#2326 "Cirrus Lines"

Every sky is another challenge. I keep trying different techniques to realistically interpret the complexities of the many layers and depths of the atmosphere - with a minimal number of strokes of the brush. Too many brush strokes can steal the life out of the painting. Polishing the brush strokes makes everything flat. I want the oils and the scene to be alive and vigourous with the three dimensionality of the real world.

In the Singleton Studio with the tunes and the wood stove.

This is a meteorologically very interesting overcast sky filled with cirrus. There are cirrus Langmuir streets parallel to the winds bringing the heat and moisture to the Parry Sound Archipelago. There are cirrus gravity waves in the stable layers of the warm conveyor belt that are everywhere perpendicular to those winds just like waves on a lake. There are multiple deformation zones but the most obvious one and the only one I fully included is the one just above the horizon. This particular deformation zone certainly leads the next and deeper layer of warm conveyor belt moisture. Deformation zones are the leading edge of the moisture at a particular layer and result from the stretching of the air laterally. Deformation is a beautiful process and is the key to unlocking a lot of the dynamic features that drive the weather. There is also cirrocumulus instability producing mare's tails shafts of ice crystal virga. Cirrostratus is the backdrop of this meteorological tale that mutes the deep blues that would have been observed in an unclouded sky.

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#2325 "Kitchikewana Rocks"

This is just one of the potential sixty thousand or more rocky points created by the ill tempered God Kitchikewana. Each of the thirty thousand rocky islands of the Parry Sound Archipelago must have a minimum of two points jutting into the water of eastern Georgian Bay. I do not think I will get to all of those painting points but I visited this one at least twice - once in this painting and again in #2326 "Cirrus Lines". Every canvas is a challenge to embrace regardless of the subject matter.

The white pine on this particular point was very exposed to the onshore winds off Georgian Bay and was heavily flagged. The branches on the lee side of the point stretched far and wide. Those branches on the windward side were short and stubby or actually twisted to the lee by the wind. This is what I wanted to say with this painting even though I focused on the rocks tossed by Kitchikewana. The humour in the title was meant to imply that Kitchikewana could have been a rock-star.

The 30,000 Islands of the Parry Sound Archipelago have an interesting legend. Kitchikewana was a god large and powerful enough to guard all of Georgian Bay. Alas, this god had a bad temper. His tribe felt that Kitchikewana was in need of a wife to calm him down. The tribe held a party with prospectus brides. Kitchikewana was smitten by a lady named Wanakita. The god started planning the wedding after the party but apparently did not tell Wanakita. When the wedding was ready, Kitchikewana invited his beloved to return but Wanakita told him that she was already engaged. The enraged Kitchikewana destroyed the wedding preparations. More importantly he grabbed a huge ball of earth and threw it toward present day Parry Sound thus creating the Thirty Thousand Islands. The indentations left behind by old Kitchi's fingers form the five bays of Georgian Bay: Midland Bay, Penetang Bay, Hog Bay, Sturgeon Bay, and Matchedash Bay. Kitchikewana then laid down and still sleeps on Giant's Tomb Island. A large statue of Kitchikewana can be found on the main street of Penetanguishene.

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#2324 "Parry Sound Rocky Mound"

The title of a painting typically comes to me as I stroke the oils. What can one say about a rock? Plenty! I have read and reread about the geology and history of rocks. It is very interesting but I typically forget it all and am equally fascinated when I read it again. The rounded shape of this island made me think of the word "mound" - a rounded mass projecting above a surface. The colourful swirls in this particular mound is what really caught my eye. Here is why.

The patterns in the rock reminded me of my artist friend Ed Bartram. Ed lived in King City near Schomberg and Watershed Farm on the 12th Conccesion of King Township. This painting is my small remembrance of an artist who shared in the joy of the Georgian Bay rocks and the archipelago. The rocky swirls gave the painting both a rhyme and a rhythm. Ed gave me an autographed copy of his book, Rockscapes. I gave Ed a copy of my Weather of Ontario.

The 30,000 Islands of the Parry Sound Archipelago have an interesting legend. Kitchikewana was a god large and powerful enough to guard all of Georgian Bay. Alas, this god had a bad temper. His tribe felt that Kitchikewana was in need of a wife to calm him down. The tribe held a party with prospectus brides. Kitchikewana was smitten by a lady named Wanakita. The god started planning the wedding after the party but apparently did not tell Wanakita. When the wedding was ready, Kitchikewana invited his beloved to return but Wanakita told him that she was already engaged. The enraged Kitchikewana destroyed the wedding preparations.

