Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

26 December finds me on my 59th birthday, at Ottawa's Hogsback Falls, to do my "birthday painting." I sit on my paint box behind a wrought iron fence and below me the water, leaping and churning like blended toffee and whipped cream, rushes through a channel between vertical limestone cliff and a massive rock that crouches like a "hogs back" in the middle of the river.  The wider view upstream is a fantasy of raging falls, leaping spray and river sculpted ice, but I have only half an hour before sunset and I choose a simpler composition, closer at hand. My camera battery is dead, so I can't begin by taking a reference photo to aid in finishing the painting indoors, so I just "wing it", even though the icy-fingered bush on the rock face before me must be indicated only perfunctorily in hopes that I can return some day soon to do it justice. So this is what I have, on a windy day at -12C just before dusk.

18 December finds me at the easel indoors, getting caught up on my commissions - "remastering" some of my Biodiversity Painting miniatures for people who want them larger. It's sunny outside today with the temperature rising, almost persuading me to paint outdoors, which I haven't done for weeks (having been busy with trying to sell our building) - but plein air painting's no way to fulfil my commissions! There is news of inclement weather all over the world - cold and heavy snow in Europe and the United Kingdom and various kinds of inclement weather elsewhere, disrupting transportation.