Sarah Lynch

Common Tree

12"X12" Oil on canvas

I have been working on a couple more images from my morning walk last week. I painted them together but will post the other one tomorrow. As usual, I find it hard to know when to stop.

Niagara-on-the-Lake Common is mostly meadow but there are a few lone sentinels like this dotted about.

$200 - please contact me for more information.

May Common

16"X20" Oil on canvas

Anyone who has spent any time in Niagara-on-the-Lake would probably recognize this as one of the military trails that cuts across the Common. Butler's Barracks is behind me and I am walking towards the river, so I am heading due east.

It is around 10 in the morning, so the sun is ahead of me and not yet at the zenith. The shadows are deep and slanting slightly towards me. I have posted WIP here and here

When I am working from a photograph, I am always most comfortable when not too much time has passed since the taking of it. I am not sure that my visual memory is as good as some and I like to be able to "feel" the location still as I paint. Sometimes, like right now, I am lucky in that the weather has remained pretty stable for the past few days, so I can just glance outside the window to recapture the colours and the play of light.

The excellent Karin Jurick started a social art project a couple of years ago called "Different Strokes", whereby she would post a picture every week and invite other painters to give their versions of it. She would then post the resulting works on her blog. I thought that this was an excellent idea, and in fact many others have copied it since. However, after trying for a few weeks to participate, I discovered that I wasn't actually very good at it and nor did I find it very satisfying. I have never been much good at working from other people's photographs. Apart from the fact that it is a practice rather looked down upon by "serious" artists, I find that I have no connection with a subject that I haven't registered personally and so I am unable to do anything much with it.

$500 Please contact me for more information.

NOTL Customs house

7"X5" Acrylic on board

I had to go into Niagara-on-the-Lake yesterday for an early appointment. It was a perfect May day so I took some photos with my iPod. I find that this is the ideal tool for taking reference pictures. It is small and portable so that I can have it with me at all times. The quality of the images isn't very good, but in some ways that is better than a really good photo. All I need is an aide-memoire.

I have featured this building before so you can go here to read more about it.

Port Dalhousie Lighthouse

16"X20" Oil on canvas

This might be finished. I am trying to decide whether to add a seagull but I think that might be a bit too twee. Besides, it might just muck it up completely.

This lighthouse was built in 1879 and is located at the end of the marina pier. Along with the inner lighthouse, which was deactivated in 1988, it was built to aid the navigation of ships into the Welland canal. The light was automated in 1968.

The first three Welland canals came out here at Port Dalhousie. The current, fourth canal is now located a few miles to the east and enters Lake Ontario at Port Weller.

$500 Please contact me for more information.

Houses across the street

6"X9" Watercolour on paper

The weather is about as close to perfect as you can get right now. I did some painting this morning, on a larger piece (WIP here), but this afternoon I just wanted to sit on my porch, so I did a little "urban sketch" of the houses across the street.

Apples in the Window

2.5"x3.5" Acrylic on paper ACEO

I meant to get started on a new piece today but the weather was too perfect. I worked in the garden instead. I painted this little quickie while I was cooking dinner.

Radio Cafe

iPod sketch in Brushes

I recently added the Brushes app to my iPod. I hadn't played with it until today finding the screen size pretty challenging. However, I found myself with some downtime this morning, waiting for an appointment at the lovely MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, so I attempted this tiny sketch.
It was actually easier than I expected and certainly a good way of sketching unobtrusively. Nobody takes any notice of someone using a small electronic device these days. They just assume that you are playing "Angry Birds" or something.

Another Morning on the River

20"X16" Oil on canvas

This, of course is on the bank of the Niagara River, looking towards Youngstown, NY.

I was going to rework an old image again. it was an image very much like this one, probably taken in the same place. I had painted it as a watercolour about three years ago. I had it all sketched out in charcoal on my canvas but it really wasn't working. Then I remembered that I had taken a photograph just a week or so ago at much the same place and I thought I would try that instead. I posted my WIP here, here and here, in the first one you can still see a faint ghost of the other tree behind it.

As usual, I found it very hard to call this done but I think I will leave it alone for now.

$500 Please contact me for more information.

Shed in a Vineyard

11"x14" Oil on canvas

Somewhere on East-West Line, Niagara-on-the-Lake. This is one That I am in serious danger of over-painting. Come to think of it, they are all like that.

$200
Please contact me for more information.

Morning on the River

12"X16" Oil on canvas

I think this one is finished.

Looking east from the bank of the Niagara River around Niagara-on-the-Lake.

$300, contact me for more information.

Orchard

16"x20" Oil on canvas

I have been trying to work on some larger pieces recently. This is one that I am not quite happy with yet but I am going to set it aside for a few days and see how I feel when I come back to it. Composition is always my downfall. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but I don't seem to be very good at fixing the ones that don't.

Niagara Winter Morning 3

12"X12" Oil on canvas

And here is the third.

