Sleigh Ride!

This painting has been very popular for my collectors and also licensing clients. It is the perfect Christmas image, both nostalgic and exciting! The horses are galloping briskly along the roadway with a frisky dog leading the way. The period dress of the sleigh's occupants suggest Victorian times, when horse and sleigh were the main mode of winter transportation. You might also notice a buffalo skin rug in their laps, which was used to keep travellers warm. The old wooden pump in the lower right corner is now a thing of the past. These pumps were carved entirely out of wood by skilled craftsmen!

The limestone house in the background was once owned by my wife and I. The beautiful blue spruce tree stands just as I have painted it, beside the house in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The historic stone church in the background actually exists in Barriefield, just across the Rideau River.

I chose to paint a colourful winter sky in keeping with the animated feeling of the overall painting. This gave me the opportunity to reflect all of these colours in the snow and gives the picture additional life. The painting measures 18 inches high by 24 inches wide. It is painted in alkyd paint on a canvas support. The original is not for sale, but prints are available at: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/richard-de-wolfe.html Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Fallen Angel

I like to do art photography as well as painting. This is a shot I took of a cement cast angel that usually resides on a raised portion of a bird bath in our back yard. I also like to write, and I am currently working on my first novel. I am considering this photo as the basis for the cover design, should it ever make it into print. I also offer this photo as an art print on Fine Art America. You can find many more of my photos and art prints at: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/richard-de-wolfe.html

An Old Fashioned Christmas

I thought it was time to post a real Christmas painting. I call this one "An Old Fashioned Christmas". Plenty of nostalgia depicted here, about a much slower and innocent time, when most people lived in the country or at least very small towns and villages across Canada and the United States. In those days the main mode of winter transportation was by horse drawn sleigh or 'cutter'. The scene is typical of many communities in Easter Canada and the North- eastern United States. It is dawn on Christmas morning, and people are gathering at the church for an Early Christmas service.

My composition is based on an "S" pattern. The eye enters from the lower left following the direction of the horse and sleigh, over the bridge to where the figures in front of the church are congregated, and finally the church itself. The stone mill beside the church and the mail boxes in the lower right corner lead the eye back to the horse and sleigh approaching the bridge and the whole process is repeated. The snow covered spruce tree acts as a visual stop and keeps the eye from wandering off to the left.

The painting measures 48 inches wide by 30 inches high. It is painted on stretched canvas, and as I usually do, I worked in alkyd paint. I found this cutter in a Sotheby's auction catalogue and I loved the ornate style. It is being pulled smartly by a high stepping Hackney Horse.

Puppy Love - Step Five

I have resolved the dilemma of what to do with the bedding and cushions by using a colour scheme that is primarily purple with golden yellow accents. The purple is a restful, nocturnal colour and the gold is on the opposite side of the colour wheel, making it the complimentary in this case. It ties in nicely with the colour of the girl's hair, the puppy and the teddy bear, too.

I have created some dramatic, low lighting on the cushion in the background and deepened the dark brown behind them. There is now a distinct background, middle ground and foreground in the picture. This creates a feeling of depth in the picture and helps build a strong, interesting composition.

Detail and depth of colour are added throughout the painting, and finally, highlights are added at the very last as the finishing touch.

Puppy Love - Step Four

I continue to add detail, slowly building up colour and form primarily with thin washes and glazes using mat medium. I darken the background with a mixture of burnt umber and black to really punch out the foreground. Everything other than the bedding and pillows seems to really be coming together at this point. I am still undecided about what to do with the cushions in the background.

Puppy Love - Step Three

At this stage I begin introducing local colour throughout the painting. I wash in flesh tones on the face and arms of the sleeping girl. I begin accenting details on all three characters in the picture. Simple washes of colour are blocked in on the blanket and cushions behind the figure. I block in the hair with a wash of colour, then add initial detail with burnt sienna. I do the same with the puppy and the teddy bear, then concentrate on adding the most detail to the central character, the puppy.

