I'm Wonky

That’s a word, right? “Wonky”? If not then I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone that is more grammatically enlightened than myself.

"Plentiful" ACEO
Coloured pencil on Mi-Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne
The image is clearer but the light is blown out, why is this ACEO mocking me?

If I may be so bold, I’d like to officially declare once and for all that I hate Daylight Savings Time and, in this case, the lack thereof. On Saturday night before heading off to bed we had to set the clocks back an hour because the calender told us to... and the newspapers... and every other form of media the Other Half and I were exposed to this past week-end.

Setting the clocks back isn’t as bad as setting them forward but the result is that sleeping schedules are thrown slightly out of whack and, worst of all, I’m really not sure when to eat. Well, I should say that I know when to eat but at the times that I’d normally eat my body is telling me that I’m waaaaay off. It’s very frustrating and I know that for the next 2 weeks until I get used to the time change I’ll probably be spending a good deal of time talking to myself essentially wondering out loud why I don’t just move to Saskatchewan and save myself the trouble.

"Reserved Intensity" ACEO
Coloured pencil on Mi-Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne

On a completely unrelated note does anyone else find it ironic and somewhat cruel that there's a candy store located just steps away from the Weight Watchers office/ store in the city closest to me? Maybe it's supposed to be a test of will power... yeah, that must be it.

It's Nice To Unwind

Well, I have to say that my trip was a much needed one and the weather was fantastic for almost the entire trip with the exception of this past week-end. That said, it certainly didn’t dampen (Hardy- har, get it? ‘Dampen’? Yeah, that was a really bad pun) the trip on the way back to Boston to visit my brother.

I got some awesome pictures and thanks to all the hiking we did up and down mountains my leg muscles are screaming bloody murder at me. What more could one ask for in a vacation? Not much, I suspect.

Autumn ACEO WIP
Coloured pencil on Mi-Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne

While in Boston we made a trip to the Dick Blick store which I affectionately referred to as my trip to “Mecca”. I picked myself up a set of 36 Coloursofts and have yet to stop drooling over using them. I had already purchased some open stock pencils to test them out and after drooling sufficiently over them decided it was high time to pick up a proper set.
In New Hampshire I bought a few things, including a bumper sticker that says “My Australian Shepherd is smarter than your Honor Student”... mainly because it’s true. I don’t normally adorn my vehicle with stickers because when they eventually have to come off they leave that sticky goo behind that requires sandblasting to remove but this sticker was one that allowed me to be smug without having to open my mouth... and that, dear reader, is a most excellent thing.

I also got to pet a moose:

Just call me Dr. Doolittle

Yup, that’s right... a moose!

Okay, it’s actually a wooden moose and I suspect that with my recent encounters of the wildlife kind that I wouldn’t be too keen on walking up to, let alone petting, an animal that could take my head off in one clean sweep. They’re cool from a distance though...


So that’s the ‘Readers Digest’ version of my trip. There was a lot more fun and excitement, including seeing a well dressed man in a Mercedes picking his nose, and I have oodles of pictures that have potential as art material. Most importantly I have great memories and got the rest I needed to fire up the old burners again for doing more art.

My battalion of coloured pencils and I have some work to do... ;)

Where the Wild Things Are

What was it I said in a previous post? The fun (or was it weirdness?) never ends for an artist living on a farm? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was something like that...

What also never ends when living on a farm with woodlands is the endless sightings of wildlife and close encounters of the heart-pounding kind. However, this time there were no mylar balloons involved, I’m happy to say.

"The Last Bale" ACEO
Copyright Rita Woodburne

Let me preface this post by saying that I love wildlife and getting up close to an animal, particularly one that you wouldn’t normally be able to, is exciting and educational as long as you exercise caution and don’t do something stupid like try to pick its nose. That said, when the animal itself takes the liberty of coming closer to you with very little hesitation it can be a bit nerve wracking to say the least and that educational experience can quickly turn into an event that results in one having to change one’s pants... if you get my meaning. So here’s where my tale begins...


