technology@pull

In this painting, strange alien-like people support or pull at each others arms while a sun sets over a calm sky. Silhouetted on the horizon is an old windmill suggesting a rural area. I suppose the premise of this work has to do with how technology can advance, pulling us in other directions as we still try to hold on to the old technology.

You may wonder how I created the halo of pink light around the tree line. When the sky was still wet, I put in a layer of red paint which 'bled' out into the tree shapes. When the red was just about dry I put in the darker browns of the tree. The trick is to know when the paint is just wet enough to add the next layer. Too wet and the second layer diffuses all over and you loose the shape, too dry and you can not get the delicate 'feathered' effect. The same trick was used to create the multi-coloured sky. It is all a matter of practice.

technology@pull, watercolour 7 x 5" cold press, winter 2007 (No. 1455)

Lamp Post, Barcelona, Spain

This painting shows the Gaudi cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. The cathedral spires can be seen in the sprawling city, reaching above the mountains and into the sky. I am sitting in a park near the old olympic village, on a nice grassy area on the sloping hill side. In the trees in the middle ground, you can see scary faces, which were inspired by the nightmare-like appearance of the Gaudi cathedral exterior.

You may notice he green reflection on the bottom part of the lamp bulb. White objects always reflect the surrounding colours, in this case the green grass below. Part of the reflection contains blue (from the sky), and the rest of the bulb is pure white from the bright sun. The bulb-shadow appears to be very light and full of colour, this effect is done by placing a very dark shadow directly underneath. The dark shadow on the lamp post provides enough contrast to make the other shadow look light and delicate.


Barcelona, Lamp post View of Cathedral, 5x7" cold press paper 1998 (No. 0875-2)

The Worms Take Over

Here, I am showing an abstract painting based on a short story that I wrote recently. The subject of the story was a group of homeless people living in a junkyard, and they had the ability to eat garbage and digest it. On one passage, one of the children has a nightmare that worms have eaten everything on the planet, and people that remain are primitive and fight for their lives against the worms. In the painting, three people with weapons find shelter under a tree while hundreds of worms crawl past in the moonlight. Incidentally, I wrote a similar story under the title 'the worms take over the world' when I was in gradeschool, I may still have a copy around, it was even illustrated.

Techniques in this painting include latex-masking fluid for the stars, tree branches, and the worms (see discussion for Cosmetic Makeup). The dark colours are a combination of ultramarine blue (dark blue) and burnt sienna (brown), as well as windsor yellow. The nearly black parts are based on alzarian crimson (dark red) and virdian (dark green). The dark highlights are applied last over top of the lighter tones. I placed the shadows on the people and worms to make the moonlight really pop out at you. The pale blue glow was applied last with thin layer of transparent blue paint.

The Worms Take Over, 5 x 8" cold press, 2008 (No. 1726)

White Wall Shadow, Cordoba, Spain

From the '98 Spainish collection, this painting was done in southern Spain in a city called Cordoba on a very hot day. I remember that I was sitting on a rock to do this painting, and beside me I had all of my socks drying on the rocks, which I had just washed that morning. The baking-hot sun did a good job on the socks. In the picture you can see the evidence of the sun, a clear blue sky, the bright white plaster wall, and the shadows cast by the trees.

The trick to painting shadows is to avoid the use of black paint. The shadows in the Cordoba painting are a mixture of cerulean blue (an opaque sky blue), and a few touches of french ultramarine, aurelian yellow, and rose madder genuine (a transparent pink). This colour combination is similar to the one I use for the sky, but it has a little more of the red and yellow added. Notice how the colour of the shadow varies; on the wall facing you, the shadow is a colder purple, while the wall that is facing the tree is tinted with light orange (because of the reflected light from the other wall). I will talk more about painting light and shadows more in the future as this is one of the most important aspects of landscape painting.

Cordoba, White Wall Shadow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1998 (No. 0947)

Monkey Thinking, Gibraltar, Spain/UK

This scene was painted on location in Gibraltar, Spain/UK in 1998. I was half way up the rock of Gibraltar when I came upon this animal, which is technically an ape, not a monkey I suppose. The funny thing about doing this painting was that the monkey actually sat still and posed for me, and as soon as I finished, the monkey got up and left. I wish people would be so helpful when you painted them.