More importantly he grabbed a huge ball of earth and threw it toward present day Parry Sound thus creating the Thirty Thousand Islands. The indentations left behind by old Kitchi's fingers form the five bays of Georgian Bay: Midland Bay, Penetang Bay, Hog Bay, Sturgeon Bay, and Matchedash Bay. Kitchikewana then laid down and still sleeps on Giant's Tomb Island.

A large statue of Kitchikewana can be found on the main street of Penetanguishene.

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#2323 "Windswept Rocky Shore"

Every painting needs a rhyme and a rhythm. I like how those words go together as well. The words use the same letters but mean very different things. Language can be interesting and stimulating. In any event there are at least 4 thousand rocks above the surface of the waters of the Parry Sound Archipelago according to Staff Commander John G. Boulton of the Royal Navy who surveyed the area in 1891. The spacing of these pieces of granite may look irregular but from a distance there must be a pattern. The same phenomena happens in the atmosphere. There is a wavelength in every fluid whether it be the weather, the atmosphere or molten rock. The winds certainly erode the rocks and weathers the trees but the regular wave patterns in these rocky swirls are cast in stone - so to speak.

In addition, the patterns in the rock reminded me of my late artist friend Ed Bartram. Ed lived in King City near where we lived in Schomberg and later at Watershed Farm on the 12th Conccesion of King Township. This painting is my small remembrance of an artist who shared in the joy of the Georgian Bay rocks and the archipelago. The rocky swirls gave the painting both a rhyme and a rhythm. Ed gave me an autographed copy of his book, Rockscapes. I gave Ed a copy of my Weather of Ontario. We are all in this together.

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#2322 "Parry Sound Cirrus Coming At Us"

I used this saying a lot to emphasize the importance of watching the sky and understand what it was saying. Cirrus or cirrostratus is associated with the leading edge of a warm conveyor belt which is the precursor of a weather system. There are many variations in this saying but they all come down to observing the cirrus. The rings around the moon for example are corona resulting from the moonlight diffracting through the ice crystals associated with cirrostratus. Simply, there was another autumn storm on the way.

The patterns in the cirrus told some more details about the weather story. There were lines of cirrus stretched across the sky in long deformation zones. The deformation zones were the atmospheric smoke rings around the warm conveyor belt. The icy virga from the mares' tails wafted in the wind shear. The humid upper reaches of the warm conveyor belt kept these ice crystals from quickly sublimating and the trails were teased into long strands as the ice crystals fell earthbound. The clouds revealed the relative wind velocities and these were part of the signature of the approaching storm.

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#2321 "Right Whale Rock with Cirrus"

Every painting needs a rhyme and a rhythm. There are at least four thousand rocks above the surface of the waters of the Parry Sound Archipelago. That is enough for any rock concert. The spacing of these hunks of granite may look irregular but from a distance there is a pattern. Similarly the words in my title may not rhyme but there is a distinct echo in the trees, the rocky islands and the clouds. These are similar-sounding and similar-looking syllables are placed so they echo one another visually in this series of Georgian Bay paintings. My goal is to capture the essence of the Parry Sound Archipelago without painting every tree, rock and cloud. The success of this mission can be gauged by the response in each individual viewer. Rhyme and rhythm does not have to be audible but just maybe can be visual as well.

The name to name the painting was prompted by a story of two right whale calves spotted off the coast of Florida. The endangered Right Whale is the rarest of all large whales. The shape of the smooth rock also reminded me of a large leviathan or whale. Right whales can weigh up to 100 tons as well as be up to 60 feet long. The name comes from the fact that the early hunters felt that this was the right type of whale to be after even though it was difficult to get these larger whales out of the water. The Right Whale floats when it dies and that made the process much easier for them. Sadly there are only about 400 known North Atlantic right whales in existence, with only 100 of those being females of mating age.

Upon discovering natural riches, it has been the habit of mankind to profiteer and plunder those resources until only about 10 percent remains. At that point the effort and profit margin makes the continued pillaging of those survivors unprofitable. The 10 percent rule and the insatiable greed of mankind is then directed to the next resource. Sadly this has been the experience of innumerable species all around the globe.

On a happier note there was another autumn storm on the way and that story was told by the increasing amounts of warm conveyor belt cirrus in the sky.