The teddy bear leans into the picture and the girl's arm leads the eye to the puppy and then to the girl's face. The flow of the hair leads the viewer's eye to the cushions in the background. These cushions act as a 'backstop', leading the eye back to the teddy bear and the cycle is repeated, keeping the viewer's eye within the picture, always returning to the puppy and the girl's face.

Puppy Love - Step Two

Once the drawing is well fixed, I tone the entire surface with a thin wash of blue-gray acrylic paint, thinned heavily with mat medium and water. I add some slightly darker washes of the same colour, particularly in the bedding. Next, I begin building form and detail to the teddy bear, puppy and sleeping girl. The last thing I do at this stage is to block in the background with a heavier wash of burnt umber.

Puppy Love - Step One

I thought it time I posted another painting progression, since I haven't put one up for quite a while. This is a picture I am painting primarily for licensing. Companies pay me a fee to use this type of art to illustrate a product such as puzzles, calendars, greeting cards, soft goods, etc. for a specified period of time.

This piece is titled "Puppy Love". I started out by doing a detailed drawing on illustration board. Once I am happy with the drawing, I spray it with workable fixative, then seal it with acrylic mat medium. I also give the back of the illustration a quick application of mat medium to prevent serious warping as the picture dries. If you only paint on the face side of the board, it will often curl due to tension caused by shrinkage of the drying paint. An application on both sides of the sheet counter acts this tendency.

Weather's Changing

I don't paint much wildlife anymore, but at one time, the genre represented a large percentage of the paintings that I produced. When I was a child, birds were my passion, especially the ducks and geese that frequented the Thousand Islands region. I learned much about drawing and painting by observing them and then trying to capture their likenesses on paper or canvas.

The Lesser Scaup or ‘Blue Bill’, as many locals know it, is a diving duck that will feed and rest in the thousands along the lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River districts during the migration south each autumn. They nest in the Arctic but they will spend the winter anywhere from the US/Canadian border to as far south as Central America.

This painting shows both male (purple/black heads) and female (brown heads) of the species, on a beautiful autumn day, but ominous clouds are building, suggesting a change in the weather is coming.

This painting measures 16 inches by 20 inches and it is painted in alkyd on stretched canvas.

Golden Lake

I want to stay with the autumn colours for a while longer. This is a great time of year in the northern hemisphere. A day like the one in this painting is something to be savoured against the cold, barren days to come.

This scene is typical of lake and river country throughout Southern and Central Ontario, Quebec, and the North Eastern United States. The reds and golds of hard and soft maple, white birch, oak, beech and ash trees contrast beautifully with the deep greens of white and red pine, spruce and cedar.

I wanted to play up the crystal blue sky and fluffy white clouds against the strong yellow and gold of the birch and maple trees in the foreground. This is echoed in the shoreline foliage in the middle ground and again in the hazy distant trees in the background. The composition is designed so that the trees in the foreground lead the viewer's eye into the picture to the pines on the opposite shore in the middle ground. These trees, in turn, guide the eye back into the upper foliage of the foreground trees and back around once more. The ripples and abstractions in the water reflections give the painting a feeling of life and movement.

The painting is done in acrylic paint on stretched canvas. It measures 16 inches high by 20 inches wide.

Geraldine

I decided to stick with the boating theme once more, but this time it is an autumn scene, in keeping with the change of seasons. I am always amazed by how quickly summer seems to end and autumn begins with cool nights, changing leaves and shorter days. It is one of the nicest times of the year to be on the water provided the sun is shining and the winds are calm.

The Geraldine is a restored steam yacht, that is now on permanent display at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York. At one time, boats like this were common on the St. Lawrence River. In the background is a 1000 Island landmark, St. Brendan's Church, at Rockport, Ontario.

I started this painting as a demonstration at an art show. The painting measures 16 inches by 20 inches high. It is painted in alkyd on canvas panel. Prints are available.

Elusive

Every year, about mid-summer, there is a show and auction sale of antique boats at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York. I caught this wonderful mahogany speed boat, a fore runner of the modern 'cigarette boat', as it left the Alexandria Bay boat basin during the Antique Boat Show several years ago. She has just passed the Sunken Rock lighthouse, at Alexandria Bay, New York, heading back upriver toward Clayton. When the captain opened the throttle, she was gone in a flash.

