It's Finally Geocaching Time!

The Thousand Island Spring Arts Show and Sale was held in Rockport Victoria Day Weekend. We decided the weather was nice enough to finally get out to do some geocaching, so we headed in that direction, armed with a GPS full of coordinates.  

Rockport is always a busy place, but it was over run with people on Saturday. We found an area designated as event parking and set off to see what we could see around the village.  I found John Shea, whose art I've admired for the past couple of years. His paintings are uncomplicated, and striking because of it.  Nearby was another artist whose work taught me much about the use of colour.  Tricia Wilmot Savoi has mastered the art of getting my attention, and that of many others. What more could an artist ask for?  I'm ready to abandon watercolour for a while, and see if I can apply what I learned just from looking at her paintings.  Somehow, I doubt be able to duplicate the effect, but I'm stirred up and willing to try.

We would have stayed in the village longer, and even done some geocaching there, but the people were so desperate for parking spots, they didn't care if they blocked each other in or not. We decided to make our escape while we still could. 

We crossed the 1000 Islands Parkway and explored a few other artists, including a photographer, a glass artist, and a guy who made concrete plaques and mushrooms.  He reported that sales were going very well for him.

We hunted down our first geocache nearby, near, but not in a cemetery. It was just a micro though, and so, after signing and replacing the log, we journeyed onward.  We found two other caches on this day, but found more interesting things where we didn't actually find the caches.  As I've said before, it's not the treasure, but the hunt that makes it all so much fun.

We made a rest stop at the Jones Creek property of the 1000 Islands National Park.  It's too early in the season for the main building to be open, but signs directed us to a compostable toilet along the nearby trail.  I think this site was worth the stop. I know of a two story outhouse at a nearby museum. This one in the woods is not a two story one, but rather just a second story one. I've certainly never seen that before. I might add that it's a great idea though as it's a very clean place, unsmelly place..

View from the top.  Notice the trail well below.

 Traveling back along the 1000 Island Parkway, we saw a couple of families of geese, as well as some interesting islands. Some of them were not far from the mainland.

 While looking for geocaches, we found this old drain. It is inscribed "The Kings Highway 1938".  It's big enough I suspect the area wild life use it go get to the other side of the road during certain seasons. 

One of the great things about geocaching is you often learn something you didn't know before. We found out that the 1000 Island Parkway was originally built to be Hwy 401.  After the eastbound lane was completed they abandoned the project and completed it further north, leaving us with the beautiful scenic roadway we have today. There is a bike path on the north side of the road, which would have been the westbound lane and runs between Gananoque and Long Beach. The path was laid by Bell Canada and covers a Fibre-Optic line that runs through the area.

There is a place where it is very obvious that the bike path was supposed to have been a roadway as both bridges were built before they the people in charge of this project changed their mind. 

The parkway is on the right, and the bike path is on the left.  Enlarge the picture by clicking on it for a better view.

 

 

 From the right hand side of this bridge, there is a view of where an older one once stood.

We finished off our day at Tim Hortons.  So did everyone else, from the look of things.

Nothing Natural About Art

In the old days, when I was in a photography forum for many years, the helpful people there would sometimes give me advise that was impossible to follow. They would try to tell me one of my photos would be better if such and such a thing wasn't in the picture, even if it was something that couldn't be avoided. Or they would suggest it might have been better if I had stepped a couple of feet to the left. In such cases I would have fallen off a cliff, or gone over some waterfall. One thing I like about painting is that I can solve some of these problems with a little artistic license.

Last month I mentioned that I was taking an online course to learn how to turn my photographs into paintings, since I had already learned that even the best photo didn't necessarily translate into a successful painting. We have just finished week 3 of 12 today.

Last week we had homework. We were supposed to post a photograph, both before and after cropping it to demonstrate that we have understood what had been taught so far. Now this was a difficult assignment for me since I generally crop in camera, so I had to really look for something that I had forced me to stand in the wrong place in order to take any picture at all.

I found one that fit the bill because there was water where I would likely have preferred to stand. Then I decided afterwards that it wasn't much of a picture anyway, and I certainly never considered painting it.

So I did the cropping, just to show that I understood the various principals that had been introduced the previous week.

I got rid of the excess sky, and anything else that wasn't necessary. This put the centre of interest in the upper left hand intersection of thirds, which is a good spot for a center of interest to be.

I also fixed it so the lead in grass didn't start in the corner, as that's not a good thing for it to do.

Saturday, during class, the instructor pulled up my photo from among those submitted, and after agreeing with the cropping, as far as I had taken it, proceeded to stick it in his Photoshop and use it to illustrate what would need to be done to the picture to make a decent painting out of it.


Firstly off, I know he doesn't like triangles, so I had already said I would deal with that while painting. He showed us all how, and did it for a totally different reason. My crop had the foreground grasses stopping in the wrong place, he said. They should stop at either 1/3 or 2/3 of the way across the bottom of the picture.

He pushed it back to the 1/3 position.

Oh hey, he told us to crop the picture, but never mentioned we could manipulate it.

He also pointed out that the background trees didn't have a very interesting line. I had already noticed that too, and would have stuck some taller ones in there if I had been inclined to paint it.

Then, of course, he didn't like the metal bridge, with all it's straight lines, and suggested I google for some stone bridge and stick that in the painting instead. Oh, and it would be good if I made it taller, so that it overlapped more of the background.

Oh hey wait, this useless photo might make a decent painting yet. It won't in any way resemble the original scene, but apparently it doesn't have to.

I've just learned that if you want to create art, it's best not to let nature get in the way.