You can tell how hot it was from the way the paint
dried. The sky has several visible brush strokes, which indicates that the paint dried very fast. The hot temperature also allowed a lot of overlapping detail. You can see the bars of the fence overlapping the mountains in the distance, and all of the detail in the monkeys fur. To be honest, the monkeys were kind of gross, and if you let them, they would jump on you and try to steal things. But hey, they looked cute.

Monkey Thinking, watercolour, 5 x 7" hot press, 1998 (No. 0930)

City Hall Square, London, Ontario, Canada

 

This scene was painted on location in London (Ontario!). The name of the city is often the source of great confusion. Many packages were mailed to London, England and then re-directed to London Ontario. The packages would arrive at work with a million stamps and labels attached. Often we wished that we could go to London, England to pick up the errant packages but the boss would not pay to fly us out there.

People often ask me how long it takes to paint a picture. Or sometimes they ask 'how long have you been painting for?' to which I usually answer '15 years, but not all on this painting.' Incidentally, a picture like this would take close to an hour. A less detailed painting could take about 30-45 minutes. The studio work (most abstracts) can take anywhere from 3 hours to 3 months depending on the size and complexity. The paintings that took the most time were 'Tuscan Vineyard', 'Lab Book #7, Construction at site 22', and 'Cosmetic Makeup', each one took about 50 hours of painting time.

City Hall Square, watercolour (No. ?) 

Ben's Deli

On several occasions I have painted scenes that disappear shortly after. The most eerie occasion was a barn I painted a picture of back in Bolton Ontario which burned down a couple of weeks later. I went back and painted another picture of the smoldering embers of the barn. In this painting you see Ben's Deli before the waiter strike and eventual closing of the famous restaurant. In the window you see customers sitting and eating and you may see a few pissed off waiters.

When you paint a scene you want the light and shadows to stay the same for awhile so you can have time to paint it properly. Painting in the city is very tricky because the sun tends to go down quick and the shadows from the building change. The light was coming in from the right side of the scene and going down fast. So I had to memorize a lot of the light patterns as they changed.
It is also important to have sunlight on your own body to keep warm, and to have the same lighting on your paper. I sat myself on the opposite sidewalk, in a spot where the sun came down on me and the paining. If you do this, the colours are rich and true to what you actually see.

Ben's Deli, watercolour 5.5 x 9" cold press, 2006 (No. 1098)

A Man Loosing His Umbrella

The umbrella is a metaphor; it is something we can all loose at times in our life. In our modern age we have all sorts of objects that we carry around with us and can forget about if we do not think of them enough. Like an umbrella you put under the table or leave on the bus, and then the next time it rains you wonder where it went. Did the cave-men loose their stone tools? I wonder. Fortunately we also have friends that can help us along. And in this case I had a friend who had found the lost umbrella.

A Man Loosing His Umbrella, watercolour 7.5 x 11" cold press, 2008 (No. 1593)

Lab Book #8 (Stubborn Nature Revealing Herself)

Part of the Lab Book series, this painting was actually done from some small notebooks that I used in early 2005 to take notes during meetings and lectures. The doodleism technique was used to create this scene, where 'evil' creatures are coming out of the desert and crossing a river to invade the 'good' creatures that are defending a castle. My favorite part is the robot dueling the brain in the foreground, and the golden eagle soaring above the battle.

Technically this painting was made in a similar manner as the other lab book paintings. First I copied out the doodles from the lab books using thin paint outlines. Shortly after sitting down I knew what the theme would be, a battle scene with creatures crossing to a castle. So I placed the doodles in a way that fit the theme. Then, I applies shadows and colour washed, using a complementary colour scheme. There is a cool part in the middle just behind the woman on the chair, where your eye is taken into a perspective-shift, suddenly you are looking in the sky...by the way, the name of the painting was taken after a sculpture here at the hospital, it is called 'Nature revelaing herself before man'.

Lab Book #8 (Stubborn Nature Revealing Herself), watercolour 22 x 15" cold press, 2008 (No. 1942)

Lorea's Mom

Another commission painting, this is one of the few portraits I have done. The actual photograph has been placed as an inset under the glass near the bottom of the mat, this was the idea of the Framer (Dini from Artisan's Alley in London Ontario where I used to show some artwork). Painting a portrait is very difficult, but painting a portrait of somebody's mother is even more difficult. To the artist, the person is a complete stranger, but to the family this face is familiar for a lifetime. A small mistake that I will not notice can become very obvious to the family! Happily, this portrait was very much appreciated by my friend and colleague Lorea (although I have not heard how her mother feels about it!).

