Normally the heavy garden work starts in late May, so I thought the timing of the Mastering Composition should work fine.  Insert ten days of summer-hot weather at the start of May and that plan is toast. The class is starting Week 4 exercises  now and I am still at mid-Week 2 with only 2 weeks to finish the 6-week course with the class. Fortunately, the program has a kind of soft landing period and I have the video access for a year. I will do what I can and hope I learn these essential painter skills.🤞🏽 No stress!

I had a brain-changing experience that surprised me into becoming artistic. A simple 15-minute exercise in drawing my hand was so transformative that I have been teaching it to others for decades and posted a video lesson online https://www.kiegerl.ca/events-and-workshops.html . It was 'contour drawing' - just draw the outlines of exactly what you see. Suddenly the world was full of beautiful simple lines - hills, trees, plants, people - they were all just lines and after a few minutes of sketching there was a picture.  Amazing!

Then I added watercolour paint to the sketches and suddenly the world was full of so many beautiful colours. When the paper got too small for my paintings (and too expensive to frame), I tried the colours with acrylic paints. However, acrylics dry too fast in our desert climate for my painting speed. Oil paints solved that problem - slow drying and easy to correct. 

This week I started an online course called "Mastering Composition" which is about seeing the shades of grey that make up an image and then arranging those patches of grey into an interesting picture. After a few weeks we will learn to see all colours as variations of grey and then I will understand how David Langevin's blue, red and green paint can make a buffalo look so fabulous. 

The best thing about art is there is always so much more to learn that I will never be finished.

Signed, varnished, framed, wired, ... ready to go! It's only one week until the show is hung, labeled, advertised, and opened on April 7. The public Artist's Reception is on April 10 from 4-7 pm.

Some works that are not for sale at the show can be ordered as prints, including the "Nicola Lake Morning" shown below. The beatiful archival canvas prints are made by local photographer Angelina Brooymans, and custom frames are available from her husband Bill Brooymans. 

I am double checking my spreadsheet of artworks for the show and setting up the information needed by the Show  Curator - Shannon Dunn. The spreadsheet is a checklist for every step of the painting process - start date, working title, size, support type, medium, date finished, archive photo, retouch varnish, varnish 1, final varnish 2, frame, hardware, final title, price. At this point, there are very few blanks in the chart, but there are a few 'strike-throughs' for works that did not make the final cut. Some might get fixed, but others will meet the fire so I don't waste more time on them.

A maybe-final phone call yesterday from my art coach, Yvonne Reddick, helped me with some details I had not considered with regard to show promotion timing and the management of commissions. 

A couple people have been extraordinary in making sure details are handled. Local photographer Angelina Brooymans is making the most beautiful prints of some of the paintings and Bill Brooymans has custom framed my big paintings and some of the prints so they will look so beautiful in the show. 

A couple other great resources have helped too:
- Preferred Framing in Kamloops for immediate access to art supplies and advice and
- Opus Art Supplies  for online  specialty items.  

And now I am putting final touches on this  website's portfolio page for the show!  2026 Art Show which was  a hidden page, but now openly online as it is ready for viewing.

Yes, it has been months since I worked on this one, so definitely dry. I was going to paint layers of transparent colours over the 'dead layer'  so I knocked back the too-dark areas before I put it away to dry. However, I got to like it in greys, so it is still shades of grey and might stay that way. 

Don't you hate it when it looked better before you 'fixed' it? There is no "undo" button in oil painting 👩🏼‍🎨

​After all that income tax paperwork, it feels so good to have my brushes dirty again. Two more little paintings done last night: Moonshot #6 and Moonshot #7. Unfortunately, #4 and #5 were destroyed in a fire deliberately set (by me.) Some work just does not make the cut. Note to self - the difference between retouch varnish and Varnish is "time to dry."
I have just been thinning out my collection of frames and canvases/panels. After taking a load to the locaI thrift store, I still have more than a lifetime of supplies. Fortunately, I have just met a new, very enthusiastic and talented oil painter who lives in this area. Hey, Aaron Tataryn - I have some wonderful things here for  you 👨🏻‍🎨