Altered Ending

This painting is an example of what I might now consider a 'classic' doodleism style... The painting which was done recently resembles a lot the earlier ones I was doing, in particular, it has an overall 2-D feel to it at first glance, but on closer inspection there is a depth-of-field suggested by the river and the landscape. Sitting in the foreground towards the bottom right, a group of cave men huddle around a fire, behind them there is a row of alien looking pods on a ridge line. The rest of the picture is filled with random elements all taken from notebook doodles. I though the title Altered Ending had something to do with the fact that aliens had somehow landed in our caveman past, and would in that case lead to an altered ending.

I don't know if I ever blogged about the methods for stretching paper ...one day not long after I started painting my parents took me to see the studio of a famous watercolour painter in Ontario named John Joy... he told me how to stretch paper using water and staples and showed me a large piece of wood that he had stretched paper on. So I went home and figured out how to do it, basically you fill the bath tub with cold water, then submerge your paper, it usually floats a bit so I flip it after about 10 minutes. Before doing this I cut the paper to the required size, lately I have been using just 22x30 or 22x15. Also, before hand, clean off a table somewhere, and wipe it down a bit to make sure there is no paint blobs there, and get a lint free rag ready (you can buy them in the painting section of a hardware store. For stretching you need a heavy piece of wood, I use an old keyboard support board from a desk I used to have, it happens to be just over 22x15, and for 22x30 I built a sturdy square from 1x4" pine. If you are wondering why the size... it is because watercolour paper is always sold in 22x30" pages. After a total of about 20 min, pull out the paper and let it drip, just grab it by a corner or edge. Bring it to the desk, and put it down flat, wipe off the excess water with the lint free rag, pick it up, wipe excess water off desk, then put flat, wipe off excess from the other side. Now the tricky part is to figure out which side is up... the top side is slightly smoother than the bottom, you can also tell because the manufacturer prints their name on the corner, it is only really visible on the back side (they dont want their name appearing in the art after all). Now put the paper on your surface or rack and using a staple gun put in stables, start with one side middle, then gently pull the other side taut so the paper is flat, staple the other side middle, then do the same for the third and fourth side. Now do corners and then a few in between. Generally about 1 staple every 4 inches is enough, if you put too many in you will be hauling them out afterward (which I do carefully with needle nose pliers). The staples need to be about half inch (1cm) from the edge of the paper, or else the rip when the paper dries. Let dry flat overnight. I always stretch paper except for 5x7" paintings.

Altered Ending, 11 x 15" cold press, watercolour, 2010 (No. 1762a)

Tree houses, La Montagne

Tree houses is a painting done in La Montagne, a small village on top of the old volcanic mountain next to St. Denis the major city on isle de la Reunion. In the scene, you are looking across a deep gorge that runs down the side of the mountain, the houses have been built up along the side of the gorge and then down in the valley. I was sitting on the edge of the road on the other side of the gorge. What inspired me most, besides the amazing way that they build houses on the mountain-side, but also the colours... all of the greens and yellows and how they play together was really special.

In some cases it is smart to paint the 'essence' of what you are seeing rather than exactly what you see, in this case the sky was actually a little overcast, and I wanted to make sure the viewer of the painting would still get the same feeling that I got when I was there. To do that, each colour has been enhanced a little more, embellished perhaps, the greens are close to what comes from the tube, and the startling yellow is too. I played up the reds a bit too in order to give the complementary contrast to the trees. The other key here was to keep the details a bit loose, to give a sort of in-the-wild feeling to it...



5x7" cold press, 2011

"Intense Island", ile de la La Reunion

Inspired by Sunrise on the Saguenay , an oil painting by Lucius R. O'Brien painted in 1880, this is a scene from Ile de la Reunion in the Indian Ocean. The sun was just about to set as we sat on a park bench overlooking the crashing waves. In the far right of the painting where the water meets the sky you can see part of the highway, which actually wraps around the old volcanic cliff which is slowly crumbling into the sea at great peril to the motorists. A few palm trees are perched atop the mountain, following the ridgeline to the left (East) would bring you to the town of La Montagne where a bsutling community exists, with a great view. The nickname for the island is "intense island" partly to do with the rugged wilderness and hot/rainy climate, but also the falling rocks, sharks and potential for molten lava.

Trying to capture a rapidly setting sun on location is never easy, especially since the effects the sun produces are quite elaborate. I started with a warm layer of grey in the shape of the mountain, I made the mountain a cooler purple farther from the sun, to give that sense of a hot sun burning through a muggy day. I added several layers of texture, leaving the area just below the sun without any texture to give the impression that the sun was totally blurring out the image of the mountain. The water was done using a similar technique, except the contrast between the highlighted areas and the water was more profound, and I also tried to maintain areas of reflected sunlight throughout the water especially in areas where the waves were active. To the leftmost of the painting I added in some yellows and greens, by doing this I enhance the illusion that the bright setting sun is bleaching out the colours. The energy of the waves was captured with a few decisive, squiggly brushstrokes.

