Frustrated with My Art Lately - digital painting

I am so frustrated with my art lately.

 

 Haven't finished one painting in 2-3 weeks! I have beeen trying to paint landscapes of familiar northern scenes, but I think I've been away from the north too long. Did get up to the La Cloche Mountains north of Sudbury last summer for a week and had a wonderful time, but I let my husband man the camera, and we just didn't get the kinds of shots I need. He takes panoramic kinds of views and I like closer and more detailed subjects. To be fair, his photos taken from a boat, (and he was not crazy about going to close to the shore because he didn't know the lake and worrried about rocks and weeds), are great for showing what the lake and shore really looked like, but it's a lot of rock and trees. I tried to point out some interesting stumps and things for a focal point, but for the most part we were too far away. Have a lot to learn about photography, and I had better use my sketchbook more next time.

 

Found an absolutely wonderful watercolourist the other day on the web.

 

I can't believe I haven't heard of him, or seen his work before. His name is David McEown and he is Canadian. Here is a link to his website http://www.artistjourneys.com/  He was born in Toronto. Visit his website and look at his paintings, they will give you a sense of wonder and awe at the powerful beauty of nature in many of the 'earth's most endangered landscapes.'

 

I told my husband that I wished I was young, male and strong (You should have seen the look on his face!) so I could go to endangered landscapes and paint them. Might be a bit difficult with a laptop and a Wacom (you never know though!) Need completely wireless Cintinq then digital painters could do plein-air painting too. I bet there is one coming soon, if it hasn't been invented already.

 

Since I won't be going landscape hunting in the north anytime soon, as search for watercolourists who paint northern Ontario was my next best step.

 

I soon found watercolourist Gordon MacKenzie http://www.sixdegreesoffreedom.ca/GordonMacKenzie.htm   

His book The Watercolourist's Essential Notebook Landscapes "A treasury of landscape painting tricks and techniques discovered through years of painting and experimentation" is exactly what I was looking for. (The fact that there was one copy in the very small selection of watercolour instruction books at the Indigo Books at Yorkdale seemed like a good omen to me. I was meant to find this book because it was too easy to find and obtain.)

 

The analogousness of his traditional watercolour techniques to some of my digital techniques struck me as more translatable and adaptable to digital watercolour painting than I expected. For example, his use of masking fluid and packing tape is comparable to my use of the Lasso tool. See my blog post on using the Lasso Tool in Winter Tracery Study. (Hint:) The search bar on the top right of blog section works well to find blog posts with Lasso Tool in them.

 

I think this book is going to help me a lot. It clarifies things I have already been attempting for a long time with varying degrees of success, such as negative painting. I'm hoping it will help me pull it all together better.

 

I posted my first attempt last night in the Work in Progress Gallery Needs a lot of improvement, but it's a step in the right direction. Now, I think it's time for me to stop talking about it and get back to painting work.