Cathleen Richards-Green

Winter is a hard time for a Plein Air painter in the Canadian winter...but I do find a way around it by drawing or painting from inside my car. I was out a few days ago and did a watercolour of the Entrance at Wilson's Point....not a soul around and the peace and quiet was precious...the painting can be viewed in my Watercolours albumn.
...a week before that I went to Ritchie Wharf Park and sketched the old barn buildings there and include the picture here in this post. I loved the interesting shadow play in the scene. I used pencil + black charcoal and white jelly pen on toned paper.
...I also sketch in the house and was attracted to my Bengal cat, Tigger, sitting on my little electric fireplace in the kitchen...looking out the window....and I'm sure he...like I, was dreaming of spring. I used brown and white inks and watercolour on mixed media paper

I recently worked with a delightful lady from the Ottawa area who commissioned me to paint an historic home on the Miramichi where she lived as a young girl. Several emails were exchanged until I got the idea of what she had in mind.
The home as it stands today had the original front veranda area closed in...so with photos she provided I was able to picture the home in it's original state....and also add the apple tree that she recalled...plus the bench seat with her* as a girl sitting there.

The top photo shows the home as it is today. The bottom left was the first drawing I did to send to my client .....the bottom left was the drawing sent with corrections after discussing changes. That was approved and the painting was begun. You can see it in the Oils albumn.
I titled it  Memories

Ukraine has certainly been on many of our minds in our hears of late.....the Sunflower is their national flower and I decided to paint one for a sister for her recent birthday....after that I painted 2 more as another birthday is coming up and one of my FB friends also asked about purchasing one. 
Here's the 3 I've done so far (These are Acrylics NOT oils just for a change of pace for me)

Every March a group I belong to on FaceBook ( One Week 100 People ) presents a sketch challange of drawing 100 people in one week. 
instead of going for the 100 people, I set my own challenge ..This year it was to study the works of Vincent Van Gogh. I began a few days before the challenge date by warming up with sketches from my news feeds that were full of photos from the war inflicted on Ukraine by Russia.

The following photos are what I accomplished during the warm-up and the challenge week starting with the warm-up news feed sketches.

Last weekend a few of our Miramich Art Core group painted the last of the summer, Figures In The Landscape project.
It was held at the French Fort cove area and we had a wonderful model ...Gandalf! Thanks so much to Allen Goodfellow!
I uploaded my painting ( in pastels) to my Face Book page and it it sold before I even got the chance to put it here on my website....so here's a few photos for you.
With this, my time as president of the Miramichi Art Core has come to and end and we now welcome Wendy Matthews
Stay tuned for news of the 3rd AnnualTiny Picture Show coming up in November!

Continuing on from the last post....For the 2nd of the Figures In the Landscape project we went to Hay Island off Neguac NB ...the day was overcast with the sun trying it's darndest to come through but failing miserably .....some painted some sketched. I decided to draw out my scene on some Arches rough watercolor paper..I love it for the textures in a landscape..though it isn't great for details like faces..which I really wasn't interested in anyway.....it is the figure that is important in this project. I even chose a location so that the model's back was turned to me so that I wouldn't be tempted. Only problem with that decision was that I was near the water line and before I was finished the drawing...it was QUITE obvious that the tide was coming IN! I had to change positions, but seeing that the sun was going to refuse to grace us with it's golden presence I decided to hold off on the painting bit till I got home...with hopes of making this rather dull scene into something more sunny and memorable
It was pouring cats and dogs before I got home...glad I wrapped it up when I did! (Thank you for being my artist model Wendy!)

Here's the scene....the drawing....and the finished painting
*Painters At The Beach* 11 X 14 in. (Can be found in the Art Work Watercolors Albumn)

I'm presently president of our local art group Miramichi Art Core..I seem to be the *Covid* president as I came into the position a few months before Covid began . We've not been able to have meetings since then...but have managed to have our 2nd annual Tiny Picture Show last winter and I'm sure we'll have it again this November too. We've had one paintout together in Loggieville and I was trying to think up something we could do over the summer and decided on a *Figure's In The Landscape* project ....going out into a landscape (a park...a beach.....you get the idea) once a month for June, July, August and hopefully September to paint a figure, modeling in the landscape. It's been a favorite staple of artists for centuries. About 5 of our almost 20 artists have taken an interest in doing it....HEY! Where ARE the rest of you??

Our first outing was at Wilson's Point. The day was gorgeous and our model (Thank you Rose!) was excellent!
Here's a combo photo of my efforts that day (The *Lady Rose* painting can be found in my Art Work Oils Albumn