County 101: Road Trip Photo Shoot

I'm in the final stages of preparation for my County 101 painting marathon next week and today I was out and about getting some last-minute photo reference for my paintings, based on suggestions provided by Prince Edward County residents. I logged nearly 200km travelling to Long Point, then to Huyck's Point, and many places in between. It was very cold, but at least it was sunny.

Former lighthouse plus weird boat.

Starting just after noon, I headed straight to the furthest south-eastern point in PEC (not including the islands just to the east) to shoot the legendary Point Traverse Lighthouse. Now a derelict building that's mildly kind of awkward to get to by car, the lighthouse is still quite an interesting thing and worth going all the way out to see it (my painting will feature a much closer view taken from right beside the lighthouse). Also, its location gives you a nice view of Lake Ontario, which is where that weird boat was probably heading.

I love this sign.

As I approached Long Point Harbour I realized I'd been there before with Krista back before we even moved out to PEC. On a wintry trip to look at properties, we explored areas without knowing anything about them, using a Red Map as a guide, but little else. As we walked along the beach we spotted a couple of tiny snakes sunning themselves together on some rocks and, ever since then (even though we never returned here together) we called this place "snakes on a beach."

Of course, there were adventures in between, and I ran into a few people I knew, including this roughly-hewn fellow in Milford ("The hamlet of friendliness!") whom I hadn't seen in some time:

"Howdy! Welcome to Milford!"

I don't remember his name and it was so cold I didn't even think to check (the suggestion I received was "the statue of the old guy in front of the post office in Milford").

On my way to the opposite southern extremity (westward to Huyck's Point), I saw this weird gate which seemed very out of place in the woods just near the shore:

"Papers, please..."

I walked along to the left and reached the shore, but the drop to the beach was about fifteen feet so I stayed where I was and got a couple of good shots looking toward Nicholson Island to the southwest. The shot below is looking northwest:

"The sea was angry that day, my friends
–like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli."

So from east to west and back into Picton I visited places I hadn't seen in years and a few I'd never seen at all. Speaking of which, I'd driven and biked past Millennium Lookout dozens upon dozens of times over the past 3-plus years but today was the first time I took advantage of the vantage. Here's a panoramic shot of downtown Picton I made from the lookout:

Pictonia Central.

Now I need to select the best shots from today, get them printed, and then get them onto Bristol board so they're ready for inking next week...

Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co

The Naked Silo

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