Swan Lake, Copenhagen, Denmark

We took a detour from Sweden going down to Copenhagen by train, only 3.5 hours or so, there is this new bridge that goes across the sea. This scene was near our hotel, it is not really a lake, it is an old defensive water system that was turned into a kind of park, all around the water is a nice jogging trail, benches, and cafes. There were a lot of swans and seagulls in the water, probably because people were feeding them. The weather was very cold this day, a bitter wind gusting and low sun making it even colder.

There is always a balance between painting exactly what you see, and painting more or less what you feel. This brings in the concept of the 'artistic license'....the unofficial license that all artists are entitled to, to basically change things. I wont even say what I changed in this painting, other than to say that I wanted the scene to look cold, but feel warm. Ok, one little thing, I did omit several lamp posts from the bridge, it would have been to tough to paint them in there. This painting is also a good example of how to create the appearance of detail, the windows and roofs are done in a minimal way but the overall feel of the architecture still feels detailed and genuine.

7.5x11" cold press

Choice to Pursue

Definitely inspired by fall colours, this painting is a doodleism style painting incorporating images from some recent lab notes. I don't think there is any central theme to this one, but the fishing rod-like object in the foreground gave me the idea of the title which suggests a pursuit or fishing activity. When I look at this painting I almost taste cinnamon, like in those little red candy hearts they used to give on valentines day. I should have called this an alternate title: "Valentine heart-flavoured day at the fishing hole; the story of an ant."

I have not touched much on how I invent these often bizarre titles to the abstract paintings. In some cases the title is taken from words in the lab book, either before or after I finish the painting. When I know the title before I tend to work the composition with a bit more purpose, when I add the title last I study the painting sometimes for a few days before deciding on a title. In this example I included the title mid-way through the painting, and depicted it with block letters incorporated into the design. For the most part I inscribe the title in the margins though, often leaving a dent in the edge of the design where I can fit it in afterwards, so that when it gets framed one day the title is visible. Also, I never date my work as per some early advice I got.

22x15" cold press. 2010

Gothenburg, Sweden, Sunset on the Condos

The most challenging part of painting in Scandinavia was the relatively low light from the sun, it kind of always felt like morning even in the middle of the day. The other issue is that the cities are very dense and lined with 6 or 7 story apartments which cast shadows. I finally found some good locations to sit where the sun was on me, and the sun was evident in the picture. I did not want to produce paintings that looked drab and overcast, although it was still important to capture truth to the image. In this example the sun was setting, and the apartments in the distance and on the mountain top were highlighted. The additional challenge for a watercolour painter in these low light, humid conditions is that the paint doesn't dry fast. At first I tried to use multi-layer techniques, but it was taking too long to dry. If you inspect this painting you can see especially in the silhouetted building in the front, several bleed-overs (when two washes run together) that were un-planned. As I continued to paint pictures there I adjusted the strategy by trying to get the effect with a single layer. This requires more experience, you need to judge accurately on the first try your colours and values, but in the end it makes the painting look a lot fresher. 

Gothenburg Sweeden, Trees and Apartments 11 x 7.5" cold press. 2010 (No. 1221-1)

The Woven World

This is probably as close to a 'Dali-Doodleism' fusion as I have accomplished... the melting figures and low-azimuth (the tilt of the ground towards the horizon) is classic Dali, a 'homage' if you will, but the random assortment of objects ... the stop sign, the alien eye-ball beast on the right, and the prolific weave pattern are all elements of a doodleism style. Both styles, Dali, and Doodleism are basically the same thing... surrealism, which is defined by an imaginary, dream-like landscape. By no means did Dali invent it, although he and his contemporaries in the ealry 20th century popularized it, but if you look at Hieronymus Bosch who painted in the 15th century and you find some really bizarre paintings that are classic surrealism.

To establish the colourful weave pattern I started with colour washes done wet in wet so they blossomed and bloomed and bled together. Once dry I overlayed with the weave pattern, which I spent some time working out in my doodle books during some meeting or another. The weave pattern is highly variable, which makes it more interesting, rather than making it a mathematically precise kind of design. Once the weave outline dried I overlayed a grey wash to give the weave density, leaving the colourful parts to show through...I wanted there to be a surreal light coming from under the weave. Also, as in the beach painting presented last time, I put a red wash on the bottom of the picture to make the foreground warm and pop out... I do this is almost every landscape after I learned the trick in 2004 from an art dealer/critic in London Ontario at the Artisan's Alley.

15x11" cold press. 2010.

The Birds.... in Mexico

A scene even Hitchcock did not imagine... there you are resting on a tropical beach looking out on the blue water and seeing Cuba in the distance (the buildings on the horizon of the sea), and then along come a flock of killer birds. These birds were not very dangerous looking unless you were wearing a french-fry suit, although I am not so sure about the pelican...you can see one in the painting standing on the artificial reef. They eat human flesh don't they? Probably just fish.

