ARTFINDER: An Old Fashioned Christmas by Richard De Wolfe - At the turn of the century, the main mode of wi...

ARTFINDER: An Old Fashioned Christmas by Richard De Wolfe - At the turn of the century, the main mode of wi...

 "An Old Fashioned Christmas" by Richard De Wolfe 30" x 48" alkyd on canvas

At the turn of the century, the main mode of winter
transportation was by horse drawn sleigh or “cutter” as depicted here.  The scene is typical of many
communities in Eastern 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.

 Many modern day Amish and Mennonite families still travel in horse drawn vehicles and sleighs in winter, though the type that they favour are much less flambouyant than this one.

Heading for the Loft

Harvesting Hay in Summer

Heading for the Loft 24X36 alkyd on canvas

I know it has been a long time since my last post!  As John Lennon (not the first) once said, 'life is what happens when you are busy making other plans'.  Many things have been keeping me busy lately, not the least of which was bringing in the hay crop to feed our horses through the long cold winter to come.

In the 'good old days' hay was forked up onto an open wagon, then pulled by a team of horses to the barn or hay crib, where it was picked up in large clumps by an articulating claw hook that transferred it by pullies and ropes into the barn loft where it was dumped.  We don't do it that way anymore, but it is still a lot of work, even with tractors and hay elevators to drop the square bales of hay into the hayloft of our barn.

The painting "Heading for the Loft" is a commission that I did a few years ago.  That is me driving the team of clydesdale horses pulling a well loaded hay wagon along a dirt road.  The sheep dogs in the picture belong to a friend of mine who also owns a farm.  The painting is sold but prints are available at: www.rdewolfe.com.

A Day in Rome

We visited Rome for one busy day.  After a long drive from the port of Civitavecchia, our tour bus became lost in Rome.  It turned out that the driver had never been to Rome before!  It is a very busy city with a lot of traffic congestion.  The old walled city within takes you back in time from the moment you enter the gates.

The statues and building facades are all very beautiful.  This is part of the dramatic equestrian art that embellishes the Trevi Fountain.

The Pantheon was a beautiful, domed building with massive columns adorning the entrance.  It is filled with art and artifacts of the early church.  Raphael's tomb is within.

This delicately carved pair of doves hang suspended over the tomb of the artist Raphael.

We did not stop at the Coliseum but only saw it from the tour bus as we worked our way past it in afternoon traffic.  We had to hurry, we were on our way to Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica!

Across the Miles - Step 5

I have now blocked in the entire canvas with colour.  Finishing the snow-cover changes the mood and the look of the painting quite drastically. This gives me a really good idea of how the finished painting will look.  The contours, light and shadows in the snow requires a subtle touch.  It is important to create the illusion of an undulating plane, falling away from the foreground to the mountains in the distance.  The roadway must also appear to 'sit' into the snow rather than on top of it.  The fence now appears to stand up from the snow, three dimensionally.

Painting and refining the white lettering on the side of the postman's sleigh is meticulous work and requires patience.  There is more work in this painting than I expected!

Across the Miles - Step 4

I continue the process of painting from back to front.  I render the barn in the distance, then proceed to the farm house in the middle ground.  Once again, I am choosing warm colours to keep this winter picture from becoming too 'cold'.

The next thing I tackle is the horse pulling the mail sleigh.   This is a critical element in the painting, essentially the center of interest so I must take great care in how I paint it.   I choose to make the horse black to create a high contrast with the white snow around it.

At this stage, I have left out the snow in the middle ground and started blocking in basic colour and detail on the rail fence in the foreground.  This helps me to keep a visual balance throughout the painting.  I have included the rail fence in the composition in order to add 'weight' to the lower portion and to guide the eye back toward the center of interest.

Across the Miles - Step 3

Usually I like to do a quick underpainting with acrylics on top of my toned canvas, but occasionally I will start to paint directly on a toned and shaded drawing.  I have decided to take the latter approach this time, starting from the sky at the top (furthest away from the viewer) and working my way down and progressively closer to the viewer as I go.  This allows me to build an illusion of depth into the work.

To keep the work from being too 'cold', I add warm yellows and pinks to the clouds, suggesting late-day lighting from the left.  I block in the snow-covered hills and move forward through the heavily laden spruce trees.  The last thing I do at this stage is to begin adding more form and colour to the mailman's sleigh and the mailbox where he has just made a Christmas delivery.

Across the Miles - Step 2

Now I start my under painting by priming the canvas with a mixture of acrylic made up of burnt sienna, cadmium red and a generous amount of mat medium to make it very transparent.  I apply this evenly over the entire canvas to give it a warm ground for me to paint on.

