View of the City, Alicante Spain

Alicante Spain is on the Mediterranean sea south of Barcelona, it has a nice beach which I also painted and discussed on an earlier blog. In this painting you see the mountain and hints of the castle on top, the city, and the brilliant blue sea. I like the part of the city near the front of the painting where you can see the road and the shadow of the building. I was amazed at a particular cyclist who was riding up the steep mountain road, and then 20 minutes later would zoom down and then ride up again...he must have been training for tour de france, or otherwise he had lost his contact lense and was looking for it on the road. Painting complicated city scenes like this can be a challenge but with a few simple tricks you can make life a lot easier. In most cases, I represent the windows of the sky-scrapers with dark paint applied on top of the final wash in simple lines or dots to indicate a row of windows. In reality the windows are probably lighter than the building itself, but painting light on dark is impossible with watercolour. In some cases I painted light windows (see the building in the front). To paint a light window surrounded by dark brick, I paint the shadow first, leaving space for the window, and then apply a light colour for the window. 7 x 9" cold press, 1998

Sunset in Ronda, Spain

Capturing a sunset is always hard to do, especially when the sun is just below the horizon and darkness is looming. But the colours are so spectacular at this time, as you can see from this painting done in Ronda Spain. I was sitting in a little park situated right on the edge of a steep cliff and wide valley. The sunset had been truly grand, in fact I think I did another painting about 30 minutes before this one, I'll have to post that one soon.

The tricky part about sunsets is that the paint dries really slow, because the sun is down and the temperature drops. In this painting, I had to paint the sunset first, let it dry completely, and then put the dark fence and trees on top. It really helped that Granada was about 35C and the air bone dry, causing the paint to still dry fast at sunset. When you are mixing the colours in a sunset scene, remember to tint everything with a deep-red orange tone....even the blues greys and darker tones in this painting are tinted with some salmon-pink to reflect the colour of the sky.

5x7" cold press, 1998

Alumni Hall, University of Western Ontario, Canada

This painting was done a number of years ago just around the time the snow thawed and spring started, you can see the little bit of snow beside the tree. Also creating the feeling of spring is the lack of leaves on the trees, and the overall cold colours used in the painting. The shadow of the tree falls over several surfaces, the grass, the walkway, and he snow, creating a nice variety of blues in the shadow. This is what drew me to the scene, the interesting shadow. I was also interested to paint the brick work of alumni hall, the edge of the building is seen on the right of the picture.

This painting is a good example of how to create luminous shadows. The left side of the tree is in shadow, and so is the brick wall of alumni hall. To make the shadows seem bright, I overlaid some darker highlights to provide contrast. For the tree, I applied some dark brown streaks to look like bark, and for the brick wall I applied outlines of the limestone bricks. Notice that the underlying shadows contain a lot of blue and purple tones. Cereluean blue is very good for putting blue in your shadows, or cobablt blue although this colour is slightly toxic and should not be eaten.

5x7" cold press 2001

Highways, Fort Worth, Texas, USA

While searching for beautiful landscapes to paint in forth Worth, I instead came across this scene. Although the scene is a little ugly...the elevated highways, the sidewalks, the shapeless buildings, it still has a character to it that is undeniable. The passing cars and noisy highway gave it a hustle-bustle feel. I did like the composition too, the crossing highways make a nice complement to the vertical buildings. This painting has a fresh and energetic feeling to it, a sort of spontaneity that can come with watercolours and not so much in other media like oil or acrylic. Examine the edge of the buildings and you see lots of rough jagged parts that look unfinished, and in the sidewalk the paint bleeds out into the blue shadow. The car, lamp posts, and other elements were painted in a quick and easy fashion. All around the edge of the painting you see gaps and choppy lines. And despite this slopiness the painting still looks pleasing....why? Partly because the sloppiness gives a sort of energy to the work, and also reminds the viewer that they are looking at a painting...the product of a painter....and not a photograph. In that respect the energy of the brush strokes tells the viewer something about the energy of the painter (which should come from the painters surroundings). Thus, you should paint energetic scenes with energetic brushstrokes, and calm scenes with calmer, more careful brush strokes. 5x7" cold press, 2008

Stylized image of a Duck

Here is a miniature painting done from a doodle, adapted into a stand alone painting that may be small but has a big heart.

Although small this painting has a lot to it. The blue sky illuminates the ducks form creating light blue highlights. Note some of the techniques I have been describing in the last few blogs: the shrubbery is done with a golden yellow halo of light, the shadow is deep blue and fades into the grass, and the open space in the grass invites the viewers eye into the composition.

2.5x2.5" cold press, 2007

All you Can Eat, Dominican Republic

One of the great features of the resort down in the Dominican Repuplic was the all you can eat buffet. In this painting I show the view from our balcony, and behind the trees was the central eating area where the buffet was. Yes...fish, chicken, beef, veggies, potatoes sweet and mashed, and a dessert table...oh yeah and the palm trees and the garden was nice too. The main focus of the work is the different types of palm trees and the striking green grass with stark blue shadows. The trees in the middle were really flat, the leaves spreading out like a fan. I threw in a few coconuts too, the resort had a guy climbing up the tree an hacking them down, and then of course selling them to the tourists.

