Colony Farm
Tonight's location was Colony Farm. Colony Farm is so named because the inmates from Riverview Hospital Sanatorium (also called Essondale) used to farm the grounds there. Now it is a thriving community garden, of which my husband and I have two plots there. This evening we brought our dinner to the garden and after finding a nice picnic table in the shade of a grape vine, I discovered this subject of tonight's painting. This is a mini scene on 4X6 canvas of some nastursums vying for the light around a very low (2 ft. high) fence.
Painting time 90 min. 6:30 - 8 pm
Barnet Marine Park
Tonight's painting is done from Barnet Marine Park off the Barnet Hywy between Burnaby and Port Moody. The view is from looking over the inlet across to Belcarra Park. I was joined by two other artists. We had very nice painting conditions, setting up in the shade to look out at the sun slicing down the inlet to highlight the dried grass of the rock. We had many onlookers stop and observe our different paintings and sketches and it was nice to have the company. While we were painting, an eagle swoooped down in front of us and plucked a fish out of the ocean. I wish I had a camera in my hand instead of a brush. That is one advantage of a camera over painting, lol.
Painting size 4X6
Time to complete- 2 hours
The Pointer Sisters
These Hollyhocks are from my garden, grown from seeds given to us by a 40 year family friend. This year they grew extremely high- 9.6ft to be exact. My first outting in Plein air and I learned a lot. First, don't start a such a large canvas. This was 16X20 and it took me three days to finish it. On the third day very strong gusts of winds came up and began to blow the hollyhocks hither and yon. Being so tall, they were bending over at 45 degree angles. Some of them started to break at the base, luckily it wasn't the ones I was painting. Still I got my son to come over and hold them in position while I took a photo and did the last 20 minutes of work back in my studio.
I named the painting "The Pointer Sisters" because back in Victorian times these flowers were planted around the outhouse pointing the way to the privy. Because of their height they could be seen from anywhere in the garden thus relieving modest Victorian women of the embarassment of having to ask the hostess where the 'little girl's room" was.
