Still life: Christmas decorations ornaments

Going back some time, my Grandmother on Dad's side once had made I believe, these types of decorations you see in the painting, the house in the middle. Its made of cardboard, transparencies, and plenty of sparkles. Actually, this version was made by my mom based on the original design, I have two of them here for Christmas decorations. On the right is a small wooden soldier, probably a dollar store thing, although I could make up a story about Grandpa making these in the old days! He certainly could have, he was a mechanical engineer for trains, and had plenty of woodworking tools. 

Xmas house soldier, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here are some tree ornaments with contrasting textures... on the front left the bulb is a metallic-green finish, on the right is a matte green finish, and the star in the background is knitted with yarn. I used several layers on the left bulb using shades of yellow-green, while the right one was done with wet-in-wet technique and darker blue-greens.

Grey and green ornaments, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally a few more of the wooden toy ornaments, the left is a colourful train with a bear sitting on top, the right is a Santa on a sailboat, with sunglasses that I added to the painting! 

Wood toy ornaments, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Blue sky Sunday, neighborhood scenes

Since the train was going by, I stopped my bike at the old clothing factory that is now a restaurant and condo complex. The structures are seen around the edges of the painting, with the bright sun, blue sky and prominent tree featured as the center of interest. I had to do another painting while this one dried, so that the tree could be painted over top of the sky. 

Sun tree industrial condos, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

In fact, I did several paintings on this location in st Henri, since the sun was beaming down and I had full light to paint with, which is a rarity these days. Much of Montreal is hidden beneath shadows from tall buildings, but this clearing provides good sight lines and open sky. The train was crossing Courcelle street creating a line-up of cars and a few bikes. 

Cars waiting train crossing, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

This painting shows an electric charging station and the sound-wall that runs parallel with the train tracks in the background. Enormous piles of snow were piled up here, and a tree leaned out over the pastel sky. 

Electric charging station, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

It didn't take long for the graffiti people to cover this wall in 'artwork'. As usual, I replaced the actual graffiti names with my own crew, including PJD, D-DAWG, CILS, JD CD, DYER, and FITZ. Being backlit, the shadow from the wall had a prominent blue-violet tint that I made with indo blue (PB60) and magenta (PR122) and a touch of blue saphhire (PB15). 

Train wall graff, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Why do I bother painting on location when that painting of the tomato wearing sunglasses will probably end up being the most popular painting? At any rate, this burned out condo in st Henri had some interesting contrasts, with plenty of snow piled on top. I am not familiar with the story on this particular fire, a quick google search shows a number of major fires have happened in the neighborhood in recent times. Half of the roof had caved in and windows looked pretty scorched. 

Burned out house, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press,December 2025  

Still life: tomato transparencies

Here is a cool tomato, wearing my favorite shades. Today's still life theme was transparency, using a tomato with various forms of transparent materials. The lenses of the shades are a charcoal grey which created darker tints on the tomato skin, and dulled the intensity of surface reflections. The lenses reflected overhead lights. A reflection along the bottom of the tomato ended up looking like a smile. 

Tomato shades, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here is the tomato as seen through a zip lock bag, the bag is being held up by a framing rack but I omitted it from the painting so the bag seems to be standing up by itself. To show the transparency effect, I placed my 2 inch hog's hair brush partly behind the plastic so it goes from being sharp and high contrast to blurry and low contrast behind the plastic. The plastic was wrinkled and crinkled which created a layer of light and shadow, while blurring the overall form of the tomato. 

Tomato seen through zip lock bag, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally the most challenging of all, is the tomato as seen though a beer mug. Its one of those glass beer mugs with the oval depressions, this one has a Concordia University logo badge on the front. The University really wants us to help with student recruitment, so what better way to say 'Bachelor's Degree' than a beer mug reflecting a tomato? In fact, the glass bent light sufficiently so as to create a large image of the tomato on the concave, with smaller versions of the same tomato on the convex oval sections. Red and green light intermixed on the front and side angles, creating a neat holiday colour scheme. 

Tomato seen though beer mug, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Still life: bathroom scenes, colour splashes

Now its time for a journey into the inner sanctum, the bathroom of all places. Everyone has one, or maybe more and spends a lot of time there, so why not make a few paintings? Here is our towel rack with an old faded blue hand towel, and part of the counter top and mirror visible. At the top there is a light switch on the left and the bottom part of 'Great Wave' a print by Hokusai. This painting tested many of my still life skills such as shiny things, fabric, and reflections. 

Towel rack, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

This porcelain cat is hollowed out in the back making way for the toilette brush. It sits dutifully all the time, keeping the implement handy for when its needed. In the background corner, there is a new water detection unit that can shut off our main water valve if flooding is detected. There are little detector pucks around the condo now, to protect against water damage. 

