Plein Air Painting in Watercolours

One of the simplest plein air sketching setups is in watercolour. The number of pieces in your sketching bag or box is minimal since it requires little beyond a piece of paper (preferably watercolour paper), a pencil and a few colours, often available in blocks. There are some exquisite little paint boxes, small enough to fit in your pocket, containing small watercolour blocks of paint along with a little bottle for water and a wee brush. These can be used to do a painting without the aid of a pencil or to colour a pencil or pen sketch, a technique known as pen (or pencil) and wash. This kind of outfit is great for traveling when you simply don't want to be burdened down with loads of painting gear. If you are waiting for a plane or ferry, you can whip this out and have a "quickie" done in no time because you don't have a lot of preparation to do. Here are some pics of the Winsor Newton Sketch Box that will fit in your smallest pocket and a small sketchbook.

When I have more time and want to do something a bit larger on good watercolour paper, I cut paper to size, punch the proper holes in it and place these in a looseleaf binder. This makes for a lot of flexibility and gives you the kind of paper you want. If you are heavy on the pencil drawing be sure to give your work a good spray of fixatif. Here is the binder:

If you add looseleaf note paper to your binder it's great for making notes about your painting experience.

The Merry Month!!!

After years of teaching painting workshops away from home, usually at the request of an Art Group, I taught my first ever watercolour PLAYSHOP at our Henschel Gallery from May 19th to the 23rd and we had a ball! It was a group of seven ladies from all over the map who were determined to have a good time!!! Four days flew by without a hitch and we came away, due to the benefits of a small group, being good friends. Here is a picture of our gang in the workshoproom and another of lunch in our yard.
You may notice on our website that "Up and Coming" has nothing up and coming. The reason for this is not that we are doing nothing, but that we are in a process of change that is still in the planning stages. So bear with us; there will be "Up and Comings"!!!
There will be new reports and ARTALK on the joys of Plein Air painting this month. Throughout the summer I will be out there a lot!
It's so great to do ART again. May was mostly taken up with elderly family members and their Golden Years, which seem to consist mostly of hospitals and medicational side effects. One message rings loud and clear after being involved with old folks: enjoy them while you've got them but also enjoy TODAY!!!

You do what you have to do!

Once in awhile, you just have to follow the Maker's plans for you and put your own on hold. Our Florida trip was cancelled by my doctor, who discovered that I have what they call , "Atrial Fibrillation", a condition in which the electrical impulses that make your heart beat regularly get mixed up and cause the heart to flutter or"fibrillate". In my case my heart is sound but there is a danger of stroke because the blood can coagulate in the atrium. I am now on a blood thinner until I can get a regular heart beat going again, hopefully soon. I feel good but have to holf off on the distant travel until the ticker ticks properly again. My doctor has plans for this.

Plans: May 19 - 23 a watercolour workshop right here in our gallery! This is a definite GO.
May 24- 31 a painting sojourn to The southern end of the island.
June and July will find me in my favourite haunts on Northern Vancouver Island, a huge area that includes some of the most spectacular wilderness in the world.
August will find me close to home. Our gallery will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day from July15th to September 10th.
In Sept./Oct. we will be in Manitoba for the fall colours.
These are the best laid plans of mice and men

Spring has Sprung

The robins are back, daffies are in bloom and the salmonberry blossoms are breaking out, much to the delight of the few courageous Hummingbirds that have flown into an exceptionally cool spring. The inspiration that gets me painting is also here and almost gone, that is the catkins on the alders are creating a colour that drives painters like me crazy. It is a reddish brown with purple undertones in the shade and yellowish overtones where the sun hits them. Because this a reddish grey that is the complement of green, when the alders are juxtaposed against evergreens their usually muted greys become brilliant.

This is a painting I did from a pencil sketch and a few colour notes near our home here in Nimpkish Heights. It is a view looking down the beach that leads to the mouth of the Nimpkish River, the longest river on Vancouver Island. The alder trees visible are on the opposite side of the river.

The sketch is 5 1/2 x 8 inches. In my studio, I painted a 18x24 inch acrylic on canvas. Both are shown here to illustrate how a sketch is used as a basis for further interpretation. I have spent 35 springtimes on North Island trying to capture the essence of it all. Haven't got it yet, but I'm learning!