On Monday morning Rosebud and I were out walking in the woods as we normally do. We made our way back into the hardwoods and as we were rounding the corner to head back I heard some rustling over the fenceline. I looked over and through the trees I saw a tawny coloured animal and I remember thinking to myself: “Oh look! A baby deer! Awww, isn’t that adora... wait. That’s not a deer...”
It looked at me and I realized I was looking at a coyote, a rather large coyote, with a rabbit hanging out of it’s mouth. Yum.

"Arctic Gaze"
8x10, coloured pencil on Mi- Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne

It was at this point that Rosebud also saw the coyote and decided that it might be a good idea to chase it at which point I yelled at her resulting in her stopping, the coyote running and then her wanting to go after it again.

Apparently this coyote was hell bent on getting to the other side of the property because it back-tracked, hopped over the fence line towards us, went back over again when Rosebud went after it again (which is odd because she’s about half the size of the coyote) and then finally just when we thought it had high-tailed it out of there it crossed about 6 feet in front of us. And again... Rosebud went after it. I, in turn, went after Rosebud yelling her name and to “... get your fuzzy little hiney back here! That doggie isn’t for playing with!!”



After our exciting excursion through the woods the rest of the day was, at best, uneventful if not simply downright dull. Since then we haven't seen anymore coyotes although we have heard them and just earlier this morning the radio reported that a black bear had been spotted a few towns over from us.

Yup, the fun and excitement never ends...

What was it I said not too long ago? Life gets in the way of having fun? Yeah, that was it, and last week there was a whole s#!^-load of life that happened... and not the pleasant stuff either. So today I’m resuming having fun, even if it kills me by golly!


So today isn't going to be a big post but let’s talk about Van Gogh, shall we?

I’ve been reading a lot more of the book that my brother got me, “Vincent Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait in Art and Letters” edited by H. Anna Suh** with great interest. With so much interest, in fact, that I’ve been marking off pages that have letters that I found particularly striking as they pertain to my own project, meaning those that discuss colour, drawings and emotion/ expression.

It’s no big secret that once VG discovered how much fun he could have expressing himself with bright, bold, rich colour could be he went right to town with it. The letters I’ve been re-reading are those that were written just before VG was introduced to the Impressionists and from those letters it seems as though he was very much on the cusp of realizing just what an important impact the appropriate selection of colour could have on the viewer (and how his own feelings are conveyed to the viewer) and it's just this facet of art that I'm quite interested in at this point in my project.


One of the letters that struck me most (so far) was written to Theo in October of 1883 and it was this portion of the letter that I found most intriguing:

"...the sky was an indescribably delicate lavender-white, no fleecy clouds, as they all tended to run together and covered the whole of the sky, but patches more or less toning lilac, gray and white, with odd gaps where the blue shone through. Then on the horizon a brilliant stripe of red, with under it the surprisingly dark expanse of brown heather, and against the luminous, red strip and number of low roofs and small cottages."


I mean really, can the man verbally paint a picture or what?

Something that also struck me with the letters from this time period was the extent that Van Gogh went to to decribe things. In some of his earlier letters he comes across as verbose (to me) but the letters from this period, and those thereafter, seem descriptive in a way that doesn't come across as excessive... and I love it. :D

He's describing an increased passion for not only his subjects but how he presents them to the viewer so they can share in that passion, and if it happens to involve some lemon yellow and pale vermillion so much the better.


So right now I'm thinking more on how I can use colour in my work to "get the point across" as it were without deviating much from my style. Regular readers will know that colour has always been a point of frustration/ angst for me when creating my art but as I progess with this project (and thanks to the VG project from last year) I'm feeling more and more comfortable with using it.


I'm gettin' there, I'm gettin' there...



** Published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York

- both ACEO's, "White Wonder" and "Contemplative" are available for purchase. Please contact me if interested.

All images copyright Rita Woodburne

It's not work

"Quiet Power" ACEO can be bid on here.

