Touristy and not-so toursity scenes

Rue st Paul is the main tourist drag that intersects with the iconic Jacques Cartier Place with all the vendors and restaurants. Looking west, this scene depicts the crowd using simplified dots and dashes in a variety of colours on top of a blue shadow. The buildings are various shades of grey and brick colours.  

Rue st Paul tourists, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4586)

La Cave à Manger... the eating cave... had some prominent yellow umbrellas out front to block the strong sun coming across the top of the Bonsecours market. Working up the outline with the sharp new #4 holbien brush, the colours were infused with yellow. Two bins, one for garbage one for recycling sat next to a bench in the foreground. 

Yellow umbrellas Cave, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4587)

After the challenging reflections and complicated urban scenes, these dumpsters were a lot more fun to paint. Its the first time painting yellow, green and cyan dumpsters, to add to the blue, magenta and yellow dumpsters painted earlier in the year. 

Yellow green cyan dumpsters, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4588)

More reflections, st Denis street

Looking south down st Denis street, the ferris wheel could be seen in the distance, and a prominent street light and window reflecting some trees were in the foreground. Connecting the scene is the street with a little bit of traffic.  

Reflection st Denis street, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4582)

The cinema on st Denis street has art deco styling,  such as the large curved glass feature above the entrance. Shaped like the prow of a ship, it was reflecting some trees and a building from across the street. Inside the structure, some curtains and lights were visible through the tinted glass. 

Reflection cinema, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4583)

Looking at this window provided a good view of the cafe across the street in its reflection. A no parking sign, in the typical 'Montreal orange' colour made with the paints called orange (PO62) and red-orange (PO73) anchors the composition.  

Reflection of cafe, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4584)

An indigenous female art collective makes wall murals around Montreal, such as this one on the side of a simple block-shaped building with red bricks. Trees were reflecting in the upper windows. The brick colour was made with raw sienna (PBr7) and pyrol red (PR254) with some burnt sienna (PR101). 

Mural and reflection, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4575b)

This old factory is derelict, it was the subject matter for Zen Factory painted last year. Not on st Denis street, this is near the Lachine canal off of st Patrick street. Most all of the small window inserts were smashed, leaving some shards that reflected the trees growing tall in the vacant lot. On google maps it is called Factory Bando. 

Broken reflections, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4585)

Reflections on reflections

Atwater station is located beneath the Alexi Nihon mall, with an exit station across the street on the corner of st Catherine. I was looking west here, catching a view of a waiting bus, some people, and the reflection in the window of the station. Within the reflection was another building with a window that had its own reflection... of another building. Trying to paint scenes like this can be daunting, but today I wanted to push my limits and see what happened. The theme was reflections. 

Bus reflection Atwater station, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4580)

This is the rear wall of the station exit, which has tall reflective glass panels separated by white-grey frames. The shadow of the building was part of the reflection, as were the various trees in Cabot park. Painting in the city is very technical... one thing that helped was a brand new #4 Holbien brush I got last week which still has a sharp tip.  

Rear window reflection, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4581)

Earlier this year I made a series of paintings of an old strip mall slated for demolition, I nicknamed it the demo mall. The last store to stay open was a laundry mat, although today when I went by it too had closed for good. An elderly lady came by with her laundry in a wheeled basket carrier, and seemed surprised that it was closed for good. I let her know that the whole building was slated for demolition. She took interest in my painting and seemed impressed, she guessed I had been painting for 15 years, to which I replied, I have been painting for 35 years... but this particular painting was about 20 minutes! If you look closely, there are three images here... the bricks and metal of the exterior, the laundry machines lined up in the interior, and the reflected scene of cars and condos that are behind me. It was mind-bending to paint the overlapping interior/reflection. In fact, I tried two other paintings of this scene in order to trouble shoot on location. I learned a bit more about painting reflections today and will tackle some more next time the opportunity presents itself. 

Demo mall laundry mat reflection v2, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4578)

 

Making the cuts, catalogue update

 

Just past the midpoint of the year, hard to believe that time flies! I completed a catalogue update and could tabulate the total number for 2025 to be at least 512 paintings with a few unaccounted for. Keeping up that rate, it would be over 1000 on the year but I usually paint more during the summer and typically slow down in the fall due to teaching and committees. However, those of you who know me, also know that I am on a one year sabbatical from July to July, so I will be travelling a bit more and concentrating on research exclusively. The main thing is to learn more about cancer immunology... that is empowering the immune system to eliminate cancer. With all the painting, I finally decided to give a second life to some of my old paintings... in other words, I selected about two dozen of the weaker paintings that had blank backs and cut them up mostly into 6 x 7.5" and 8 x 10" which are the most efficient sizes. Unfortunately, that meant loosing a few paintings, but I had to ask myself, would I hang these paintings on my wall? Would I want them hanging on my parent's wall? The problem was that I used a lot of alizarin crimson and aureolin yellow both of which fade, and my technique at the time resulted in very bland and greyish paintings that were overloaded with details. I am glad to have cut the paintings up, it freed up some space, and I examined each one to see what could be done better in future paintings. Most cut up paintings were in the doodleism style, which kept me busy and I had fun painting them. In recent years, I refined that style and got better results than the works from about 2005 - 2020. The abstract painting above was recently done on one of the cut-offs, I used the 'earth max palette' which has like 15 different earthy paints and a few synthetic colours. 

Making the cuts, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4866)

Here is what is on the back of the previous painting... a piece of 'Attempted Evolution'. There were things I really liked about the painting such as this character and the eyeball in the ground, but overall it would need a re-work, and a re-paint with better contrast and higher quality finish. When I was painting these large doodleism paintings, I knew the backs of the paintings could be used one day if I ever ran out of money. It wasn't money I ran out of, but space! 

