Ecoline, ink and micron pen on paper
Summer studio
Lettuces from our vegetable garden
Greens from the vegetable garden
Summer colours are officially in!
- In my work
- In our outdoor studio/office
- In our food
Spring and summer land art from Walter Mason
I have almost completed July’s wallpaper, it will be ready for tomorrow.
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Les couleurs d’été explosent un peu partout!
- Dans mon travail
- Dans notre bureau/studio extérieur
- Dans notre assiette
Walter Mason : land art printemps/été
Le fond d’écran du mois de juillet est presque terminé, il sera en ligne demain!
Celebrating Saint-Jean (Quebec’s national holiday) with friends
These two have to sniff everything new.
Ink, ecoline, watercolour and micron pen
It is now a diptych! But not done yet. *** Un diptyque en cours de route.
Noémie picking daisies *** Noémie cueillant des marguerites
Digitalis (Foxglove) *** Digitale
The summer studio/office — furry accessory not included — where all the work is done these days.
Have a good weekend and bonne Saint-Jean* les Québécois!
* For Quebecers, St-Jean is equivalent to the Fourth of July…
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L’atelier/bureau d’été — accessoire poilu non inclus — où tout le travail se fait ces jours-ci.
Bonne fin de semaine et bonne Saint-Jean!
This one knows everything about farniente.
Baby cauliflower!
Sweet peas are flowering. Nature is so elegant!
Still working on this piece and it’s going to have a blue brother…
Our weekend looked like this: flower picking, gardening, a father’s day dinner, badminton and craft activities with the nephew and niece plus a bit of farniente.
What about you?
How cool is that tree house?
And this building?
We are almost done installing our outside dining & living room/work space/summer studio. I will show you more pictures later. As long as the temperature allows it, I will work outside, well protected under the screen house tent! The cats/foremen seem to approve of the new space; Roupie has already used it many times as a napping ground.
I am becoming an iPhone addict…
Six years ago, I bought a refurbished Blackberry Dinosaurus. It must have been the dullest phone you have ever seen and it was used mainly as an answering machine. About a month ago, I felt it was time to switch for an iPhone. After all, a website programmer has to test on the real thing! I barely had time to play with it until last week but I think I am already hooked! All those camera apps (among other things) are really addictive.
Emanuele Kabu
Ecoline, ink and graphite on paper, work in progress…
Some of the kale seeds survived winter
Sweet peas are emerging and Roupie the Mittens is making his rounds.
A lot of things that were dormant are starting to awaken.
Summers are short around here so nature is in a hurry!
It won’t be long before colour pops everywhere.
The rainettes (tree frogs) have been singing every night for the past weeks. You can’t imagine a more beautiful concert. I have just recorded their song, you can hear it over here…
And this is the song of the grenouille taureau (bullfrog). Some of them hang out in a pond not too far from our house; I think I prefer the sweet voices of the rainettes!
What is your favourite concert?
I rarely know what’s going to happen when I start drawing, forms just happen. But it seems that round and fluffy feathered creatures have made their way through my work recently.
Ink on paper
Ink and acrylic on paper Ink and Japanese paper on paper
They also got to me through my camera.
This is where we pick up our eggs each week. These hens live a good life: they belong to a very nice neighbour who lets them wonder around freely and they end up their lives as old hens, never in a crockpot.
These last ones were taken a while ago:
The owls were photographed at le Refuge Pageau in Abitibi, a very special shelter for animals.
The second photo was taken during a three day eco-bike tour in Outaouais.
And last but not least is a bird that was photographed on our balcony in Montreal. We left food outside for the stray cats, but these birds ate it as much as the cats.
And since we are talking about birds in this post, here is today’s inspiration: the beautiful documentary “A falconner’s tale” by my friend Marc Girard. It’s available to watch on line!
Ink on paper
The kind of monster that hides under the bed.
It looks like me when I started drawing again: paralyzed, hit by the white page syndrome. My hands - and mostly my head - did not remember how to proceed. I was wondering how to get out of that impasse when I remembered the inkblot technique. It is used in psychoanalysis but it can also give you a hand in terms of creativity!
My adapted method (or absence of it!) is simple: you wet the paper, drop big or small amounts of ink and see what happens.
I sometimes find a beast hiding somewhere: bird, bear, fish… If not, I just play around with the shape, add texture and try to give it depth by adding or subtracting ink (wet the paper in some areas and dab gently with an absorbent paper). Working white on black is also permitted!
I’ve been “inking” this way for a few months. I can now control a little part of what happens by using more or less water on the paper or by directing the brush a certain way when I drop the ink, but my subconscious still do most of the work. And that’s fine that way. For now.
Ink and acrylic on paper
I will leave you with a few pictures from around where I live (the forest at the back and the small lake in front of our house).
Have a good weekend!