Copyright Rita Woodburne

"Gone With the Wind" ACEO can be bid on here.
Copyright Rita Woodburne

So I'm back with another installment on my VanGogh project. I'd like to have a bunch of sketches to show you but those are going to have to wait until next week because my camera battery is charging right now. Guess I should really check these things before hand, eh?
That said, I still want to touch on the subject of the importance VG attached to sketching/ pre-planning for larger works and my own feelings about the process. This isn't going to be a post heavy on VanGogh himself but more a post for myself and what I've worked on over the past week and a half in regards to my sketching.

As I mentioned before, and as anyone who is familiar with VanGogh and his working process will already know, he attached a fair bit of importance to sketching (meaning practicing one's drawing skills in general) and also to planning out any issues that one might have before delving into a larger piece. After all, who wants to get half way through an 18x24" only to realize that you should've moved that birch tree behind the rock rather than in front of it? It could be changed but you just know it'll irk you as you work on the rest of the piece.

I bring this up because there's a large work I'd like to do with the culmination of what I "discover" along the way in doing this project. It'll be done in coloured pencil (and possibly some pastel) but in order to get the image I want I need to cobble together several reference pictures and do some colour, value and shadow adjusting. No small task for myself as I don't often find the need to use several different pictures and collage them together, at least not as many as I have lined up for this piece.

What have I gotten myself into?


I've never done a lot of pre-planning (heck I can't remember the last time I did any pre-planning) for any of my works. I've always felt it was a buzz-kill and this is something that I'm hoping to change or at the very least resolve to embrace as an important learning tool. VanGogh seemed to delight in the whole process of working out problems before putting paint brush to canvas and I often wonder if it had something to do with the immediacy of both his medium and process. Oil paint can be very forgiving and painting with it, without question, is much faster than coloured pencil even on the best of days. Labouring over a piece doesn't strike me as being particularly enjoyable but then again, I could adopt the attitude that it's not labouring over a piece so much as it is savouring the creation of the piece, right? How's that for trying to change one's mind-set? ;)


I'm really kicking myself for not making sure that I had my battery charged because I really did enjoy doing the sketches and I'm noticing that it is slowly turning into more of a habit rather than something I feel I need to do. I had also done some sketches for the larger piece I mentioned earlier and I felt that in doing them little things were falling into place that would help me tackle the larger, final work.
Last week was quite higglety-pigglety for me so I didn't get to do as much sketching as I would've liked but life tends to get in the way of having fun from time to time. When I wasn't sketching I found myself thinking of what I'd like to try next so the fact that it's entering my mind as something to do for fun to pass the time is a good thing, a very good thing. Let's see if it can persist...

Wolf WIP

A yet unnamed wolf piece, work in progress
Copyright Rita Woodburne

Welcome back, dear reader! So today I'm posting another WIP (work in progress) of another Arctic wolf as a companion piece to the two other wolf pieces I have. The other reason I'm doing this is because just the other day I received my invite back to the Bon Echo 2008 art show and since it's a Canadian wildlife/ nature themed show I figured I'd better get another wildlife piece done while I'm feeling in the mood to do one.

As you can see from above all I'm showing at this point is my line drawing and some filling in. As I've stated before, when doing any type of piece that involves an animal (humans included) I always make sure to get the eye done first. The eye for this one is in, but not totally done, there's going to be some tweaking as I get further into the piece.
I'm happy to be doing this one because, like my other Arctic wolf piece, I'm not going to have any "background angst" with this one. It's on black paper. It's a white wolf. It looks classic and that's the way it's going to stay. I love it when I can do a piece like this.

So that's where this one is right now and next week I'll have more to post on it with a bit more detail concerning what colours I'm using and all that other nitty gritty fun stuff. Right now I'm getting ready for the show I'm in this week-end for the Tyendinaga Library's 'Art for Literacy' program. If you happen to be in the area be sure to stop by and say 'Hi' and buy some art to help out the library in purchasing more books and also because I need to buy more band-aids from cutting my own matting.

To all the Americans out there have a super Thanksgiving and be sure to eat some turkey and stuffing for me. Back on Friday with nonsense, keep on art-ing!