Once that is dry, I use a mixture of the same colours, but with less medium and I wash in some tonal areas to establish some basic form.  I work up some darker areas using the same colours and I delineate some details, such as the rail fence, sleigh, the horse and the buildings.  I place dark tones on the fir trees to establish a pattern of snow on the upper side of the branches.  Things are starting to take shape!

Across the Miles

Here is the beginning of another new 'horse and sleigh' painting.  These pictures are especially popular with my clients for such things as Christmas cards and puzzles.  This one is called "Across the Miles".  It is a depiction of the mailman making his delivery rounds by horse drawn sleigh.  The scene is a snowy landscape in rural America, just before Christmas.

This canvas measures 16 inches high by 20 inches wide.  Once I have worked out my initial drawing, I transfer it to stretched canvas, then spray it with workable fixative.   Once that is done, I'm ready to start painting!

Running Horse

This is something new I am experimenting with for art licensing.  I am working with computer software to create the entire illustration.  I bought a drawing tablet and got CorelPaint software with it.  I have been experimenting and here is one piece of art that I have created as a result.  I am using it in conjunction with PhotoShop software that I am more familiar with.  CorelPaint seems to be a really great tool, so I may decide to purchase a complete and more current version.  Both CorelPaint and Adobe PhotoShop are great tools both for creating art and manipulating digital files for today's graphic artists.  If you haven't tried CorelPaint, I highly recommend it.

Mikey

"Mikey" is one of the horses that are boarded at our farm. I painted Mikey for his owner in a small format, just 6.25 inches by 9.25 inches. When I do these small portraits I usually work in acrylic, as I did here. I did the painting on acid free art board and I worked in several layers of wash, particularly on the coat, then increased the level of opacity as I added detail to the horse's features and bridle. By painting the background in a heavy impasto in a very loose manner, I created an illusion of greater realism in my subject. The black bridle seems to pop out in contrast to the rich red coat of the horse, while the contrasting blues and greens of the background makes the subject dominate the painting. Carefully placing the highlight in the eye makes the whole thing come to life. As always, prints are available or I can be commissioned to paint your horse or pet.

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!

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.

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.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 9

The final session is the most satisfying.  Everything comes together to create an inviting winter scene.  I add darks where necessary and model the snow with light and dark tones to create contour and light and shadow.  The edge of a palette knife is used to simply suggest wire on the fence posts.  White highlights are one of the last things I do and these help to guide the viewer's eye to specific areas in the painting.  I embellish the coats of the horses and add final details to the harness.  The last thing to do is add a signature!  Fini.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 8

Once all of the basic elements and areas have been initially painted in with alkyd paint, I begin the process of finishing each area, maintaining a harmonious relationship with the overall picture.  I begin from the sky (the most distant background) and work my way forward, adding detail, contrast and harmony.  I have embellished the light in the sky somewhat, softened the hills in the distance, and added detail to the buildings in the middle ground.  The trees on the left are painted in, providing a nice border and visual stop on that side of the picture.  I spend quite a bit of time on the trees and underbrush on the right side of the picture, deepening the green of the foliage, creating subtle shades on the snow of the branches and detail in the tangle below.  More detail is added to the snow and the roadway,  the fence posts are added and finally I spend much time painting the horses and harness and the sleigh bells from which the painting gets its name.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 7

I have blocked in the rest of the foreground snow and shadows, creating a rutted look in the surface of the roadway and contours in the mounded snow at the shoulders of the road.  The contour lines of the road help to draw the eye into the picture and the horses appear to be in motion as they draw the unseen sleigh forward. 

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 6

The mood of the painting starts to change rapidly as I begin to paint in the middle ground.  The muted tones of the snow on the large pine trees on the right side of the picture create a nice contrast to the brighter white of the snow on the ground leading into the foreground.  These tree branches keep the viewer's eye from leaving the picture and frame the focal point of the colorful red barns that the horses are approaching.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 5

Now I switch to alkyd paint, bringing subtle color and cloud forms into the winter sky.  I usually paint from light to dark and from distance to foreground, as I am in this instance.  Next I paint the most distant hills with soft tones tinted with blue to accentuate a feeling of distance.  As I move forward I add more local color and detail to the hills creating a depth to the picture.  The nearest hills have a strong suggestion of trees and snowy spaces between them.  The background now has a sense of reality that I like.

Painting Progression-Sleigh Bells-Step 4

I am still working with acrylic paint, but now I begin blocking in local color in the sky, hills, buildings, trees and horses and their harness.  This gives me a basic color map of how the painting will look and how the colors will relate to each other as I continue to build my painting.  It is wise to establish an under painting, that is blocked in quickly.  Adjustments and improvements and even complete re-do's are easily done at this point.  If you spend a great deal of time finishing off an area, then find it isn't working properly in relation to the rest of the painting, it can be very hard to bring yourself to change it, thus compromising the finished piece.