Irene Duma - Landscape Painter
fine artist and educator
Being able to walk to Signal Hill and hike the trail that goes around it is one of my fave things about living in the east end of St. John’s. As summer comes to a close, the days get shorter so you may find yourself walking in evening light sooner than you expected. Which could be scary since not all of the path has stairs and handrails to hold on to.
This little pastel 5 x 7 was painted for day 5 of 30 paintings in 30 days.
For day 4 of  the  30 in 30 painting challenge, I thought I’d draw bigger and try out my Uart sanded painter. It was also the first time I used one of my smaller paintings for a study.
Today’s lesson is that yes, I think that making smaller studies is a useful exercise. You can work out your composition and colours in advance, and have a plan that you are happy with for going bigger. Pretty cool since sometimes staring at a large empty canvas can be daunting.
By the way, this may actually not be the most photographed house in Tors Cove – it might be the second most photographed house. You see both of the houses everywhere, Â in tourist brochures, posters, magazines etc., so when you come across it in real life, it’s like coming across a celebrity. “Wow, it’s that house!”
This trail is a must do if you visit Newfoundland. It’s a beautiful ocean-hugging path on the east coast trail, and there’s a wonderful art gallery and print shop in the village.  With its idyllic view of the ocean and sheep island (they boat the sheep over in the spring where they graze all summer long on the salty grass) Tors Cove is becoming quite a dreamy little artist’s enclave.
I completed this today for the 30 in 30 painting challenge, a painting a day for every day in September. This is a small pastel painting of Tors Cove Newfoundland.
For this painting, I did an underpainting in gouache, then painted over it with clear gesso, before using pastels.
Today I signed up for 30 in 30, Leslie Saeta’s “paint 30 paintings in 30 days” challenge. The event is  devised to get artists painting every day during the month of September. Today was Day 1 and I made this little pastel of a house in The Battery, the old fishing village in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
I have to give a call out to Karen Margulis whose blog I am devouring: Â it is just loaded full of cool tips for painting with soft pastels. I have learned tons from her.
On this painting I did a little gouache underpainting on watercolour paper which I then painted over with clear gesso. The clear gesso gives the paper some “tooth” so that the pastel will cling to the paper surface.
Not only does it work like a charm, but I am really liking the way that you can get some extra texture and energy into the artwork by painting on the gesso with strong expressive brushstrokes that follow the marks on your initial underpainting. Check out the swirls in the sky.
I love this daily painting challenge. It’s part of my new commitment to devoting myself to my art practice: an important tip I got from Alyson Stanfield’s art biz coach newsletter. (How did we ever learn things before the internet? I just dunno.)
Bring on day 2.