MEXICO

We are reluctant Snowbirds! We love the seasons of North Island and when many of our neighbours pack up their motor-homes and head for places like Yuma and Phoenix, we put another log on the fire, hunker down with a good book and listen to the rain – a time for R&R. This winter, however, we weakened to the call of the sun and the invitation of our daughter and son-in-law, Kathy and Don Mancell, to join them at their house in The Baja, Mexico. On December 6th we drove to my Mom’s in Surrey and on the 12th flew to San Jose del Cabo where Kathy and Don took us on the two and a half hour drive north to their place in La Ventana.

La Ventana, a small Mexican fishing village, has become “Gringo-ized” by wind and kite surfers. Likely one of the best places in this hemisphere for this type of surfing because of the very dependable winds, it has grown in popularity to where many of the surfers have exchanged their spots in the campsite and built more permanent adobe style houses. The land here slopes away from the Sea of Cortez and nearly everyone has a view of both mountains and an ocean that is never more than a kilometer from anyone’s house. Kathy and Don’s place had an added “Casita”, a self contained unit separate from the main “Casa” (house), that we inhabited It had its own patio facing the mountains that were bathed in colours at sunrise and silhouetted at sunset. Among the fifty or so sketches I did were several views from the patio. The one shown here is a ten by fourteen inch watercolour that shows the incredible Cardon forest sloping all the way to the mountains. The Cardons are a cactus closely related to the Saguarros in the American Southwest. My favourite place to sketch was in the desert among these friendly giants. The holes in the old ones, drilled by various woodpeckers, were often inhabited by other birds. I soon discovered where our humming birds went during the winter. Any time there was a flowering plant, there they were!
Christmas was, strangely, not too different from here, except for the century plants used as Christmas trees. Christmas Eve was celebrated with a monstrous potluck dinner at the campsite on the beach and, later, a huge bonfire and Christmas carols. Church, the next morning, was all in Spanish but meaningful, nevertheless. We arrived home to banks of snow in Vancouver but, to our delight, sunshine and no snow in Nimpkish Heights! Home is where the heart is, don’t you know?

Milestones and Transitions

Transition and painting are not favourable companions for me. I paint the most when: 1. I'm feeling well and energetic and 2. I have an established well worn routine. Both of these have been changed a bit this fall. I had eye surgery that took two months to normalize and during this time we changed our gallery operations from 7 days a week to "Open by Appointment' and stopped custom framing. This is a milestone, since we have operated this gallery for over twenty years. BUT we have not retired! The gallery was wonderful for meeting people from all over the world and both my wife and I love people, BUT it tied us down and often kept me from doing as much PAINTING as I would have liked to.

So, as Bob Dylan put it, "The Times They Are A-changing" and we want to expand our horizons and "roam a bit". I always paint wherever I go and this winter I hope to bring home a lot of scenes from Mexico and Florida. April will find us in the Canadian Shield to paint the breakup of ice on the lakes and rivers and, if the Good Lord is willing and the creeks don't rise, late May and June I'll look for springtime in the high Rockies. North Vancouver Island and home is the world's best place to be in the summer. I'll be back painting my favourite haunts here. So stick with me -I'll keep you posted!

Let me talk a bit about mediums. I'll be traveling by plane to Mexico and Florida and try for portability. My choice for air travel is usually watercolours but as long as you keep your images on paper you can use acrylics or pastel. On site painting with acrylics is somewhat restrictive since they dry so quickly, I've been trying out the Golden Company's new OPEN ACRYLICS that have a drying time up to ten times slower than regular ones. They still dry a lot faster than oils and are a good alternative for travel so you won't have to worry about bringing back wet panels. We tried them out at The Hills workshop and students generally liked them.

When I paint the Shield in Manitoba/Ontario and later The Rockies, we will travel by car and be free to use whatever medium is suitable - probably my nostalgic old oils! The big trick with travel, since I don't have a satellite connection is keeping up with this blog and my website at http://www.henschel.ca/ Meanwhile, Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Frolige Weinachten and Joyeaux Noel! The Jolly Holly, by the way, is in front of our gallery door.

Workshop at The Hills Health Ranch

Back home from the B.C. Cariboo at 108 Mile House.

Here are a couple of pics from the Workshop there. Great group: folks from Prince George, Chase and Barriere as well as local 108-ers. The Cariboo (cowboy country) is full of friends and neighbours!