Friday, March 28, 2014

NCO of the 17th Lancers

I felt like drawing some soldiers in the striking uniforms of the 19th century. This is a sketch for a coloured illustration - the final version will be similar in style to my earlier picture of a mounted officer of the same regiment.

This drawing depicts a non-commisioned officer of the British 17th Lancers - one of the regiments of the Light Brigade who made such an unfortunate charge in the Crimean War of 1853-56. He's not so fancily dressed, as it turned out - this is the uniform worn into combat.



It was drawn with pencil and micron markers on a strip of brown butcher's paper.

Who's a lonely pony....

Which led me to the sinister reflection that a horse that rides no shadow carries a cruel companion.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Try Not To Complain

An oil pastel I had the whim to make a few nights ago.  The lips are on the reverse side of the translucent film I used.


Friday, March 21, 2014

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Aerial Knife

College band Aerial Knife played at the Grad Club at the University of Western Ontario; I was in the audience.



Thursday, March 13, 2014

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

A black night in Venice

"Venice often makes one feel loneliness. It does not console and does not enlighten like Florence or Rome… And the water! The water strangely fetters and absorbs all thoughts, just as it absorbs all sounds here, and an extremely proofed silence lies upon one's heart."  -Pavel Muratov, The Images of Italy, 1911.





A small painting in gouache and watercolour, done by night in Venice. This picture highlights one of the great problems of on-site painting at night: not that you can't see your subject, since an atmospheric picture is the point, but that you can't see the colours on your palette.