Everett's 2nd Birthday Painting

The Royal Hudson and The Three Sisters (Canmore) 2017 acrylic on cradled panel 13" x 18"

He's all over trains these days, so for Everett's second birthday painting Laura suggested a train and mountains. The Royal Hudson immediately came to mind as I recalled the only time I've seen this train. It was in the interior of B.C., on our way home from the west coast. It was the morning after we'd sprung the clocks forward. Laura was exactly three months old. The time change had the effect of making me think the babe and I had slept through the night, but had we really?  I look so tired because I was!

Yours truly with the baby Laura, April 1st, 1978

The Royal Hudson train when we saw it, April 1st, 1978

The drawing

At work, September 30th, 2017

Day two

If this painting has the feel of a watercolour it's because I used the acrylics transparently and very thinly. In my time, I've painted many mountain landscapes, a good deal of them in watercolour. I didn't expect to have any trouble with the mountain but I did wonder how I'd manage the train. Miraculously it fell easily off the end of my brush and the painting went from drawing to being finished in just three days.

I scored a Canadian stamp image from the Internet and was rather pleased with myself for changing its denomination to 2, for the little man's birthday, which is September 18th. It was Bill's suggestion to paint the track running right through the stamp which helped the stamp to become a part of the painting. Adding the stamp and the railway crossing sign makes it a bit of a mixed media piece.

Day three and The Royal Hudson and The Three Sisters (Canmore) is complete 

Initially all of us were bummed that the Manila parcel, with all their birthday and Christmas gifts, arrived after Christmas but as it turned out it was a good thing. They are 14 or 15 hours ahead of us so we would never have been able to watch them opening their gifts Christmas morning. On January 3rd, the family got a second Christmas and we able to view it all via FaceTime.

Everett opens his painting in Manila, January 3rd, 2018

Cutest little man with his painting, January 23rd, 2018