Flooded Graves - Part 2

I have so many of these photos and I really like all of them, so I'm just going to keep posting them and hope inspiration strikes and I may think of something to do with them.

Flooded Graves - Part One

These photos are from the rest of the cemetery the WWI Vet graves came from. There is more to come, as I took about 200 photos, and that's after I deleted the ones I really didn't like. I'm putting up some of my favourites. I have yet to decide if I'm going to print any of these out, or possibly put some up on etsy.


I just can't get over how great the reflections of the bare trees look in these, especially the black and white photos.

The Combat Arms - WWI Veteran's Graves

While I was exploring Winnipeg one one the things I found was a great old cemetery, which, thanks to the flood, was mostly under a fair bit of water. I took a photos of anything and everything that caught my eye, including several rows of graves of WWI vets. This was especially interesting to me because I'm in the Canadian Forces now, so I will likely do more projects based around these photos. These are my favourites and I've got many many more.

I like that the reflections actually have more detail in them than the graves themselves.





I discovered I really liked the ripples and their effect on the reflections, so I started stamping my feet in the water to get more of them. I was soaked! Next time I go exploring in Winnipeg I'm bringing galoshes.


There were three graves in a row marked Sapper - Gunner - Private (Combat engineer, Artillery, and Infantry trades) and I kept trying to get a photo where the inscriptions were legible so that the different trades where all in the same photo, but I couldn't get it to work.

I don't generally go in for symbolism, but I thought all the red that came out in this one was very appropriate.

Old Books

I love old books. I could (and do!) spend hours looking around in old book stores. A couple of weekends ago I went exploring in Winnipeg and found a few fantastic shops. One had a section filled with antique books, so I did what any sensible person would and took as many photos as I could. I may trying doing some prints from these if/when I ever get to move and have a studio again! I'm putting a silk screening kit on my wish list.

Shar and Helen at Graduation

This is the first of (probably) many pieces I'm going to do based on the photos I took of my basic training graduation. I don't normally use charcoal for portraits, but it's all I've got available at the moment, so I thought I'd give it a go. I used rough watercolour paper to give it a grainy appearance because I was trying to make it look a little vintage, like the photo it's based on:

It was a dark and stormy night...

A few weeks ago I went down to Somerset, MB, which is sort of the middle of nowhere. It was a middle of winter as well, and there was nothing much to look at but some really beautiful trees, devoid of leaves and covered in snow. I wanted to draw it when I got back, and started right out on this charcoal drawing. It looks nothing like the trees in Somerset. It turned out really dark and twisted. It reminds me of the Disney forests in Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast. I like the dark fairy tale feel, but I think at some point I'll have to retry the original idea.

I used masking fluid to keep the highlights really white, vine charcoal for the majority of the drawing, and compressed charcoal for the really dark blacks. I love the look of vine and compressed charcoal together. I started using it way back in my first semester of art school to add depth to my drawings: