Winter = Enlarging sketches

Nov 29, 2015
2 min read

Since I live in Canada, we are fortunate to have seasons that bring colour, growth, and inspiration. It definitely breaks up the monotony. I spent a winter in Australia many moons ago, and having Christmas when it's 30+ degrees out just doesn't seem right.

One of my heros and reasons for painting, Canadian painting great Tom Thompson created some of his masterpieces in the winter. His preference was to paint en plein air, and capture the great Canadian landscape in person, but when it was too cold to paint outside, he created some of my favorite paintings in 'Jack Pine' and 'The West Wind' indoors in his winter abode, 'Tom's Shack.'

One might argue that his sketches are actually more interesting the the final paintings. I think there's more energy in his sketches compared to the final works. Not that both aren't beautiful. When I'm painting outdoors and racing against the changing light, I don't have time to fuss and procrastinate. A lot of the time, I'm trying to get the paint on the board as quick as possible and I'm not thinking too much, and I imagine he might have had the same process.

Since it's late November here on Covert Farms, we're in full winter mode. I'm taking my guidance from the great late Tom Thomson, and enlarging select pieces. I'll for sure try to get outside when there's enough sunlight for interesting shadows, as snow shadows are some of my favorite things to paint. But in the meantime, might as well spend some time reworking some smaller sketches into larger pieces. I usually take photos when I'm on location for more detail during this process. Cameras sure can't capture accurate colour and I'll be relying on my sketches for that. Here's some works in progress. Currently, I'm enlarging 'Trees on the Shoreline', and 'Sun-Oka Park'. My goal being to try to knock 8-10 of these 20 x 16's over the coming winter months