#2592 "Atmospheric Ocean Swell Waves and Lines"

#2592 "Atmospheric Ocean Swell Waves and Lines"

The morning light at 7:40 am on Tuesday December 14th, 2021 revealed a warm frontal surface. The altocumulus was transitioning into altostratus. The wind wave lines in the altocumulus gave away the storm relative southwesterlies of the warm conveyor belt. 

The lower band of altocumulus in the foreground was a bit of a puzzle. I believe it was linked to the cold conveyor belt and the associated wedge of Arctic air. Note that the sheltered eastern bay of Singleton Lake was calm while the western basin was rippled with wave action. 

The two flows when combined were the perfect setup for freezing rain which later materialized for the Ottawa Valley. We received just a taste of ice pellets and freezing rain at Singleton. 

The smooth and slippery panel encouraged me to just lay the colours in and leave them alone. 

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#2591 "March Sunset Study"

#2591 "March Sunset Study"
7x5 inches

These are parallel streets of backlit stratocumulus embedded along the northwesterly winds behind a spring cold front. The March sun was powerful enough to create late afternoon instability within those lines of clouds. Snow virga was wafting down from the convective bubbles like the tentacles of jellyfish. In fact, the motion of jellyfish as they move around the ocean closely resembles cumulus convection. Gravity waves in the thin cloud streets reveal the direction of the wind and probably result from the stabilization that was occurring with the setting sun. The bands of stratocumulus further to the west were looking more like heavy snowsqualls and not just light flurries. Every cloud has a story to tell. Singleton Lake was still frozen solid. 

The smooth and slippery panel encouraged me to just lay the colours in and leave them alone. 

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#2590 "Piney Windswept Shore"

#2590 "Piney Windswept Shore"

This rocky and piney point is classic Canadiana looking southwestward on a cloudy morning in August 2020.

I wanted to keep both the colours and the brush strokes as fresh as the wind and the weather. 

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#2588 "Cousin Island Georgian Bay"

This bit of rocky and piney shore is on the northern shore of Cousin Island looking southwestward early in the afternoon of a cloud free August day in 2020. The granite of Georgian Bay can we swirled into complex vortices and they remember their molten past even today. 

This is another Ro-Lak-Tree (a name I made up) Painting. I am repeating the Group of Seven Canadian Identity adventure of painting Canadian rocks, lakes and trees during COVID 2021. It was winter outside and the windchill had encouraged me to paint inside the Singleton Studio. 

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#2587 "Saturday Singleton Sunset"

#2587 "Saturday Singleton Sunset"

The cold front had passed through and the skies were clearing for just a short while. Gusty northwesterly winds were rolling the turbulent stratocumulus around. 

Radar with cold front to the east of Singleton
which is almost in the center of the image

There was some residual cold frontal moisture overhead. Some clouds far to the southwest were the start of circulation snowsqualls off Georgian Bay. The snowsqualls developed off Lake Ontario to our south immediately behind the cold front. 

The Tug Hills east of Lake Ontario get a snootful (that is a lot) of snow in these weather situation! There is a reason that we live at Singleton. We miss almost all of the lake effect snowsqualls. Only a squall from 230 degrees off Lake Ontario could possibly reach Singleton and the air originating from the southwest is rarely cold enough to generate significant flurries. 

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#2586 "Golden Moment in the Singleton Forest"

The cold front had gone through with the heavy rain and the embedded convection. There was a brief period of clearing and the timing was perfect for the golden light of sunset. The light would not last very long. As the sun dropped just a bit more, the golden rays would be captured by the circulation cloud to the west. 

The front lit cumulus cloud elements were fuzzy with the turbulence and the precipitation. There were a lot of subtle colours in those clouds and I tried to do them justice. Contrary to what some believe, there is a lot of purple to be found in nature, if you only look. 

This is a very smooth and slippery surface and I was having fun!

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#2585 "Singleton South Shore Paddle"

#2585 "Singleton South Shore Paddle"

This painting is from an October 2021 reconnaissance paddle of Singleton Lake, checking on the welfare of the two loon chicks. The water was a mirror and the reflections reached out from the shore to envelope and embrace my canoe. The depth of the colours were what interested me most. 