I really rather enjoyed this format, I should get myself some square canvases.

SOLD

Niagara Winter Morning 2

12"X12" Oil on Canvas

Another of my "Small Feats" paintings.

SOLD

Niagara Winter Morning 1

12"X12" Oil on canvas

I have been busy for the past week or so producing 3 new works for the Niagara Artists Centre "Small Feats" show. This is a juried show, so I don't know how many, if any, will be chosen It was a good exercise for me however, keeping me focused and on track.

I used images that I have painted before and reworked them for the different scale and format. I have a feeling that I will be doing this more and more as I run out of original local images to render. Maybe the Spring will provide new inspiration.

SOLD

House down the hill

iPad painting, Brushes

Sitting at the top of the hill in Pittsburgh. Visiting with a friend and sitting on the deck on the ides of March.

Niagara Postcards

Morning Light

iPad painting

Back to the iPad today. This one came straight out of my head, no reference photo. I used to see this scene every day on my drive into work and it more or less became etched onto my "mind's eye".
I actually did a sketch about six months ago and today I took the sketch and transferred it onto the iPad using some of the methods I have described over the past few days.

Somewhere on I90 ACEO

2.5"x3.5" Acrylic on paper

I love American highways. It may be very unpatriotic of me, but I would rather drive in the States than in Canada any day. For some reason the self-effacing good manners, for which Canadians are so famous, seem to go straight out the window as soon as we get behind a steering wheel. We drive too fast, we tailgate and we pass on whichever side we want. In comparison American drivers are models of good behaviour.

Another January Sky

3.5" X 2.5" acrylic on paper ACEO

I went at this a different way this time. I took an old photo, messed around with it in Brushes with much the same method that I used yesterday by painting on a new layer so that nothing remains of the original photo. Then I used that as the source for my painting.

I am trying to get as far away from the photographic reference as possible, without having to rely entirely on my memory and imagination, something that I am not very good at.

Ultimately I would like to do a series of these sky paintings in a slightly larger scale than my usual 5x7. I would like to create a slightly more abstract effect also, while remaining true to the mood and palette of the original. The colors look a bit off here, but that is largely due to a poor scan.

More fun with the iPad

I have been laid up for a few days for reasons that I won't go into, so I have been playing with the Brushes program on the iPad.
This time I took a watercolour sketch that I did some time ago and again used layers. First I used a layer to trace the basic outlines, then I created a new layer to paint on. I went back to the original sketch and used the eye-dropper to find and save about six dominant colours.
I changed the transparency of the original layer and the paint layer so that I could trace through, while leaving the outline layer on top to serve as a guideline. I find that the trickiest part is remembering which layer I am painting on.
I am really not sure how useful this exercise is, beyond just having fun. It does help me to learn the program and allows me to define the "notan" for a future, larger painting that I may do. It also has the advantage of being easy to undertake while sitting in bed feeling sorry for myself. It certainly isn't any quicker than conventional media, in fact by far the reverse.
I have a couple of other drawing apps that I have downloaded (what else is an artist going to do when she finally aquires an iPad?). Over the next few weeks I plan to try them all out and see which one I like best. So far I have found Brushes the easiest to learn but the others may have features that are worth the extra effort. I will keep you posted.
I would be very interested to hear others' opinions, I notice that more and more of you are experimenting with this new medium. Since the Hockney show in London there has been an enormous amount of publicity about iPad painting and I have to admit that I was inspired initially by Hockney when he first started using his iPhone for sketches a couple of years ago. I am not a big cell-phone user and couldn't justify the expense at that time, but finally decided that the iPad offered enough advantages that I may be able to claim it as a business tool. So here I am.

Sunset East-West line #2

IPad painting

I took yesterday's little painting and traced it in Brushes on a new layer. Then I deleted the painted layer and continued in Brushes. Variation apon variation.

Sunset on East-West line

2.5"X3.5" Acrylic on paper ATC.

Driving home from Niagara-on-the-Lake to St. Catharines at around 5:00 on February evening, this is what you will see.

The image that I used is from a previous year, we hardly have any snow this year.

Snowdrop

More fun with the iPad

Girl on Television

Moleskine sketch

A bit short of subjects today.

Culture in Niagara

Pencil in Moleskine

I attended a seminar today, presented by a new group who are trying to promote culture in the Niagara region. One of the speakers was my friend Odette Yazbeck who is Director of Publicity at the Shaw Festival. The other was Angel Scappatura, arts writer at the St. Catharines Standard. The idea was to provide some of the smaller arts groups with some of the tools they need to get themselves heard. I took the opportunity to sketch the speakers. Neither a good nor a flattering likeness of either of them but at least I tried.
I am going to try to get back into the daily posting habit. Use it or lose it is certainly true for my drawing skills and I find that if I don't draw or paint every day I lose confidence in my ability to do anything. So I may be posting some dross over the next few weeks, but with any luck it will get better.