For the past couple of weeks I have been reading about painting methods of the past. This started because of dissatisfaction with acrylic gesso as a ground for canvas and trying out an oil ground as a canvas base layer. In reading about the traditional preparation of canvas I started reacquainting myself with methods of painting that happen in steps instead of all at once. What I am doing in this 6 x 8 inch panel is similar to what early painters in oil did. Here you see the initial outline drawing and then a tonal monotone underpainting that the Italian painters called verdaccio that would be followed by layers of glazed colour. I have used mixtures of Burnt Sienna, Paynes Grey, and Titanium White. Next step will be colour derived from a limited palette similar to what painters of 500 years ago used. I’m not trying to recreate what painters did in the past exactly, just changing my methods to have fun and see if there’s something here I can use.

There are times when I grow extremely weary of the depraved immorality and devastating impracticality that I encounter around me and I need to look at something else that at least has the virtue of working. This does not herald some depressing instance of personal misanthropy. Most people around me I see as decent neighbors who I respect and care about. But the effect of the cumulative weight of terrible human choices can become too much so I go to visit another realm where these sad conditions do not apply. This other realm is the world of nature.

Every now and then during my wanderings in the forests of Temiskaming I find flowers that interrupt the drab colours of an overcast day. This is Fireweed, so named because it supposedly grows after a fire. Many of the flowers I see are far from people and they have made me ponder the fact that I may be the only person who sees a particular flower. Nature offers beauty without expectation of results.

This painting is for every forgotten flower.

The watercolour painting I am showing you here was painted at Kerr Lake south of Cobalt, Ontario a couple of days ago. A relatively short walk from the road through thick bush brings me to a tranquil lakefront painting place in a quietly beautiful pine forest. It takes a little less than two hours to hike here from Cobalt. I spend the day painting and reading. I cook a lunch on a little stove that I bring. The forest has too much dead wood and it is too dry to consider a fire these days.