3.11.2016 watercolour, pen and ink 11′ x 15″
desktop bouquet
cloud illusions I recall
In July last year Ben challenged us to split our photos in two for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Half and Half. I had taken a photograph of the Wall Centre here in Vancouver surrounded by clouds and titled my post for the challenge Both Sides Now. Perhaps you remember it.
For this week’s Discover Challenge: Song Ben asks us this time to “Tell us a story about a piece of music that stayed with you.” How could I not repeat my love of Joni Mitchell’s song Both Sides Now as I explained in this quote from my post in July 2015:
“I took this photo with my iPhone a few weeks ago looking up at the Wall Centre here in Vancouver. The words of Joni Mitchell’s song, Both Sides Now from her album Clouds, instantly came to my mind and a moment of warm reverie came over me as I looked up at the clouds and remembered hearing her voice for the first time in 1969. I was driving my old yellow Triumph TR2 down the Old Kent Road in London, and as she started singing on the car radio I had to pull over to listen to the rest of the song, a magical moment frozen in time and one which has remained with me ever since.”
Both my love of the song and of clouds themselves have never left me. We are fortunate indeed where we live in Vancouver to enjoy glorious sunsets throughout the year, so often accompanied by wonderful cloud formations. My camera is always to hand to record these masterpieces of nature that surround us every day. What better way to share them with you, both as a gallery and a slideshow, and accompanied once again by the unforgettable voice of Joni Mitchell singing one of her greatest songs.
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.
Joni Mitchell 1967
Eerie
an eerie Halloween monochrome monday for today’s Daily Prompt
and Transmogrify # 2
back to the beach
For this week Discover Challenge: Flâneur Krista asks us to “Observe your city, town, street, or patch of earth and report back — in your favorite medium.”
No surprise that the patches of earth that I love to feature on The Changing Palette, as you know, are here on Kitsilano Beach Park in Vancouver with views out to English Bay.
Yesterday’s morning walk at sunrise was rewarded with these glorious Fall colors in the park…
the silhouetted figures seen between the trees…
and the tankers illuminated out in the Bay.
One final image from the walk you might recognize as I used for an eerie backdrop in my post for this weeks Photo Challenge: Transmogrify.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Transmogrify
“To change in appearance or form, especially strangely or grotesquely; transform.”
Happy Halloween
when it’s raining outside
bouquet of the imagination 27.10.16
how d’ya like them apples
branch majesty
I rescued this majestic branch whilst walking home one day last summer and brought it back to the studio. It was about to be pulverized in a wood chipper but like the photinia that you will remember from my yard work to art work story, it became my model.
Using the small branches from the photinia as drawing tools it started to come to life transforming my empty sheet of Arches watercolour paper one warm July day.
Finally, as I completed the painting today with the brushes from the Gift of the Four Treasures, the spirit of the branch filled the studio once again and its story was complete.
the secret path
Today’s painting was inspired by last night’s broadcast on CBC television of Gord Downie’s film, The Secret Path. The film acknowledges a dark part of Canada’s history – the long-suppressed mistreatment of indigenous children and families by the residential school system and tells the story of twelve year old Chanie Wenjack who died alone beside the train tracks fifty years ago on October 22, 1966 whilst trying to walk home to his family from whom he was taken over 400 miles away
If you can find an hour take the time and see the film, and be as moved as I was. Learn Chanie Wenjack’s heartbreaking story, listen to Gord Downie’s unforgettable songs and music and be inspired by award-winning cartoonist Jeff Lemire’s illustrations. You can find the film here on the CBC website: The Secret Path.
Dedicated to the memory of Chanie Wenjack
Weekly Photo Challenge: Shine
Those of you who follow The Changing Palette will know where I am this weekend.
Whatever the weather
it’s always shining around our beautiful granddaughter.
thechangingpalette 