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.
Painting to see : Peindre pour voir 