11x15" cold press, 2011

Mahe, Seychelles

The main island in the Seychelles is called Mahe, the hotel we were at was in the south of the island up the hill from this beach depicted in the painting. The colour of the water was very pure and filled with amazing yellows and blues. The colours of the water were echoed in the colour of the boat, as well as in the rich tones of the jungle in the background. If you look close there is a tiny crab in the bottom right of the painting, the beaches were all covered in the creatures, they lived in little holes in the beach that they dug and would pop out overy now and then.


Painting tropical water is always a challenge and I recommend that if you are an artist you should take every chance you get to practice, well even if you are not an artist it is highly recommended to spend some time at the beach! I learned a lot on this trip, for example, the shallow water near the beach front takes on the colours of the sand, so to paint it I mixed the sand colour first (a light yellow accented with peach and a touch of green), then when it came time to do the water colour, I used the same paint mixture from the palette, just adding a bit more yellow and some blue... then I added a bit more blue and merged the washes... in this way you can gradually change the color you are adding to create that smooth transition from beach to sea.

Mahe Island, Boat, Cove 5x6" cold press. 2011 (No. 1274)

La Reunion, Coral

On the beach at L'Hermitage there were many large chunks of coral which may have washed up or may have been carried up by the beach folk who use them to weigh down their towels in the island wind. This was a sizeable chunk of coral, larger than your two hands and weighing a kilo or so. The patterns and colours of the coral were really inspiring, it was a bit of a challenge to pull it off though.

Even though this is the simplest subject matter I painted on the trip, it was probably one of the most technically difficult. I began with the underlying colours and shadows, a complex mixture of pinks, ambers, peaches, and warm lilac tones. As the painting dried I 'spiked' the shadow areas with darker purples and browns, by spiked I mean that I put colour into a semi-dry layer resulting in a very smooth changing of the tone. Even though the coral itself was rock hard, it appeared very 'cottony' and the light reflected off it in an almost halo-like way...the key to capturing this feeling was to keep everything smooth and a little fuzzy instead of having the elements too sharp an focused....examine the edges of the coral and you see a very undefined line. The details of the coral structure were added after the underpainting was nearly dry, they were kept fairly muted so as to maintain the illusion of a delicate coral.

5x7" cold press 2011

L'Hermitage Beach

Also called the 'lagoon', this beach situated on the west coast of Ile de la Reunion is protected by a natural coral reef that blocks the waves from the indian ocean, and more importantly prevents the sharks from entering. In the painting you can see the white foam of the waves crashing on the reef about 2/3 the way up the sea, the actual distance is about 30-40 meters from the shore. Within the lagoon there are many little fish and other creepy crawlies that are mostly harmless, and the water ranges from 25-28 C.

This was the first (and only) painting from the trip done on this format, the size ratio is over 2:1 wide. We had already been to the beach several times and I knew I wanted to paint this scene, the long beach with the repeating trees in the foreground, so on the last day I cut a larger piece down to this size especially for the scene. The actual painting went very quick, I started with the water, completing it pretty much as you see in the painting, I then took the painting out into the sun (I was sitting in the shade at the time) to allow it to dry fully before putting on the darker trees in the foreground. It was then a matter of putting down the sand and the shadows, and finally adding the details (pine cones on the ground and the wispy pine needles and branches at the top). Now that I look at the photo of the painting I really like the sparkling white highlights on the waves in the distance. This was the last painting I did on the Feb La Reunion trip.


15x6" cold press 2011

Morning Clouds, La Reunion

The morning clouds were rolling into ile de la Reunion, illuminated by the pink light of the rising sun they reached high into the sky billowing above the topaz sea. Gee, this painting blog is turning into a cheesy poetry blog all of a sudden. This is the view from the back patio of the apartment, not a bad place to have a coffee in the morning. Most of the day it is sunny here or partly cloudy, although sometimes in the afternoon the clouds roll over and there can be flash rain storms. So far we have been lucky with the weather though, as this painting suggests.

I put most of the effort into painting the clouds... to begin I put down the blue sky roughly outlining the white clouds, then used a damp brush to soften the edges of the clouds to give them the cottony-appearance. When partly dry I dropped in the golden pink followed by darker shadow tones which are a mix of cerulean blue and rose matter genuine with a touch of lemon yellow. When these layers were mostly dry I put on the thin dark clouds over top, and by using lifting techniques created the thin white clouds that streak across the top. The humidity here on top of the mountain is actually quite low, so the paint dried fast enough to make this complex multi-layer approach. If the humidy is high you need to think of a simpler strategy.

5x7" cold press 2011