Got to spend a few days at a friends’ cottage painting with C and P and M just after Labour Day — this is the 4th year we’ve done this and it’s always a blast. Up in the morning, paint all day, eat, drink, be merry.
I paint this big old pine tree almost every time I visit the place. Many of its lower branches have either fallen off or been trimmed in the years I’ve been coming here.
These paintings are a little bigger than I usually do — 12×16″ and 12×18″ — more real estate to play on and a quite different feel to pushing the paint around.
The left fork of this old pine tree was blown off in a storm last winter, a big loss to its canopy, but I love the way it now flounces all to the right.
This is actually the sky over Pine Lake in Muskoka — another friend’s delightful spot, but it was a good warm-up painting for the week from a place also ‘peopled’ by magnificent pines.