One point that is worth repeating over and over again is that outdoor shadows are filled with blue light from the sky. I have discussed this on other blogs before, and here again is a great example, intensified by the brilliant Caribbean sky. The shadows of the trees are a deep blue-green. In order to create this effect, it was important to minimize the amount of yellow in the shadow. To do this, I first painted the yellow-green lawn, and then put the blue paint in right away, before the yellow dried. In doing so, the shadow gets that deep-blue, and also the edges of the shadow get a chance to bleed a little, making them a little fuzzy on the edges (like a real shadow). What all that dried I put a second coat of a warmer green on top, to make the lawn look natural and not to shockingly bright. Finally, I put on a few dark blue/red highlights near the base of the tree where the shadow is darkest. Notice too, that the side of the tree, and the coconuts are also filled with purple-blue colours, really making the shadows sing.

5x7" cold press paper, 2009

Reserved, Dominican Republic

Here is another painting done on the beach in the Dominican Republic, this time portraying the reality of the situation (as opposed to the postcards that show a single couple on the beach with a horse or something). Thatch-roof umbrellas and blue reclining chairs are scattered across a beach while people walk by soaking up the sun and boats of all kinds (not to mention parachute riders and helicopters) streak across the water. The chair in the front right of the painting has a towel on it, left by some inconsiderate ass who is probably up at the lunch buffet for the next three hours.

Painting a crowded scene like this definitely takes a bit of time, and in this case I chose a slightly larger size paper. Despite all the clutter in this painting I tried to arrange things in a pleasing composition, the umbrellas stretch across the top half of the work while the blue chairs occupy the middle part and the foreground. Also important, is to allow some open visual space in your composition to allow the viewers eyes to have 'access'. In this painting I left a wide section of beach open at the bottom of the painting, and you will notice that there is an unobstructed path that leads to the waterfront and up to the sky. Pay attention to where your eye moves when you look at the painting, and you may find that it prefers to move up and down this unobstructed visual corridor. Controlling where the viewers eye moves it the key to any good composition, the true master of this was Degas, the great French impressionist.

7x11", cold press, 2009

Lab Book #15: Chameleon Sunset

Just after finishing the Lab Book #14 miniseries I did this painting which was inspired by an old style of painting done in France just after the revolution and slightly before impressionism began. This style depicted mostly rural scenes with laborers working on the farm or with livestock. The style was kind of a slap in the face of the traditional 'academic' style that dominated at the time (academic painters focused on mythical greek or religous themes, and considered the painting of lower class common-folk to be unacceptable). In this painting I depicted a cartoon image of a farmer holding a pitchfork in the middle of a plot of land. A red golem comes out of the ground at his feet representing the blood and sweat that it takes to raise crops from the ground.

I really went for a bright colour scheme with this one, aiming for rich rusty-reds and deep candy-yellows, intermixed with tangerine oranges (hence the name of the painting). To get these colours I used some high intensity colour glazing...this is done by laying down a wash of an unmixed colour (right from the tube, not diluted too much to keep it bright), letting it dry, and then overlaying with a thin second wash of neutral gray or green to keep it 'earthy looking'. The second wash can drastically change the appearance of the first wash. For example, the deep purple shadows cast by the character were initially a hot bright-pink, onto which I layered a cool blue to give the final shadow, which is electric and full of life. The main character began as a crimson red, to which I overlayed a thin green (the same combination used extensively throughout the Lab Book 14 mini series). Most of the yellows began as pure aurelian yellow, on which I put greens or browns to make the yellow cool, or warm, respectively.

15x11" cold press 2009

Pina Colada on the Beach, Dominican Republic

Here is a painting I did on a recent trip down to the Dominican Republic at one of those all inclusive (including the mosquitos) resorts. The sand was white the water was aqua and the pina colada was cold. In the scene, two people are stretched out on chairs watching a catamaran go by. In the foreground a leafy tree casts shadows onto the beach. The two pink dots on the right were kind of an accident but I liked the way they looked, kind of like flowers?

Capturing the water was by far the most challenging aspect of the trip (besides the difficulty in getting out of the chair to go to the bar, and the annoying habit of some of the other vacationers to reserve pool-side chairs with their towels). The sea has several distinct phases...near the beach the water is tinted by the cream-coloured sand, and also reflects some of the cool blue sky, creating a puple tone. This fades into a yellow-green with blue highlights, and then becomes a cooler blue closer to the horizon. All over there are purple highlights reflecting from the sky, and bleach-white waves rolling in. I tried to keep it simple by excluding a lot of the waves, and the frothy ripples that come in near the sand, and also not painting a lot of the relfected light from the sky which created difficult highlights. Of all the Dominican paintings this one perhaps captures the sea the best, I used a lot of cobalt blue and cerulean blue, which give that textured effect that simulates ripples and reflections.

5x7" cold press, 2009

San Sebastian, Spain

Here is one of my favorites from the European collection that spanned a 2 month vacation in 1998, this one done in the wonderful beach-side town called San Sebastian, Spain. The beaches (as you can see in the distance) were quite nice, although the water was cold as this beach lies on the north shore of Spain on the Atlantic ocean. The painting captures the other unique aspect of this town, that is the old churches and architecture, and narrow cobblestone streets. It took awhile to find this scene, it captures the Pyrenees mountains in the background along with the beach and the church steeple.

A lot of my paintings depict shrubbery. The importance of a good shrubbery can not be underestimated. If there are any doubts about this fact, one should view Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail movie and see how shrubberies can become a matter of life and death. But seriously, check out the middle right and you see a shrubbery tucked away behind a stone wall. I use a simple trick to create the golden-halo effect on the shrubs... start by laying down a warm yellow, let it dry just a bit, and then drop in an orangy/green, let that dry a bit and finally put in a cold dark green tinted with a bit of red. For further depth you can put on a few touches of dark purple into the shadow part.

5x7" cold press, 1998