Porcelain cat, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

If you made it this far into today's blog, then what were you expecting? Here is a painting of incense burning on top of the toilette. In the upper left is an aqua-painting we obtained in Ottawa, the artist made it by putting paint on top of a bin of water, then placing the paper on top, and skillfully pulling it off, leaving interesting patterns and an image of a red tulip. A black lighter is visible on the counter. Catching the gloomy amber lighting was key, I used a head lamp (white diode light) to judge the colours correctly. 

Incense, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

No, this is not a painting of what was in the toilette, although it could be... this is what was on the backs of these paintings, well, front. In 2005 I did a series of colour-splash paintings, where the paint is applied in great big puddles then allowed to dry over the course of days, then repeated a few times. When cut up into smaller sections, the results are sometimes fantastic like this one. 

Colour splash 1, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, 2005 

Here is another image of the back of the painting, it was part of a large piece. In elementary school I did a project where I created fabric dyes from household ingredients like beet root or turmeric for example. When complete, I dumped all the various materials from which I had extracted dyes into the toilette and flushed... that looked like the painting indeed. I am afraid to search the internet, but surely, toilette bowl art is a thing. 

Colour splash 2 ,watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, 2005  

Nice Autumn day, a little bit windy

It was a nice Autumn day, just a little bit windy and a tad bit of snow. Painting was a challenge, in this scene you see snow blowing across the basketball court down in Coffee park. I applied a moist wash to the area of the blowing snow, then painted details around it, using the trees and post as a device to create an illusion of floating clouds of snow. 

Basketball net blowing snow, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Cars at Raffi's auto shop on Harley street were buried in piles of fresh snow and the strong wind was whipping it up even more. Quebec issued a travel advisory for cars, to basically stay home if possible, but the travel advisory did not say anything about riding bicycles today!

Raffi auto cars under snow, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Riding east along the Maisonneuve bike path brought me to a group of trees that offered some respite from the blizzard-like conditions. On cue, the commuter train rolled by and I could paint its outline real quick, then integrate it with the foreground trees. To begin, I painted out a faint outline where the snow highlights had to be, then filled in the little bits of tree trunk and branches that were visible. So most of the snow is just paper showing through since there is no white paint in watercolour. 

Train through trees, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Still life, shiny things

Finding a few shiny things around the condo I made these paintings starting with our cheese grater. After examining the small holes with a magnifying glass, I came up with a strategy and kept with the plan. The dark holes were not evenly round, they had been made with some sort of mechanical hole punch. Light was catching their jagged protruding edges, creating small local shadows. The aluminum background was mirror-like, my blurry reflection, and my cup of tea could be seen. Mixing grey tones is best done with a purple mix (PB60 + PV19) and some yellow ochre (PY43) or raw sienna (PBr7) dabbed in. 

Cheese grater, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Looking like a metallic owl from Clash of the Titans, an old 1980's sci-fi movie, this is our electric kettle, with one of my water bottles in the background. My face and hand, with paintbrush, were reflecting on the right side of the container. Using a full set of values wisely, from darkest dark to lightest light, it key to creating this illusion of a shiny object. There are wide ranging hues to depict, some cool purples, others warm caramel tones. I had two light sources on the subject matter for all the still life paintings.  

Electric kettle, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally the big challenge, our disco pumpkin... its a pumpkin candle with a mosaic of tiny mirrors fixed on with grouting. The mirrors were much smaller and fit tighter than you see in the painting, but you get the idea. Colours ranged from cream to dark green, purple, and variations of grey. The stem was made of glass. 

Disco pumpkin, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Still life, fabric theme

Continuing with still life studies, here are some paintings of various types of fabric from around the condo. The first one is an afghan blanket made by my late Nana using crochet, its brown with yellow and cyan patterns. Since yarn uses similar types of dyes, I could match the colours using pigments such as burnt umber (PBr7), orange-yellow (PY110) and cyan (PBr7). Painting fabric feels inherently chaotic due to all the undulations and textures, but the final results seem to be rather peaceful. In the background, I showed a stack of recent paintings, with the intense sunset over Lachine canal on top of the pile. 

Crochet afghan brown yellow cyan, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here is a tea towel folded up, it is cream-coloured with magenta detailing stitched in to the material. It looks to be machine made, although the magenta parts may have been hand stitched or done with a sewing machine. Being mass produced, it had tight texturing and clean lines. To do this, I painted out an outline of the undulations, applied the body washes including shadows, then over-painted the magenta and cream fabric textures. In the background is a kitchen table chair and some water containers I use for location painting. 

Tea towel cream magenta, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Trying a different type of fabric, here is my neon vest with reflecting strips running down the back. In reality, it is spattered with mud, but I liked the clean aesthetic of this painting, it looks like the day Cilei gave it to me as a gift, new and clean. If you try to paint things like this at home, it may feel like a huge technical challenge. Its been some time since I did fiddly studio paintings, but with all the location painting lately, I felt like my brush work improved tremendously and I had no trouble identifying hues and values. It was fun to try and figure out ways to depict various types of fabrics, perhaps I will do more in the future, although, I have a different idea for my next set of still life paintings, wont spoil the surprise. 

Reflecting vest neon grey, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025