I loved the way the cumulus clouds were building in the sky and the way the sun shone on the highly polished varnish finish on the hull of the boat. The long, narrow shape of the canvas adds thrust to this composition, and the bow-view accentuates the length of the boat in relation to the size of the figures in the cockpit. The original painting is done in alkyd on a canvas panel. It measures 12 inches by 24 inches. It now hangs in one of the beautiful old summer homes on an island on the Canadian side of the river.

Boldt Castle

This is another example of a painting that I did of a boat in the 1000 Islands. I saw this small, antique sail boat, with the bright red sail and I knew I would have to paint it. I took a number of photos, circling the craft in a power boat, and I am sure the sailor wondered what I was up to.

In order to create an interesting composition, I used the image of the sailboat to create a lead-in to the castle on Heart Island in the background. The six story, 120 room mansion is a full size Rhineland castle, built by George Boldt as a wedding present for his beloved wife, Louise.

In 1904 tragedy struck and Louise died from tuberculosis. Construction of the castle halted immediately, never to resume. Broken hearted, Boldt never completed it and he never returned to the island again.

The picture is actually only part of a larger painting that I did of the entire island, which features stone buildings at either end in addition to the castle itself.

Swell

I love to do paintings of the Thousand Islands, and antique boats are special subjects to me. There is no place I enjoy spending the day more than on the water where I grew up. This spot is just a half mile from my old home, near Rockport, Ontario.

"Swell" is a beautiful example of a 34 foot Elco Cruisette that was built in 1925. She is seen here passing smoothly under the Thousand Island Bridge on a warm, misty morning, as the sun begins to burn through the river haze. You can almost hear the throaty melody of her 38 HP, 4 cylinder inboard engine, as it pushes her smartly through the calm water at a respectable 10 MPH. Antique boats like this one are still fairly common in the Thousand Islands and they are highly prized by their owners.

I painted this picture on cotton canvas, using alkyd paint, applied very smoothly. It measures 16 inches wide by 20 inches tall. Occasionally, I am commissioned to paint antique boats, such as this one, for their owners. Prints are available for this and a number of other antique boat paintings that I have produced. Check out www.richarddewolfe.com for other examples.

Lost In Thought

This painting is a little bit of nostalgia from my youth. I grew up in farm country, and though I did not live on a farm at that time, I did spend much of my time exploring farms and of course, fishing whenever possible. What could be more idyllic for a boy than a clear summer day, accompanied by his dog, with a can of worms and a make-shift fishing pole?

I painted this picture on stretched canvas, using alkyd paints. It measures 18 inches high by twenty-four inches in width. Prints are available.

Farm on Warden

Sometimes I like to stop and document a quick impression of a scene in a small, thumb-nail sketch to be referred to later for a larger, studio painting. This little piece is called 'Farm on Warden'. It measures just 4.5 inches by 6 inches. I painted it on an artist's sketch pad, first doing a quick pencil sketch, then quickly painting over that with acrylic paints, which are perfect for this type of work. They offer a full range of coverage from ultra transparent to heavy opaque, and they dry almost immediately. They are water proof and completely permanent. The colours are also particularly brilliant and there is a relatively small colour shift when dry.

By working this way, I can achieve a degree of impressionism that usually escapes me in more carefully planned works. When I attempted to recreate the feeling of this small sketch in a larger painting, I found that I preferred the small size and casual spontaneity of the original, so I framed the sketch instead.

I used to drive past this spot almost every day on my way to my studio in downtown Toronto, back in the days when I worked as a full-time illustrator. On this particular day, I could not resist the temptation to record the scene. As is so often the case, I am really glad that I did, since it no longer exists in this way. I especially liked the way the sunlight struck the face of the distant farm house and also the split rail fence that leads the viewer's eye into the picture.

Daisy Chain

This is another piece of art that I produced some time ago, specifically for art licensing. I thought the idea of pink pigs all in a row and sound asleep would make an interesting card motif or maybe a border or who knows what! Unfortunately, my licensing rep is not into pigs at all, so this image has not been promoted yet. Should you be interested in licensing it, please let me know so I can tell him 'I told you so'.

