Sud à Beauharnois et à l’ouest Saint-Anicet. Et il ya cette érable chantant qui se tient droit et fier, regardant par-dessus ses vistas.

Paper: Arches
Colours: Q. Gold, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine
Location: Rigaud Mountain, Québec, Canada

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I decided to dedicate my whole day to painting as I have sorely missed it these past few weeks. When I arrived at this place, the sun was shining, the autumn colours were beautiful and as I settled into drawing mode, I had a flow moment — time kind of vanished — and when I looked up again, the mountain had disappeared behind a dense curtain of fog, there were pellets of snow dropping with a loud swoosh on my car window and the beautiful autumn scene was replaced by a nostalgic and eerily soft landscape, where forms were but a shadow of themselves. How could such a change happen in such a short time? Well, this changed my whole painting and I think that I should have used some white paint to dilute some of the intense colours. This is the first time that I ever tried painting a foggy landscape. It was also the first time that I have used Arches watercolour paper and it took awhile to adjust to it, and I loved it. It took well to alot of water and did not bloom easily or warp. Very nice!

J’ai décidé de consacrer toute ma journée à la peinture car ces beaux moments entre un paysage et moi m’ont réellement manquées ces derniers jours. En arrivant sur place, le soleil brillait, les couleurs d’automne étaient belles et je me suis installée en mode dessin et je suis rentrée dans un moment de flow. Quand je me suis levée les yeux, la montagne était disparue derrière un rideau de brouillard intense, des pastilles de neige tombaient sur le pare-brise et la belle scène d’automne était soudainement remplacée par un paysage nostalgique et étrangement doux, où les formes avaient disparues derrière leur ombre. Je crois que j’aurais pu utiliser de l’aquarelle blanche pour diluer les fortes couleurs, mais je n’y ai pas pensé. Ceci était la première fois que j’essayais de peindre une scène brumeuse, et je suis contente.

Colours: Hansa Medium, Raw Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine
Paper: Arches 9″x6.5″
Location: Rigaud Mountain, Québec, Canada

Here is an actual photograph of the scene so that you can see what I was seeing.