Painting Life in Winnipeg: June 2014

Although the name of this blog is "painting life in Winnipeg", I am very interested in going further afield to paint outdoors. When a family wedding came up that was being held in Edmonton, I suggested to my husband that we make a small vacation out of it. Our plan was to get out to Edmonton quickly and take a little time on the way back to sketch and paint. On the drive out, we encountered amazing scenery along the North Saskatchewan river just west of Saskatoon. The days were bright with beautiful clouds in the sky ... remember I said I was going to paint on the way home. Unfortunately for me, the weather was not quite the same on the return trip but we did spend two mornings at Cranberry Flats south of Saskatoon thanks to a tip from a friend who lived many years in Saskatoon.

Cranberry Flats was named so due to the presence of high bush cranberries. It is situated on the South Saskatchewan river. The first morning we went there it was extremely windy and I had to clamp down my sketch pad just to doing some sketching. The meandering river with its sand bars was a great subject as well as a nice hill with a sandy path winding its way down. I particularly like the local vegetation which consisted of a lot of wolf willow and junipers that crawled over the ground and prevented erosion of the very sandy soil.

The second morning we took our paints with us; I took oil and pastel and Bill took acrylics. The weather was perfect and we set ourselves up on the scenic overlook over the river. I mostly completed an oil study on an 8x10 Judson's carton board and a small 5x7 pastel painting on Ampersand pastel board. One of the highlights was a squirrel that enjoyed hanging around us and even came right up on Bill's shoes. A perfect day of painting!

One of the things I learned from this trip is that it is very hard to find time to paint. There is always something else to do; driving, eating, shopping, etc, etc. It is also hard to find a good spot to paint if you are driving on the main highways. For future trips I will have to consider this carefully if I want to get some serious painting time in.

This particular painting trip also was a test of some new gear that I bought. The day before I left on this road trip, my parcel came from Sun Eden with my new travel adaptor. I bought this specifically for plein-air painting and it worked really well. One of the photos shows an ampersand pastel board set up on the adaptor. This will mean I have a very lightweight setup to do plein-air pastel painting. I also worked with the Ampersand pastel board which I think is fantastic. It's a nice rigid surface and takes layers and layers of pastel beautifully. I also found that you don't get a lot of dust falling which is great when you're on the road and might want to consider working in your hotel room for example. I think I may have to invest in some more of these boards.

In addition to the painting at Cranberry flats, I got some sketching done in Edmonton and on the road to Saskatoon. I have also posted some photos below to support the sketches and paintings I did.