For me the hardest part was establishing the drawing. I made detailed measurements on the photo to locate the position of the eyes, nose and mouth, and then transferred the positions onto the larger paper. I sketched in the face with light pencil, and once the face looked right I painted the skin tones and hair etc. The drawing took about 3 weeks to get right, the actual painting was done in a mtter of hours. Without formal training in portrait work the whole process was nerve-racking. I hope to do more portrait work one day and implement faces into my abstract work.

Lorea's Mom, watercolour 10 x 14" cold press, 2000 (No. 1899)

Andy's Harley

This painting was done for a friend as a christmas present. The owner of the motorcycle loved the painting, especially all of the chrome and leather and the handcuffs that can be seen on the saddle pack. I tried to put the motorcycle in an environment that had a lot of motion and colourful energy to it. Even though there is nobody on the motorcycle, it looks as if it could be going full speed into the sunset.

I have done a lot of commission work, where people usually give me a photograph and ask for a painting. Working from photo is very difficult because there is often a lot of details that you would normally ignore when painting on location. So the first step is to ignore the details you don't need. For this work the entire background was invented, only the details of the chrome are real (and the handcuffs). You may recognize the technique I used for the background, it involves applying large mounts of paint and letting it dry overnight (see yesterdays posts for 'Dream Tree' and 'The Idea is This').

Andy's Harley, 7 x 10" cold press, 2008 (No. 3353)

Dream Tree

For the most part this painting was done by applying large amounts of wet paint and letting it dry overnight. The next day I touched it up and added the deer in the background and some of the details of the tree branches. This work was the first painting I did in Montreal, January 2005, and the first of this technique. This technique of applying the paint first and seeing how it turned out reflects the fresh perspective I has coming to a new city. The work was bought by a colleague from the lab.

Dream Tree, watercolour 22 x 15" cold press, 2005 (No. 3352 )

The Idea is This

In this painting multiple planes of reality are depicted. Flowing from the tree, a couple sits on the roof of a house and in the sky people walk through a candy apple sunset. The painting started by applying large blobs of paint and letting them dry overnight. The next day I look and see what it sort of looks like, and then fill in some details. Similar techniques were used for Yellow Sky posted previously, and Dream Tree which I will post soon.

The Idea is This, watercolour 11x14" cold press, 2005 (No. 1426)

Orange Alert

This painting depicts the statue of liberty bathed in orange light. She is standing on a Canadian flag. Next to her there are wagons circling an egg. Wolves, fire and those evil little ghosts that appeared in the pacman game, surround it in a threatening way. An eagle soars above.
I'm not often political with my work, and mostly I like to leave the meaning of a painting to the imagination of the viewer. But this painting was inspired by the increased border restrictions between US-Canada that make it more difficult to visit the US. The American desire to protect itself is represented by the circling wagons and the threat of terror are found in the various creatures.

I wont say much about this painting from a technical standpoint, only that I came up with the idea as I was painting it. Even as I painted it, I was not fully aware of the overall meaning. It was only afterwards that I looked at the work and understood what it stood for. It is strange to paint something in this way, almost zen-like (or drug induced....but I am only high on caffeine)...other paintings I made in this way include 'Birdman' (posted previously) and 'Love vs. Jealousy'(not posted).

Orange Alert, watercolour 9 x 12" cold press, 2008 (No. 1481)

Two palm Trees, Santa Monica, California

Obviously this painting was not done in Montreal, Canada unless I imagined it. In fact it was done in Santa Monica California on a trip I took with an old friend. Santa Monica is connected to all the other beaches via a long boardwalk which goes into Venice beach, where we were staying at a roach-infested youth hostel.
Of course it was sunny there as I sat by the boardwalk painting and watching the people go by. I had only been painting outdoors for about a year when I did this, I remember the results of the painting trip to be quite good. I will post some others in the future.

Because watercolour paint is mostly transparent, it is often impossible to paint an object on top of the background. To do this painting I did the tree first, and then painted the background around it. You can see the white paper showing through towards the bottom of the tree where I failed to fill in the background completely. Despite the small mistakes this painting has a nice freshness about it, the colours really feel warm. 

Two Palm Trees, watercolour 5 x7" cold press, 1997 (No. 0167)