Attempted evolution crop cut, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025

Here is another crop cut of a painting called 'Apple eye Shrimp in the sky' which was a remake of an earlier painting called 'Apple Eye Violet Sky'. It was my 'Magical Mystery Tour' phase of being an artist, like the Beatles Psychedelic period.  If the time, opportunity, and mood presents itself I would pick through these paintings and see if I can make finished pieces. Before you go thinking I cut up all my paintings, I currently have nearly 6000 paintings in my collection, most of them postcard sized, so loosing a few dozen to gain a few hundred in return was great, and the work from the past few months seems to be top notch. There is still a good pile of cuts to paint on, and I have new Arches paper I bought last week. I notice a big difference, in the old days I soaked the paper to remove the sizing, that was based on the advice of a famous painter John Joy. However, the sizing is there to prevent the paint from diffusing into the paper pulp. Quite a few of the old cut pieces were pretty hard to paint on especially in humidity, and there were some strange textures not to mention staple holes. There was one painting where the texturing really helped, it was the elevated train in Griffintown, it was on the back of Tourist Destiny. When I painted tourist destiny I also noticed the weird texture and I believe it was a manufacturer defect. The texturing defect-effect is so cool I wish I knew how to reproduce it for certain paintings. Like in the gravel field yellow flowers I used the grainy cut offs from Tourist destiny and it was perfect for the subject matter.  

Apple eye crop cut, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

Greenspot Restaurant, record painting count

 

At last, I painted a scene of the Greenspot restaurant which I have painted many times before, its just up the street from Atwater Market. The roof is with a mix of viridian hue (PG7) and phthalo blue (PB15) and some indo blue (PB60), similar to what I used for the turquoise car in Brossard earlier in the day. Instead of Coke on the sign I put my initials. Today, I painted 21 paintings, including several in the larger 8 x 10" format like this one. Its not about the count though, I wanted to finish strong with some quality paintings that meant something. Sure, I could make 50 paintings a day of fire hydrants in NDG but what's the point? Today took several days of preparation that entailed resting the legs, getting the bike repaired, stocking up on supplies, and leaving early in the morning with enough food and water. I hope you enjoyed reading about my Montreal/Brossard adventure today, and I might just take it easy tomorrow. Just noticed I spelled restarant wrong, must have been tired!

Greenspot restaurant, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4326)

Lachine canal restaurant boat and Atwater Market

After getting back over the Champlain bridge and into Nun's island I was pretty beat physically and mentally after many hours of painting in the smoggy heat. Sitting in a cool park bench contemplating the next move and sipping some luke-warm instant coffee, I decided to press on and make some more paintings. Surely I was close to breaking my single-day painting record set last September? Getting through Verdun and back to the Lachine canal, I found this scene of a restaurant boat near Atwater market. There was a lot of detailing in the boat itself, which was crammed with patrons, and more people were waiting outside. It was another reminder of the 2018 trip to Amsterdam where I painted canals. 

Lachine canal restaurant boat, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4574a)

It was kind of neat to be in the zone so to speak, painting smoothly and effectively despite the physical exhaustion. Here is a well-organized scene of a fruit stand at the Atwater market with a few patrons. The watermelons initially caught my attention. I also liked the yellow stripes on the awning. The painting required attention to detail and patience, since several layers of colour and texturing had to be applied to work up the details. 

Atwater Market fruit stand, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4574b)

More free-form, this flower stand was painted by making small daubs with the #8 brush, almost like pointillism. A few forms of people, and the semi-transparent domed roof completed the scene. Considering how messy my palette was at this point, its a wonder the colours came out so well. In fact I brought another palette along with all the same paints, but never needed to use it today. They only colours I had run out of by now were bismuth vanadate yellow (PY184) and shadow green (PBk31). I still had benzi yellow (PY154) and two other greens so it was all good. 

Atwater Market flower stand, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4575a)

Champlain Bridge from the south shore

 

If you are reading my blogs from Saturday July 19th, you might be starting to wonder how many paintings I did today? It was a lot by my standards, in fact I did more than my previous number done in one trip on September 14th 2024. Numbers like this make no difference, the important thing is to be enjoying the craft, and not feeling like its just shoveling out paintings for the sake of paintings. The final tally for the day will be told in a blog or two from now.  

The painting above shows the new Samuel-De Champlain Bridge, which is just called the Champlain bridge by locals. It was built next to the old Champlain bridge which has been all but removed now. Just a few of the supports were kept near the shore, they are turning them into monuments. This view of the bridge was from the south shore, from the aptly named Chaplain Bridge park. By now I was pretty beat by the heat exhaustion and the 22 km trip down to the st Jacques river. Somehow my brush was still moving and paintings were coming out before my eyes.  You can see the Montreal skyline and Mount Royal in the distance under the bridge. 

Champlain Bridge from south shore, watercolour 8 x 10" hot press, July 2025 (No. 4323)

The bike path curves its way under the bridge, then loops around to join a separate structure on the bridge span. In this stylized view, I wanted to catch the s-shape of the bike path, and show the steep incline up the bridge. Where the path seems to end under the bridge, that is were it carries on to the west and towards Park Radisson and the st Jacques river. I was on my way back to Montreal, looking at the bridge. You can see part of the Montreal skyline under the bridge. 

 

Champlain bridge bike path, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4324)

Standing in one of the rest areas on the bridge, which is just a nook with a few benches where people can stop and catch their breath, I got this view looking down on the south canal, it is the active channel that allows passage of container ships. The islands provide sanctuary for birds, and house the massive power lines that supply Montreal. You can see the Cartier bridge off in the distance through the haze.  

Bird Sanctuary south canal, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4325)