The painting measures twelve inches high by twenty-six inches in length. It is painted on illustration board in gouache (opaque watercolour). If you are an artist and you have never tried this medium, it is well worth the effort. It is unlike any other medium I have used. Right out of the tube or jar, it goes on flat and completely opaque. It dries quickly but it always remains water soluble. You can mix it with transparent watercolours, acrylics, dyes or any other water based medium. Have fun!

Painterly Illustration

During the 1980's, I shared studio space with several other artists and a photographer. One of these artists (we were all illustrators in those days) was Stewart Sherwood, one of the most talented and prolific artists I know. Stewart has produced paintings and illustrations based on a wide range of subject matter. He is also amazingly fast, often producing a number of finished pieces in one sitting.

Stewart handles any subject with warmth and humour. Today, Stewart paints primarily for the art licensing market and is one of the most successful artists in this field today. As I mentioned, his subject matter is broad, including Christmas, nostalgia, portraits, sports, animals, landscapes and so much more. I particularly love the many paintings of children that he has produced over the years, many for the Bradford Exchange, as collector plates. For more information on Stewart Sherwood and many more examples of his wonderful art, visit his web site at: www.stewartsherwood.ca

Confederation Park

I love to paint pictures of the Thousand Islands, the St. Lawrence River and boats. This painting is one that I did several years ago. It is the Confederation Boat Basin in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, not far from where I live. In the background is Kingston City Hall and Confederation Park. This is a great place to spend a summer evening near the water when the weather is warm. The view here is from the outer docks, looking back toward the lights of downtown Kingston. The sunset is rapidly fading into twilight and the ducks have settled for the night in the shelter of a boat slip in the foreground.

The painting is sixteen inches wide by twenty inches high. It is painted on cotton canvas with alkyd paint. Prints are available.

Starry, Starry Night...

Here is something very beautiful, both visually and musically. Don McLean's recording of "Starry, Starry Night" expresses the emotions that many people feel for the great impressionist artist, Vincent van Gogh, who experienced very little artistic acceptance or financial success as an artist during his lifetime. Sadly, after only ten years of passionate and wonderful painting, he took his own life. Ironically he has since become one of the most sought after and highest priced artists of all time. The visual presentation of van Gogh's paintings blend beautifully with the sad but beautiful music of Don McLean. Enjoy...

Passing Giants

A true giant of illustration passed away last week. Frank Frazetta, the undisputed king of Science Fiction and Fantasy art, died from complications of a stroke in Fort Myers, Florida, on Monday, May 10, 2010. Frank was 82 years old.

I can't describe how much I looked forward to every piece of illustration that carried the distinctive signature of Frank Frazetta when I first became interested in illustration as a very young teen. I never lost interest in or my love for the work of this tremendous painter. Warren Publications introduced 'Creepy' and 'Eerie', two brand-new high-end comic magazines in the mid-sixties. Through the amazing art on their covers, I was introduced to the work of Frank Frazetta. In earlier years, I had enjoyed the comic strip, Lil' Abner, which also featured the art of Frank Frazetta, but I was unaware of that at the time. Later, Frazetta produced paintings for the covers of the 'Conan' series of pocket books, written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprauge de Camp. The painting used on the cover of 'Conan the Adventure' recently sold for one million dollars! How many fine art painters can claim as much?

So long to another unique artist-idol from my youth. Rest in peace, Frank.

For more insight into the work of Frank Frazetta, please visit http://drawn.ca/ or follow the direct link to http://drawn.ca/2010/05/13/frank-frazetta-1928-2010/

Mya a.k.a Woofie

I sometimes do portraits of pets for their owners. Most of the time, the subject is a horse or pony, a dog or occasionally a cat. This pup was a very exuberant model, much more interested in play than she was in posing. It was no easy task to get a photo of her to paint from, let alone expecting her to sit still while I painted from life.

