Mathieu, the fellow from Paris with a website on Pastis 51 and who found my painting of the Pastis 51 water bottle, has included my blog on his site. Thanks, Mathieu, it's been fun email chatting and I really enjoy your site. Take a look at Mathieu's site at:

Une canadienne en vacances en France peint le pastis 51

Another reclaimed table today...this one my son's landlord was throwing out. It had three inches of snow on it when I rescued it. And a few paintings I did from pictures I took in Italy.


Table with the Tuscan Hills design


Rialto Bridge - Venice


Houses sinking into the Grand Canal - Venice

test

I'm posting my latest painting today. I did another Tuscan hills and cypress trees idea. I was much happier with this one than the last one I tried.


Tuscan hills and sunflowers

I'm posting some pictures of two tables that my neighbours were going to throw out. I'm really very pleased with the results. The one with the pines and mimosas is in my livingroom now and the one with the palette, brushes, and paint jars is serving as a table in my studio. I've also included the cricket bat I painted with a Yorkshire scene.

One of the really fun things about having this blog is that you get responses from people out there somewhere. I got an email today from a fellow in Paris who really liked my painting with the Mimosa branch in the Pastis 51 bottle. He's from Paris and collects Pastis 51 stuff as well as having a website devoted to it. We had a lot of fun during our winter in the south of France going to flea markets and picking up pastis water bottles, ice buckets, and even a set of playing cards from Ricard. Pastis is just perfect to drink in the south of France...somehow it's not quite the same back home. The picture isn't too clear but you'll get the idea.


Pastis memorabilia

This is a study I did for painting a Yorkshire scene on a cricket bat I bought quite a while ago in a second hand store. I was quite pleased with the way the cricket bat turned out. I'll post a picture when I get my film developed. I tried to include a border collie but it didn't quite work.


Yorkshire Dales with drystone fences and sheep

Last summer when we were in Vancouver we took a couple of free walking tours given by the Architectural Institute of B.C. They offer six in total (we did the Chinatown and West End ones). They also give five in Victoria. We really enjoyed them and learn a lot about the city we grew up in. You can get them to send you electronic or snailmail brochures by emailing tours@aibc.bc.ca or check out their web site at tours

Today I'm posting a couple of other paintings I did recently. The first one was on a canvas so I took a (rather bad) picture of it.


Ile de Bendor


Tuscan hills with Cypress trees

I finished a painting from my Chinatown pictures. Just for fun I'm going to post it, the preliminary sketch I did and the three pictures I used.


Fantan Cafe


Sketch for the Fantan Cafe

Photos I used for the painting

My son and I went picture taking in Chinatown last weekend.

I was practicing making links on Monday and one annoying this about the Blogger program is that it won't delete postings you want to delete sometimes for a long time. It may magically disappear one of these days. Anyway, I didn't really want to link people to the Apple Store. I'll try this again. I really love the graphics of vintage posters especially advertisements for travel and drinks. You can take a look at some of these at Art and Posters

I see the Apple Store posting has disappeared now. I think you have to make another posting before it actually will delete the previous.

Along with the two wheeled theme I've posted the photos I used to do my motorcycle painting.


Motorcycles in St. Tropez


Motorcycles in Cassis

Here are the bicycle pictures. Having trouble with my scanner so this might be the last of pictures for a while.


Old bicyles in Italy


I love the colours of this one

One thing we noticed about Italy is that many people of all ages still ride very old ordinary bicycles. I took quite a few pictures of these old bikes and I'll be posting some over the next few days. I think I'll try to do some kind of painting as well.


Wooden bicycle in front of a deli shop in Florence

These are some cyclists getting a well deserved drink of water from the community fountain in the very beautiful medieval village of Gordes in France. This is a hilltown and it was quite a hike for these men who weren't exactly young but obviously very fit.

The French do certainly love their dogs. They are welcome in restaurants, buses, food shops...you name it. They are quite well-behaved in these places and it was fun in Carqueiranne to see some dogs wandering on their own like dogs in our neigbourhood used to do when we were growing up. The French haven't quite got into the idea of cleaning up after their dogs but the street sweepers were out several times a day in our little village so it wasn't a big problem. I did have to laugh at this device the village had installed on the beach for dogs to do their business...a "villepropre" or "clean city". We never saw any dog use it.


"Villepropre" dog toilet

Our anniversary yesterday (couldn't seem to post anything)....34 years!


Jim and Janice, May 18, 1968.

