Which Sense?

Another painting I did while procrastinating from the larger painting I'm also working on, this one was based on doodles. The doodles were just following the ones I used to make the last painting (Night Harvest). In fact, I just continually flip through the notebook and use up the doodles, in order, until the painting looks full. Not sure what this painting is all about, the title was because there were many senses depicted in the work.. taste, sight, hearing (I imagine that the people in the middle are playing a concert).

In the last blog I talked about glazing... that's where you overlap layers of paint. You do it by letting the first layer dry, and then applying a second wash. I used that technique extensively throughout this painting. The best example are the dark brown characters in the chairs, they were started with a layer of warm yellow (ochre), which dried overnight. Then I overlayed with cobalt blue. Finally I accented with some darker blues to produce the shadow and volume. Glazing was also used for the tongue-like thing... there are actually three or four layers of alternating blue-purple and red-orange layers. To make the tongue looked smooth, I quickly brushed over the finished product with a moist brush... this is risky to do and takes practice, but what it does is smooth out the appearance... I wanted the tongue to look soft and a little slimy even!

Another quirky note, I painted on the wrong side of the paper... rarely do I make this error anymore, there is nothing really wrong with doing that, but it does change the consistency of the washes, and I found that the overall product finally looked a little more matte instead of glossy, which kind of worked in favour of the overall mellow feeling.

Which Sense? 11 x 15" cold press, watercolour, 2013, (No. 1765)

Night Harvest

Night harvest was based on doodles made at work... of course I am always paying attention at the meetings, drawing just helps me focus ; ) I made the paiting while I was working on a much larger painting. Usually I do one at a time, but the large painting was feeling like work... so this one was a bit of a break. The scene was actually a daylight scene until I made the name for it ... Night Harvest... I then covered the back left part of the sky with the night sky, stars and the moon, and made the background a little grey. It would have been cool to do before and after photos because the scene transformed from daybreak to twilight in a few moments.

The dark red-brown colour in the shark-like things in the front was created from two layers of paint. This is called glazing... the trick is to put down one layer, let it dry completely, and then overlay a second layer. I did the undercolour in a bright pink (permanent rose) and overlayed a deep green (viridian). You need to control the consistancy well... if too thick then it looks like mud... it actually takes a surprisingly thin liayer of green to make the effect work. I first used this combination frequently in the "Three Ringed Flying Circus on Wheels" Seriese, and have employed it now and then ever since.

15x11" cold press. March 2013

Hanging Out

Here is a super quick painting I made recently, it was really just a quick sketch from a couple of doodles done in a note book. the funny character on the right is kind of hanging out, I thought he was chewing little bits off the moon, then tossing them over to his friend on the beach. The painting actually had no title on it, usually I write the title along the right side or bottom using watercolour.

To create the texture in the background I used a dry brush technique. To do this, make sure the paper is dry, and then load your brush with paint that is fairly concentrated (not watery!), then drag the brush lightly across the surface. This works best with cold press paper because it is bumpy, if you use hot press (or beginners paper) than this technique will be hard. I think the texture helped keep the background interesting.

7.5 x 11cold press March 2013

Colour, Posts, and Contour Lines

I often discuss colour on my posts, but how about discussing a painting of posts in a field of colour? While you are thinking about that, I'll just say that this was a little doodle in one of my many note books which was strong enough to be a whole painting on it's own. The fairly minimal detail makes it a little easier to look at than some of my other abstracts, and also allowed me as the artist to concentrate on the aesthetics of the painting without the burden of externious details. Anyways,  I like painting open spaces, all of my abstracts contain at least a little open space in them.
I suppose the style here is kind of like Salvador Dali meets Jimi Hendrix?

In a recent blog I talked about outlines and how they can contribute to the energy and style of a painting, not to mention the composition... in this examplea lot of the depth you feel comes from the contour lines of the land. The other way to create depth of course is to put warm bright colours in the foreground (red and yellow down by the signature) and cool colours in the background (greens blues and purply-brown at the back).

I got the idea for these kind of lines from a trick that the impressionists (and the group of seven) used a lot... directional brushstrokes. They arranged groups of bold brushstrokes to build up volume in their work, usually for trees, clouds, fields etc. In watercolour it is nearly impossible to show brushstrokes cleanly because it is a liquid medium, so instead I developed these curvy lines, which do a similar thing as the directional brushstrokes used by the likes of Cezanne, Monet, Tom Thompson...
another example where I used this was in 'Ground Escape'.

5x7" cold press, winter 2013

Skydome, Toronto, Canada

 Painted in the mid-late 1990's, this one shows what used to be called the 'Skydome' but is now called Rogers center I think... I only actually went there once or twice to see the Blue jays play and also the Argos football team. As I remember it was very hot at the time, perhaps July, and the paint was drying very quickly. I had to walk around quite a lot to find this scene... in Toronto the view is blocked by buildings and apartments. If I were to try and paint this same scene today it would probably be surrounded by condos!

This painting is only 5 x 7 inches (about 10x15 cm) so imagine trying to capture something as big as the Skydome on a paper the size of a postcard! It seemed impossible...yet is still worked out, you really get the feeling of the enormous arena. To give the feeling that the Skydome was big, I made sure not to have any bigger objects in the same scene... if for instance there was a 15 story skyscraper next to it (which as I remember was actually in the real scene), then the Skydome would appear small. I emphasized the trees in the foreground because they made the building look huge in comparison. This is one of the advantages of making a painting over photography, you can unceremoniously delete anything ...including skyscrapers. 

Skydome Side View, 5x7" cold press  1996 (No. 0189)

Sunset, Hamilton Ontario Canada

You might have guessed that this sunset painting was done somewhere exotic like Spain or southern France, but you would be wrong, it was done in Hamilton Ontario. Of course to a Spaniard or Frenchman maybe Hamilton would be considered exotic, who knows one has probably never visited. At any rate this was a great scene I found right at the end of my painting day in Hamilton... has it ever looked any better?

When the sun is behind your scene, it is 'backlit' ... when objects are backlit they are typically in a silhouette. To paint an object in silhouette start with the lightest colour and work up to the darks. For example, in the trees in the middle of this painting I started with the bright yellow shape and when that dried a bit I put on the medium dark greens, then on top of that some darker (and colder) greens. Finally I put a few darker highlights on top. This multi layer technique is tough on a good day, but especially tough when the sun is going down!

5x7" cold press 1996??

Swimming Pool, North Carolina USA

When you think of the southern US big blue skies come to mind, but how about swimming pools? This was a swimming pool right outside of a motel, the brilliant blue contrasted nicely against the pale sky and green grass. There was also a flowering tree of some sort, not sure what the species was. This is a good example of how an otherwise uninteresting scene can make a nice painting. The composition worked well with the strong vertical lamp post against the horizontal roof.

When using watercolour, painting white fences is complicated...painting black fences is easy. The reason is that there is no white paint in traditional watercolour, so you would have to paint IN BETWEEN all of the fence posts, which is incredibly difficult. On the other hand, painting black (or very dark) fences, you just put it on top of the existing scene. In this example, I finished the pool and area around the pool, and when it was dry, painted the dark fence over top. Unfortunately if you make a mistake it is difficult to fix, so just relax and plunge in (the pool?) !

5x7" cold press, 1999