Nov 3rd…

This morning I was able to slip up to my studio…if only for an hour or so…it has been over a month since I have had a chance to be here…and for the few months before that it was very crowded…but my elder daughter and her beau have found a place of their own and have moved most of their stuff out…so I have breathing room again up here!

I perched at the big table, got out my sketchbook and jotted down some of the ideas that floated around in my head while driving home in the dark with Cariño this past Sunday…it really was a beautiful night…the bright, full moon in a deep grey sky with a gauzy haze of clouds moving about provided dramatic lighting for the skeletons of the mostly leafless deciduous trees and the wonderful silhouettes of the coniferous ones…

On the route that we take across Ontario, using the back roads, we drive through the mixed forest region which makes up the central part of the province...known as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest…so the combinations and varieties of tree silhouettes against the grey sky and the full moon were endless…it was beautiful and mesmerizing…

As I was sketching, I came to the realization that I am going to need a tree book…or a good web site…one that shows the tree shapes for both summer and winter…it is the winter shapes that I am interested in now…although I guess – except for the Tamarack – for the coniferous trees it doesn’t much matter the season…

Here are my starting sketches…I can go ahead with the coniferous (not sure which species this was) painting, but will have to do some research for the deciduous and mixed ones…



































It might be neat to do a triptych of a mixed species scene…sort of like this…except this is just a repeat of the 1 sketch…but then I do have a thing about repetition...