I'm going to try to post a little quicktime movie I took today of Mary and her new puppy, Ian. He is just adorable!

Ian.mov

When we were in Nice I really loved these sculptures by Niki de Saint-Phalle which were installed along the Promenades des Anglais. There were others that I didn't take pictures of and also a fabulous one of Louis Armstrong in front of the Negresco Hotel. Alas, at the end of our trip I was in a getting tired of always carrying that camera around mode and didn't get a picture of it.


Baseball player
Sculptor: Niki de Saint-Phalle


Basketball players
Sculptor: Niki de Saint-Phalle

I just found out my friend, Mary, has a new border collie puppy. How exciting! When we were in Ireland a couple of years ago on a house exchange we were just fascinated by these dogs and their work with the sheep. We were fortunate to live beside a working sheep farm whose dogs were borrowed by almost everyone in the region to bring in their sheep since they were so good. In fact, they were so good that when we went to visit these neighbours, the dogs shepherded us down a long driveway nipping at our heels all the way! Once visitors got going down that road I don't think they could have changed their mind about a visit. I've posted a picture of one of dogs and also some short quick time movies with some footage of the dogs working.


Rover keeping a close watch on the sheep

Sheep and Dog
Sheep and dog

Ireland video album
Our neighbour, Teresa, Irish scenes, and the dogs.

We really enjoyed Cassis this trip and the wonderful limestone cliffs and caves called "les calanques". It is a very popular place for people from Marseilles to come to sip the very special local white wine and go into ectasy eating slimy things like sea urchins, sea snails, oysters, etc. They go through these sea urchins by the ton and we were offered some for free along the port. We enjoyed them so much that we had them in a seaside restaurant as well. I loved the simple campanile on the apartment building with the leafless plane trees in front of it that I did a painting from the photo I took (see Tuesday, April 23 entry).


Jim enjoying his first taste of a sea urchin


Taken on a boat trip to les calanques


Campanile and plane trees in Cassis

I just got the rest of the pictures of my basement art so here it is. Thanks to all my friends who contributed. And I hope to get more contributions this summer. Start thinking about it, those who haven't yet taken the plunge in my ocean!


Nin's octopus (did you guess she is a Londoner?)


Annette's treasure chest


Patty's crab


My freezer lid polar bear


My seabirds

Just testing to see whether I can get a quicktime movie up. Since we actually had some snow yesterday in Victoria it seemed appropriate!

Snow in Victoria

Once I got going on this painting of walls and everything in sight I just kept going. One thing about a basement, everything is up, as my friend,Carole said. I figure I can always paint over it and it certainly brightened things up. I made one room over into my studio and painted scenes of Paris on the walls.


Le Moulin Rouge


A "Deux Chevaux" (a car I've always loved)


Les "bateaux mouches" on the Seine and "le pont neuf"

Today a couple more things I did for my ocean in the basement.


Dolphins and an otter


The Walrus and the Carpenter (with thanks to Lewis Carroll)

Artwork is something I never thought I would do having never gone past stick figures in school. My friend, Carole, got me doing some mosaic tile stepping stones and I found I really enjoyed playing around with colour that way. This gave me the courage to do some absolute beginner art courses and I've just had tremendous pleasure out of drawing and painting since then. Carole does the most amazing watercolours and wonderful portraits of her grandchildren. I'm very grateful to Carole for getting me going and also my friend, Marnie, inspired me as well. She does these wonderful murals on big white rolls of paper using felt pens. I was very attracted to her use of colour. Perhaps Carole and Marnie will have blogs one day and post their work. I've included their contributions to my ocean today along with some others.


Carole's tidepool


Marnie's mermaid


Trish's shipwreck


Contribution by my husband, Jim.

Today my page is dedicated to Victoria and Madeleine of London, England. Last summer, they gave me a great idea for my rather grubby basement. I had turned my rusty old oiltank into a "yellow submarine" and they volunteered to make some tropical fish for the ocean part. I think they did a terrific job and it gave me the idea of creating an "ocean" in the whole basement and having friends and family contribute. I've had quite a few painting parties and we've all had tremendous fun with this. More pictures of contributions to come!


The "yellow submarine" (with apologies to the Beatles) that began it all.


Victoria and Madeleine and their tropical fish


A rusty old freezer transformed and my favourite type of whales.
My friend, Fern, did the tropical fish.


My lighthouse


Killer whale by my son, Richard, and seahorse by my friend, Barbara.