Bookmaking!

It's nice to try a new creative form so when a friend told me about a workshop for bookmaking taking place near her studio I jumped at the chance. I've always wanted to do this. It looks like there may be more classes in the future too. This is my first effort. I've already bought paper to have a go at another one on my own. Wish me luck. I'm planning to give it as a gift. Well, that's the plan now. We'll see.

I can see Christmas presents...

Inspiration needed

Well today started out as a beautiful day but I needed more than that for inspiration. So, you dial up an artist when you need help and plan a spontaneous trip out to the westend of the city to go to a great art supply store. You buy photo paper you don't need but mat board that you do. You even try to spur on the painting (I haven't done any lately as you can probably tell from this blog!) so brushes were bought and a lovely travelling watercolour sketchbook. Which led me to think, our trip to France is just over a month away! On my return with my goodies I wasn't entirely done there. I also purchased a photo magazine that came with a cd with really good workshop videos including one for Lightroom (still trying to figure that one out). So, now I'm combing through my old photos looking for inspiration there before adding more photos next month and also playing with some new textures and borders (thanks to PhotoRadar). Not entirely happy with it but I'm going with the feeling that I'm just experimenting and playing tonight. This one was taken last October with my lensbaby on my camera so it already had texture and a strange colourcast to work with. More serious work to come.

San Francisco and Paris?

I loved this San Francisco building when I saw it. It's actually a really interesting green colour and I'm sure it is probably cast-iron. I also remember a similar image that I did of a Parisian building so here they are together.

San Francisco tram

Well, I haven't done one of these for a while. I did yellow taxi cabs like this for a photo of New York so this yellow tram caught my eye while I was going through my photos.

Red?

While seeing if I could improve the saturation of the reds in the Eastern Bakery photo, this happened and I like it.

Shop change

Better? I took out the Wok Shop title from next door and added a bit more texture while I was at it. Just realized that both shop images from San Francisco feature bakeries. Hmm...

San Francisco shop

Here's another San Francisco shop image. It took a bit longer than I planned to get another image completed. I do feel like I was productive this week, just not in this area. And now that I look at it on here I think the "Wok Shop" is distracting even if I love the name of the store. The main focus should be the Eastern Bakery. I love how this bakery looks like it probably did from its opening.

More to get on with for the Christmas show in November...

Lola

Just one more. Taken in San Francisco at the Presidio. I got my only glimpse of the Golden Gate bridge from here (half covered in fog or half visible) after meeting with the people from the California Watercolor Association and seeing their fab National Exhibition at the Officer's Club there. I spotted "Lola" in one of the parking lots.

San Francisco

Just starting to get some time to go through my San Francisco pictures. I feel like I haven't even looked through my Spain and Montreal photos properly. I plan to sit down with them, possibly Friday, and really go over them - see what will become photos with some tweaking and what may become inspiration for painting. I have a sale to plan for before Christmas and I really just need to get back in the game. And before you know it, that will be upon us.

Continuing the shop theme but with a change of scenery is this shop from San Francisco. More to come!

Update

Well, it's been a long time since I posted anything. I wonder if anyone has even noticed. If you had, here's a update on life since I disappeared from blog-land.

Shortly after putting up the last two shows I got a request to show 4 more works at a show in an Vintage store Love Me Two Times. That show is still up and running since it's had some great comments.

After dropping off my work for that show, I left for San Francisco for a week. There I met up with members of the California Watercolour Society who were having their national show out at the Presidio. It was an amazing show and so nice to hear how another watercolour society is run and organized. I think we can learn a lot.

Back from that and I got some freelance work on an touring exhibition. I may tell you which one when it gets installed. I also had a painting commission from my mother-in-law of my in-laws' house (as shown above in detail and nicely framed) and a husband going back home so I needed to get that done quickly so he could bring it with him. That was the only painting I've done since the library show and my paintings from Spain.

But I have loads to work with and a plan to hold a sale in November. There's been so much inspiration from this year's trips and another planned for France in the fall. Now I just need the time and the focus to sit down and work through them. It feels weird not creating lately. But the approach of Autumn I'm sure will change that. Even the cooler weather has me inside doing this today on Labour Day weekend. My photography club will also be coming off its hiatus. I also realized it's been over a year now since this little blog experiment has started and I don't want to see the finish of it.

So more soon!

Another Show is Up

In less than an hour it was all done, pictures, labels etc. On at the Woodside Square library until August 4th.

The Show must go Up!

So yesterday morning was spent putting up a display of my photos at the Cozy Cafe on the Danforth in Toronto. This isn't far away from where I displayed my watercolours during the Art of the Danforth. I went with a cafe/bakery theme so lots of photos of boulangeries in Paris and even cafes in Berlin (as seen above).

Still working on shopfront photos. I'll include one here that I particularly like from Barcelona. I think I'll also add in some of the modern day shops aka "big box stores." I'm still working out how to present these. They are driving so many individually owned stores out of business. Luckily in many parts of Europe this hasn't happened like it has in some small towns in the states. It really is more to do with the make-up of the town and how far away the big box stores have to be there to find the amount of land they need. It's also a different mentality although that has changed too. My "aging" of these stores to look like they're from the past might become reality sooner than we would like. It's even becoming harder to find the more traditional shop front since many are becoming so modernized with huge marble tiles, lots of glass. Anyway rant over.