Nostalgia

I don't even know if the word exists, in this form, in English... Maybe it's more like melancholy ? (Well, I checked and it exist; meaning homesick...) In my meaning, it's more like a mellow sadness, a resigned regret that time passes and the youth with it... This watercolor (and acrylic ink) is a landscape of a very special place, for me: it's called something like the Village Technical Museum (whatever!) and it's situated in a large forrest near the city of my childhood and youth: Sibiu, in Romania. A great place with a few lakes and a lot of fire trees and oaks, etc. I've spent a lot of time wandering about that forest, in the summertime... Of course, in my nostalgic memories, it is even more beautiful than this painting...

I don't know why but it sems I'm not able to upload an image anymore... I'll try again later... Sorry, folks!

Quebec landscape

I think I would need 2 lives to paint and draw everything worth painting in Québec... I suppose it's the same thing with some of its neighbours... Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire...
This is a landscpe from Gaspesie, I think (I'm not good with names of places) and those two boat "floating" on dry land catch my eye. It's an acrylic ink and watercolor on strathmore 300 g watercolor paper. CAD 250 if somebody is interested...

Sketching could be fun!

I would never understand why people like better "finished" works to sketches! In my opinion (and there are some others, like Delacroix, for instance...) a good sketch IS worth a good painting... I would take every day of the week a small sketch of Rembrandt or Bruegel insteed of 100 big, super-finished paintings of Bougereau & Cabanel.
This is a sketch of my daughter (who was posing for a group of my drawing friends) in acrylic ink where I used as instrument not only the pen but also the "pipete" (the device used to draw and drop ink from the bottle) and a medium brush. On watercolor paper, of course (otherwise imposible to obtain these textures...) I kind of like it myself...

More personal stuff...

This is a 2006 somewhat more personal watercolor. It represents my daughter, Ioana, a young lady now, always in a hurry and with very little (or none!) time to pose for her father, the artist... I have to take spy pictures of her - decent ones, of course! - and to paint her after those fugitive, in movement photos... Neither her, nor my other two children, give much attention or thought to my paintings... Nobody's a prophet in his/her family, eh?..

Digital variants...

It's funny what you can do nowdays, with the digital photography, scanning and such...Since 1998-99 I began to digitally archivate my paintings and drawings... They become, more and more, just pixels on a cd or DVD... A lot of advantages with that: you can have almost instantly the image of your stuff, you can even ameliorate it (usually I don't do more than amelioration of the contrast or a small re-blance of the colors...) And, of course, you can keep and use an imense number of images (yours or others, to use them as visual stimulii... Or you can keep track - in a very detailed manner - of your work, you can transform what will finally be your paintings in a multitude of "variants", of work steps... Sometimes, a sketch can be better than the "finished" work... sometimes (even quite often) what you do "a la prima" is the best thing you do... Here is an advanced "variant" of a painting I sold a few years ago, at the Bromont Art Symposium... It's just a digital variant...

The mean me...

I did not post a lot of drawings here... caricatures even less. This is a rapid sketch taken at a show I've participated. A show for artists 50 years old & +, in the basement of Sherbrooke Cathedral. It was the last day of the show & I was cranky since I hadn't sold a thing, not even to cover the registration fee (and there were some nice paintings there)! I kind of resented all the friends and relatives of some other painters who did go straight for their relatives paintings without even taking a look at my stuff... So I took revenge in drawing their wrinkled asses (sorry!) It didn't help much, but still... I could gather my unsold paintings with resignation... Van Gogh himself didn't sell much either, eh?

A recent nude of Gabrille

This is one of the nudes of Gabrielle (one of the best models I've had...) that I've sent in Romania, to my European agent. Still in sale, I suppose... It's a 9" x 12" acrylics and watercolor on Strathmore 300 g paper. Don't ask me what does mean the Japanese characters... I don't know. But they seemed to be fit there...