Canadian Landscape Series - Painting 1 of 13: Twillingate, Newfoundland

This is a post about Twillingate, Newfoundland - 1 of 13 paintings in my 2024 Canadian Landscape series. If you would like to read about the series as a whole, you can find that post here. 

Twillingate, Newfoundland

Twillingate, Newfoundland (2023) - part of my Canadian Landscape series

​Twillingate, Newfoundland was the first painting I completed from my Canadian Landscape series. It was completed in May 2023. 
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My goal for this series was to capture the essence of each province and territory in a painting. I'll admit I have never been to Newfoundland, so I had to rely on research to formulate the essence of this province. I scrolled through photos and read several articles about Newfoundland and Labrador to find out what makes it unique from other provinces. I also fell in love with the work of Adam Young - a well-known Newfoundland artist with a fun, whimsical style. ​

Photo Credit: Erik Mclean (Unsplash)

​​Newfoundland and Labrador is Canada's most eastern province. When I think of Canada's east coast, a couple things come to mind... namely, the  sea and the colorful homes along the coast. 

​​Newfoundland has some stunningly beautiful places, so deciding what to paint was not an easy decision to make. Another top contender was the fjords of Gros Morne National Park (which I may circle back to one day). ​

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​In the end, I decided to go with the icebergs of Twillingate as I felt this would best capture the essence of Newfoundland. 

​You may remember a few years back, when Twillingate's icebergs made the news. Canadians were captivated by images of gargantuan-sized icebergs floating by residential areas, completely dwarfing the houses along Newfoundland's coast. These images stuck with me. 

​​I was not able to find one photo that perfectly captured what I wanted to paint, so I ended up making a compilation sketch of several photos from the Twillingate area, including the one above from Unsplash taken by Erik Mclean. ​

​The biggest challenge I had with this painting was that I originally painted the water using vertical lines, which ended up making the houses look like they were floating in the sky. To fix this, I had to apply several layers of paint and medium to cover the vertical lines and turn them horizontal, and this left behind a thick outline and some faint surface texture visible on the original painting. So annoying. 

I also had to try a few different palettes for the rocks before settling on a range of greys. ​

Twillingate, Newfoundland (2023)

Completing my Newfoundland painting motivated me to get working on my second painting in this series: Old Quebec City, Quebec. ​

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​​Thank you for reading! Be sure to say hello in the comments. You can also follow me on social media for updates about this series, new work, and upcoming shows. ​

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​Twillingate, Newfoundland
​by ​Danielle Harshenin 

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