Bought another painting last night

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I've bought a handful from my favourite Vancouver artist, Ken Foster. He's known as Vancouver's van Goh. Today is his 53rd birthday. I went to see him last night after the beach to remind him I commissioned him to paint 6 iconic Vancouver scenes as Christmas gifts for my friend and his family and saw him working on this one of Granville Street. (Vancouver's theatre and night club district) He was going to sell it to a nearby gallery, I liked it, so offered him more for it. Rode my motorcycle home, switched to the truck and went back to get and then have a late night birthday drink with Ken in the bar downstairs. Just needs a shot of clear coat so it doesn't flake - I'll do that with what he recommended later. It's done on a reflective vinyl road sign - his favourite media lately - and has glitter throughout the sky as well as some down on the street a bit. More things I'm gonna get him to paint for me - wanna collect 'em while he's still alive and painting tbh - as he lives a pretty high risk lifestyle.

Anyways, here's the latest and the artist, Ken Foster:

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

Crickets, eh? I suppose taste in art varies widely. I really like Ken’s work. I’ve commissioned him to paint a few already and have more in the works and more planned.

He’s a local legend. He’s been paid as much as $2000 for one small painting about 1/4-1/3 the size of this one. He was going to sell this one to a gallery near his home that pays him a max of $100 and then resells them for $600-800. I paid him $140 + a drink at a bar downstairs instead.

He paints a lot of iconic Vancouver cityscapes and scenery, and is most famous for his Gastown/DTES alley paintings. He paints at least one every night.

Here are the most recent two paintings I asked him to paint for me. Both are on reflective sign vinyl.. sidewalk closed signs that we “salvaged,” together at 2:3am while discussing painting theme ideas.. The painting of Siwash Rock at Stanley Park is a 16th birthday present for one of my God daughters who wants to be an artist. The fine lines are scratched in it with a razor blade to let light catch the reflective vinyl. The alley is for me because I didn’t have an alley yet. Light shines through where the paint is thinner and shimmers on the reflective vinyl.



He also does some wild characters and somewhat psychedelic stuff amongst other things. Pretty sought after stuff locally - and he’s so quick he blasts out multiple paintings per night that he’s busy working away. Soooo many locals have & cherish his work. Crazy talented - it’s cool to watch him so his thing.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

They are really unique and interesting! I love his use of colour! That painting with the island and the water really is great. The others are great too! My Aunty was a really talented artist but died in poverty. She could not sell her paintings. But after she died the paintings kept passing hands at ever increasing prices as local people started to look for them as they loved her style and how she painted local scenes. (I remember her telling me how she did them as I asked her how she captured scenes when it took hours of work to paint it, and by then the weather would change of position of cars and people etc. She said "That's easy! I take a photograph and then paint what I see in the photograph!" Such a simple way to capture a scene before one paints it!. She had her style of painting that differs from other painters who painted the same of similar local scenes. This is what I find interesting, and I like my Aunts style. (Think she was on the spectrum as she was quite an interesting character. My Uncle was nice as well)).


I like creations that reflect the character of the person. Is why in recent years I have scratch and kit built model locomotives and their rolling stock to go behind them, and if I kitbuild, I always put my own "Take" on how I build them. I do not want exact copies of anything as used to do that years ago but I got bored! Apart from that, one is copying the character of the railway designers instead of copy ones own character and allowing one to play!
The thing is for me that everything revolves around trains. Always has done with the exceptions of bicycles or cars...
Hardly done any two dimensional art though I was thinking of painting model railroad backscenes but I will need to experiment and practice as I have no idea how it will go.

Creating various items of rolling stock is something I love doing, and I find it fun! Creating using rusty tin and strips of wood. I like them to have the character of using the real materials as I can let the materials work for me instead of painting things to hide that they are not the real thing! I rather have things overscale using the right materials than underscale and looking plasticky. Any plastic or resin life of parts I make need to have good coats of paint over them.
Casting my own parts from copying things from here and there is fun. See a part that I think would be useful and duplicate it many times to use for various different types of applications. Hard to make items such as axleboxes and their lead spring assemblies which would take time to scratchbuild and get them right are the sort of things I copy, and I use very old crude scale designs that no one today is interested in, as to me I love their character, and no one really is going to worry about copying something a latest manufacturer is doing. I just want something which works.
My designs are somewhat coarse scale. If I make a kit, I will not add all the timescale detail as to me it adds un-necessary clutter to the model, as models represent the real thing and are not the real thing themselves. This is where I feel that many enthusiasts in the hobby to wrong because some finescale models mixed with those that are not so finescale and the railway scene lacks consistency. I have heavily painted over some models to get them to look consistent with the ones I build. Sure if one has the ability to replicate factory models but most of us do not, so we need a consistent overall look... Like an artist paints a painting! Does not really work if two artists paint different areas and both have different styles as if one stands back it will look inconsistently odd. This is what often goes wrong in model railways. Inconsistent scenes!
I think I will write a book about my findings and thoughts.

(I think I already have!)

I like the first one best