She is a sheep dog, a border collie cross and her name is Mya. I preferred to call her "Woofie", since her boisterous nature just didn't seem to fit with a name as formal as Mya. I tried to capture her love of life and playfulness in this small, simple portrait.

The painting measures 6.75 inches wide by 9.75 inches high. It is painted in acrylic paint on art board. Prints are available.

Best Friends

I can hardly believe I missed posting anything throughout the entire month of April. A trip to Florida with my granddaughters definitely changed the routine, and I had lots of catching up to do when we got back. As always, the month flew by and now it is May.

In honour of Mother's Day, I thought the painting "Best Friends" might be an appropriate pick.

This painting is not truly original, it is a copy of an old print by Virgilio Tojetti, who was born in Rome, Italy, in 1849. He was a resident of San Francisco up until 1883, then moved to New York City, where he died in 1901.

One day, a client brought a print that was more than 100 years old into my studio. It was in extremely poor condition, due to water stains, tears and acid deterioration of the paper. He asked me to restore it, which I did. When he picked up the reconditioned print, he was so pleased that he asked me to paint a new one. I did so, signing my work after the original artist, "Tojetti".

I painted my version on canvas, using alkyd paint. The painting is much smaller than the original, and measures 18 inches by 24 inches. The dog in the picture is a Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog. These are beautiful, faithful dogs who are great companions and protectors of children.

Collecting the Sap

Here is another painting that I think is well suited to the season, here in Ontario. Our maple sugar and syrup making season has just ended for another year. The tradition of collecting sap from sugar maple trees is well known in eastern Canada and the north eastern USA. It is done in early spring when the sap stored in the roots of the maple tree begins to travel back up the trunks of these trees, to feed the buds that will soon blossom into leaves. Small holes are carefully drilled around the circumference of the tree and 'taps' or 'spiles' are driven into these holes to collect some of the sap as it flows upward. The sap, in turn, is allowed to drip into pails attached to the tree, or as is most common today, into a network of plastic tubing, which may run for miles to a central collection point. The sap must be boiled down quickly to avoid spoilage. It takes approximately eleven gallons of raw sap to produce one gallon of delicious maple syrup.

For the most part, tractors and modern equipment have replaced the horses and sleighs that were traditionally used in collecting the sap for delivery to the 'sugar shacks' for the long process of boiling over a wood fire. If you look hard enough, it is still possible to find teams of horses, such as the Belgians pictured here, being used in the bush to bring tanks of sap to the wood fired evaporators and maple sugar shacks.

The title of this painting is 'Collecting the Sap'. This painting measures 18 inches by 24 inches. I painted it on stretched cotton canvas, using alkyd paints. Prints are available.

Madawaska Sunset

I thought this painting would be appropriate at this time of the year. We are down to the last days of March, spring is officially here, and the weather is definitely showing a warming trend. I painted this picture some years ago, when we owned a cottage on the Madawaska River, south of Algonquin Park, in Ontario, Canada. This is the view from that cottage, which sits high on the river bank, just to the right of this painting. It is a late afternoon picture and the sun is setting in the west. I loved the contrast of the warm light reflected in the water, surrounded by the cold blue of the melting ice in the foreground. The three Canada Geese tell a story of the changing seasons and the new life which will soon burgeon throughout the north.

The title of this painting is 'Madawaska Sunset'. The painting measures 18 inches by 24 inches and it is painted in alkyd paint on stretched canvas. Like most of my paintings, prints are available in a variety of sizes.

Toronto Illustrators

Another month has flown by and I have found little time to add a new post to my blog. My last few posts have been in reference to my previous career in illustration. The industry has changed a great deal in more recent years, and digital art, created with the use of computer graphics software predominates these days. You can view the work of a number of illustrators, such as the one I have posted here, by visiting www.torontoillustrators.com.

Sports Illustration

In honour of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games wrapping up today in Vancouver, I thought I would post an illustration that I was commissioned to paint for the Canada Games when they were held many years ago in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This illustration was painted on a fine weave cotton canvas with acrylic paints. It is hard to beat the intensity of colour that you can get with acrylics. Once again, this is a montage but this time there is a full background included. I enjoyed getting a feeling of animation in the water in the foreground and the flapping flags in the background. The colour scheme is vibrant because of the rich warm skin tones of the swimmer contrasting with the icy blue of the water around her.