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#2320 "Parry Archipelago Pines Granite and Cirrus"

The nature of the Georgian Bay Archipelago is unique. The wind flagged pines and the granite ledges are everywhere. I painted my share of those.

Langmuir Streets in a Fluid

The weather is also intriguing. The effects of the inland seas on weather are many and actually fill several meteorological textbooks. These Langmuir streets of cirrus revealed the strong westerly winds aloft. There were some gravity wave signatures embedded within those bands of cirrus and those confirmed the wind direction. A band of higher level deformation zone cirrus had already passed by to the east. These winds were part of the warm conveyor belt that was directing more moisture toward Parry Sound. Another autumn storm was on the way.

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#2319 "Backlit Parry Sound Archipelago Afternoon"

The mid-level deformation zone of the next storm was still some distance to the southwest. Parry Sound was probably in the path of the anticyclonic portion of this deformation zone with the col further to the northwest. The cirrus comprising the leading edge of the warm conveyor belts was shearing to the southeast.

Using my right hand and pointing my fingers in the direction of those cirrus elements forced me to point my thumb Nero downward. This told me that a vorticity minimum was driving the circulation behind that confluent asymptote. At a glance I knew what portion of the approaching storm was destined to befall the archipelago. There was a bit of confirmation cloud as well. Let me explain.

The basic approach is to apply the conceptual model of the deformation zone to the observed moisture patterns. A vorticity maximum is paired with the anticyclonic vorticity minimum across that approaching confluent asymptote branch of the deformation zone. Sometimes the vorticity maximum is strong enough to provide sufficient lift to create cloud even in the drier and cooler air mass. The altocumulus elements that I witnessed in the sky and included in the painting confirmed where we were in relation to the approaching storm. These altocumulus clouds were also moving toward the southeast but on the opposite side of the deformation zone line in the sky. The painting is the weather observation and the record of my experience. Simply, there was another autumn storm on the way.

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#2318 "Parry Sound Archipelago Mares Tails"

#2318 "Parry Sound Archipelago Mares Tails"

The long arc of the deformation zone was just part of the weather story told by the clouds over the Georgian Bay Archipelago. The elongated band of cloud was the leading edge of the warm conveyor belt of the approaching autumn storm. Sailors watched and listened to these weather stories in order to survive and those high, windswept clouds told them to batten down their hatches. As the proverb goes, "Mares' tails and mackerel scales make lofty ships to carry low sails."

In this painting though I was focused mainly on the "cirrus uncinus" which is from the Latin meaning "curly hooks". Most people call them mares' tails. In any event these ice crystal clouds are typically sparse in the sky and very thin. In this view across Georgian Bay I had an entire herd of horses stampeding toward Parry Sound.

The convective equestrian rump of these atmospheric horses may not be very large but long trails of ice crystals waft earthward shaped by the winds in the atmosphere. The cirrus horse typically runs faster at the higher levels of the atmosphere and the ice crystals fall into lesser winds. The result is that the icy tail lags along far behind the horsey source. The individual hairs were separated and this might be aided by some atmospheric process. Sublimation of the smaller ice crystals may warm the adjacent air parcels between the central shafts of the mare's hair where supposedly the crystals should be bigger and hang on the longest before they too sublimate into oblivion.

I wondered whether the fibrous nature of mares tails and cirrus clouds in general could be a Darwinian selection process. The larger ice crystals would certainly defy sublimation and the release of the heat of vaporization for the longest period of time. All of the large crystals from a particular source area would thus have a longer tale to tell. The smaller crystals would be the first to succumb and sublimate into oblivion. Even though the sources of both look the same from twenty thousand feet away, maybe there are differences? For example, small ripples like those on a lake could happily exist within the rump of the old grey mare. The wave crest in these ripples would convectively produce the larger ice crystals. Earth observers might not be able to resolve those small convective elements from miles away. These ripples though could have impact on crystal growth and the formation of the individual hairs in the tail.

I am not sure if anyone has solved this question or even posed it before. Many hairs come from each rump even though there only seems to be a single focus and no obvious, smaller convective elements. I am making all of this up as I do not have the instrumentation to answer the question directly. I find it interesting though and it gives me something else to think about as I paint. Sometimes it is best if you let your mind wander and wonder while you paint. It is not helpful to get tangled up in the process of the pigments on the canvas.

I would paint this same location in #2304 "Georgian Rugged Shore Pines".

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