Studio H Canada International Artists Residencies

Heidi has asked me to join her on-line community at Studio H. For my first foray I thought I’d write about my recent visit with Heidi and Michael and share something of the exciting view and one watercolour I did while there.

For those of you who have not visited the Victoria region and the Highlands of Metchosin, I must warn you it is a very inspiring place for any artist to visit, be inspired and to create. Every time I visit Heidi and Michael I sketch and paint the view from their living room and dining room windows or out on their front deck. Over the years I have painted small oils, various watercolours, numerous sketches turning those sketches into larger paintings and using the images for relief prints.

Last week’s visit resulted in four 8″x24″ pen sketches and one 10″x22″ watercolour with pen. One of the challenges working on location be it outside or the comfort of a living room looking out a window is the constantly changing view due to the changing light, cloud and weather conditions. The morning I painted the watercolour, I laid down the first warm wash of the first-morning sun reflecting on the low cloud cover. I used yellow then cadmium red above the pen rendered cityscape view of Victoria. Then the light changed. When I looked up from applying the four wash strokes the warm colours were completely gone and the sky was grey. Thus I completed the watercolour studying the remaining landscape with the influence of grey lighting. I was fortunate to have caught that momentary colour and light show in the lower clouds and to have painted that small window of the reality of the Victoria dawn.