Auto Racing Montage

As I have mentioned before, throughout the 1970's, 80's and into the 1990's, I worked full-time in Advertising Illustration. Many of my clients were in the automotive field, such as Goodyear Tire. I produced a number of illustrations for Goodyear during that time period and this is one example of the work I did for them. What could be more fun to paint than a montage of racing machines diverging at dramatic angles?

I tried to create an interesting and exciting composition that sweeps from back to front in a dynamic and dramatic curve. The rakish angle of the Goodyear Racer in the foreground seems to suggest thrust and speed. A montage must be carefully designed to work as an interesting unit without confusing the viewer. Often it is done as a vignette, so positive and negative shapes must be considered as well. The colour scheme must work as a unit and the design should carry the viewer's eye into the picture and keep it there. A variety of shapes and sizes of the elements within a montage are required to create visual interest. The whole thing can be a lot more difficult than you might think, at first glance.

I painted this illustration on a very fine woven primed canvas, using acrylic paint. Before I began to paint much detail over the finished drawing, I loosely painted a thin wash of colour over the general area of each individual scene, using the local colour of each one. After I painted the various elements in detail, I back-painted around the illustration with white gesso to softly define the shapes.

This Time For Sure & Home For Supper

This one is called "This Time For Sure". I wanted to paint a typical day of pickup hockey, played by a bunch of country kids, on a frozen farm pond. When I was a kid, we played like this, sporting any equipment that we had. Many times we would not have skates available and we would play in our boots. The 'net' would usually be non-existant too, and we would improvise with a couple of blocks of firewood from home.

Once again, this painting is done in alkyd oil on stretched canvas and measures 16 inches by 20 inches.

This one is called "Home For Supper". It features the same scene, but in the moonlight instead of mid-afternoon sunshine. Often, we played on the ice until the sun went down and supper time would arrive after dark. Finally realizing that we were late, we would drop our sticks and head for home , a hot meal and the warmth of a country kitchen.

I painted this picture smaller than the others, only 11 inches by 14 inches. It is painted on canvas using acrylic paint.

Dreams of Glory

This is another of my series of paintings on the theme of country kids and hockey. This one gets the girls involved too. I call it "Dreams of Glory". When we were kids, it was common for the boys to dream of playing hockey in the NHL (National Hockey League) and the girls would dream of becoming Olympic figure skaters. The dog was usually happy to just live in the moment, jumping on anyone who happened to take a tumble!

This painting measures 16 X 20 inches. It is painted on stretched canvas using alkyd paint. You can tell it is a good old frosty winter day in the country by the crystal blue sky and the hoar frost on the trees. The farm house and outbuildings in the background, along with the style of clothing worn by the kids, suggests the 1940's and 1950's. My favourite part of this painting is the low sheen of the ice surface, suggested by the soft reflections and the crisp skate marks that define the surface.

Wall of Fame

The month is flying by and I haven't found time to publish another post until now. This is one of a series of five paintings that I completed on the theme of nostalgic memories of winter skating in the country. The time period is the 1950's. In those days, hockey skates were made of uninsulated leather, dyed deep brown or black, or often a two-tone combination of the two. I call this painting "Wall of Fame". It represents the dreams and aspirations of many boys who grew up in rural areas, playing pick-up hockey on farm ponds and rivers, hoping some day to play in the NHL. In those days, the league consisted of only six teams and any school boy could name every player on every team.

The painting is done on stretched canvas, rendered in alkyd paint, over an acrylic underpainting. It measures sixteen inches high by 20 inches wide. Since I no longer had my own skates from my boyhood years, I purchased this pair in a country auction to use as a model for the painting. I hung them on our barn wall and leaned a hockey stick that I had in the garage beside them to create an interesting grouping. The rough texture of the weathered barn boards make an interesting background for the polished leather surface of the skates. I added some snowflakes in the air to create an atmosphere of winter and a sense of animation in what otherwise is a still life.