BCIVS End of School Year Canoe Trip 1970

I have always been in love with the canoe. For me, the quiet, unobtrusive canoe is more about romance than that other Canadian qualification some people refer too. The silent stroke of the paddle in a secluded lake surrounded by nature is as close to paradise as Canadians can get. Courting canoes were designed for stylish leisure and affairs of the heart and I remember those days fondly after almost fifty years. There is something about being out in a canoe that connects the occupants to each other as well as nature and the landscape. 

I carved my favourite paddle out of a mahogany plank when we still had Watershed Farm in Schomberg. The voyageur design has a very long blade and the edges are knife-sharp for Canadian stroking. There is an arborite splice in the bottom of the paddle to overcome any split in the wood. I think of my wood -working friend every time I pick up my paddle. I was reading the series of books by Bill Mason at the time and painted "water walker" within the water of the decoration on my paddle.

A paddle in a canoe can bring back as many memories as a painting... 

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#2584 "The Calm Before the November Winter Storm"

#2584 "The Calm Before the November Winter Storm"

I wanted to have some fun with thick oils on a slippery and very smooth panel. The altostratus cloud on the western horizon was smooth and without features except for the gravity waves. 

I attempt to cleverly disguise my art as science and my science as art. I am sometimes successful and even confuse myself which is which. Over the years I have come to the obvious conclusion that they are indeed the same … at least in my mind. 

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#2583 "Singleton November Castellanus at Sunset"

The Wednesday sunset was a bit surprising. The gravity swells of altocumulus were adorned by ranks of castles in the sky. Altocumulus castellanus is the official name for the cloud turrets. They bespeak of mid level instability released in the upward motion of the atmospheric swells. The heart of the approaching storm was still well far to the west. 

If you should research "castellanus", you will likely find information like the following. "A castellanus is a cloud that displays at least in its upper part, cumuliform protuberances having the shape of turrets that give a crenellated aspect. Some of these turrets are higher than they are wide; they have a common base and seem to be arranged in a line. Some people call them "jellyfish" clouds should they also be producing virga - because of the small part dangling below each cloud, reminiscent of tentacles beneath jellyfish floating on the water's surface." Several of these castellanus clouds were indeed dropping tentacles of snow virga. 

Gravity waves of what looked like cirrus completed the bedtime story in the sunset sky. These ice crystals were actually the remains of jet contrails. I had watched those jets overhead probably on their way to Europe. The contrails were drifting southward as revealed by the sharp southern boundary along each of the ice crystal bands. I had written about this in "Weather Watching Guide - Contrails". 

The gravity waves within the contrails revealed that the atmosphere relative wind was from the southwest. All of these winds were consistent with the warm conveyor belt conceptual model. A autumn storm was on the way. Singleton was in line for the anticyclonic companion at least to start with. It would begin raining Thursday afternoon and last into Friday. 

If you paint what you see, nature will make sure that it actually makes sense. Most other things in the human realm make no sense at all. 

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#2582 "Singleton Golden Orb Sunset"

This is really just another November sunset. Every sunset is pecial though in its own unique fashion. The sunset continues to march southward along the western shore of Singleton as winter soltice approaches. The progression of the seasons between the winter and summer solstices, can be witnessed by the location that the golden orb sinks below the western horizon. The sunsets are always spectacular and are a daily inspiration for fresh painting material. 

The streets of turbulent stratocumulus relied on the daytime heating over the still dark ground surfaces. The added bit of instability was the energy that was required to get these cumulus clouds the lift that they needed. These clouds would disappear with the imminent arrival of the darkness. I was intrigued by the rich, yellow colours of the setting sun as contrasted by the dark blues of the backlit stratocumulus. There was no snow virga with these cloud streets that were purely over the land in the more north-northwesterly flow. The interesting science of Langmuir streets and the friction of the planetary boundary level of the atmosphere explained the structure of these beautiful lines of clouds. A co-worker in Environment Canada called these garbage clouds and he could not have been more wrong. 

I was using at least two Studio palettes in order to keep my oils clean and bright. I scrape these palettes clean fairly regularly. As they say in the computer world, GIGO which means "garbage in; garbage out. I seldom get oils on my hands while I paint. 

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