Painting things that move when you are sitting on location is hard. Birds, cars, people. So often I keep the moving elements out of the main composition...if there are people I keep them near the bottom or buried in the foreground, if there are cars I usually just show one parked or scribble in one in the distance. These strategies down play the importance of the moving object in your composition. In this case however, I made the birds central to the composition, the arrangement of the birds form an "S" shape starting on the bottom left where the birds tail is off the picture. The "S" shape draws your eye around the picture. I also used the classic 'red on bottom' trick... notice the splash of red in the sand that makes the foreground warm (and thus it pops off he page) whereas the background is all cold colours. Together with the "S" composition, these tricks give a lot of depth to the landscape.

5x7" cold press 2010.

Mexico Coconuts

This is another small study done on the beach at a resort in the Mayan Riviera. Considering the cost of the resort in addition to the materials, I would need to sell this painting for many pesos. There were these freaky looking black birds everywhere preying on the leftovers of toursists (people who stayed in the sun too long or fell asleep got their eyes pecked out, just kidding the birds would just drink your Tequilla Sunrise). One such bird is seen camouflaged in the canopy of the palm tree amongst the coconuts. The tops of the shade-huts are seen, and a strip of emerald water at the bottom.

When you are looking for landscape compositions don't forget to look up. Especially on the beach, there is so much action going on that sometimes the only clear site line is upwards. I once did a painting of an American flag, with ust the blue sky in the background and a few tops of telephone poles, and it worked out really well. This one worked out too, I think part of the key is to keep some of the elements in that tie the scene to the ground, in this case I made sure to keep in the water to let you know where you are looking, to give a frame of reference. I also kept in the top of the sun-huts for the same reason, as well as to give a nice, jagged line to the horizon. This painting also have several good examples of reflected light, the blue light of the sky bouncing off the side of the tree in the center, and the hot light of the sand bouncing off the underside of the sun huts which glow orange.

5x7" cold press. 2010

A Puzzling Planet

I have always been fascinated by puzzles, in this case an entire surrealism scene has been depicted as a flowing puzzle that spans the ground, sky, and everything in between. A small group of people stand at the bottom of the scene, one holding a puzzle piece probably wondering where it goes. To he right is a funny looking insect-alien hanging out. Scattered buildings on the warped horizon suggest a city scape.

The puzzle piece effect was done by first establishing the colour washes, letting them dry completely, and then overlaying the picture with the outline of the pieces. To make the outline I used various tones of grey, tinted in some places with red or blue to suggest light reflection. In the middle of the painting I made the outline quite light, to suggest a sun effect illuminating the picture. It helps to study the shapes of puzzle pieces before trying this, there are a few familiar repeating shapes that you see throughout the picture. Maybe one day someone will print this and make a puzzle out of it?

11x15" cold press. 2010

Mexico Resort, Mayan Riviera

Another from the Mayan Riviera collection, this one shows one of the room-complexes near the beach, it would be only a few steps from the sand (where I was sitting) and more importantly only a few more steps from the walk-up bar and the beach house where they put snacks every day. You can see a little piece of the boardwalk on the bottom right.

Capturing this shade of yellow is extremely difficult, and I was very surprised to have nailed it almost exactly as it was in the real scene. The problem is that yellow paint is very strong, and in your mind you want to use yellow to paint something yellow right? But it always ends up looking like a cartoon chicken or bathtub rubber ducky. The secret is start with a base of thin (slightly watery) purple, and then add some thin green (a touch of viridian for example). With this base, you can carefully add some yellow, I would recommend a weak pigment like aurelian, or if you don't have that, then very small amounts of a stronger yellow like windsor or lemon. The yellow is really the minor component of the mixture. The other thing that helps is to surround your yellow object with things that are complementary, and a little darker.... in this example the window frames are a deep purple-brown, and the boardwalk is a dark purple. These dark purple elements were added on purpose to enhance the yellowness and the luminosity of the yellow wall.

5x7" cold press. 2010

Wing and Prayer

This painting was a true doodleism in that I used nothing but doodles to establish the drawing. I decided to go for a more "Dali-esque" style for this one, he often used big skies and floating elongated objects, as well as desert-like landscapes. This painting has all of those elements, and also a sort of stormy angst in the background. The screaming figure in the background is reminiscent of the famous painting by Munch 'The Scream'. I suppose I have reached a point in my painting where I do not minding 'paying hommage', as many movie directors also do. I'll talk a moment on brushes, because at the end of the day the quality of your brushes counts for a lot. When you first buy a brush it usually has a really sharp edge that take a little while before it can soften up a bit and be more useful, then for a long time it will keep it's properties. But after a lot of use the brush gets frayed and eventually looses it's edge. One frayed, the brush is not very good for details, but it is still very good for other techniques like blending colours on the page, or lifting paint, as well as filling large areas. Some of these techniques especially lifting dry paint layers is very hard on the brush, so I only use my older brushes for this technique, saving the new brush for the details. 14x11" cold press. 2010

Neon Trail

So I took a year off from the blogging, mostly yo build up some new paintings to talk about (see the last post for one of the Mayan Riviera paintings). I did lot of the doodleism style in the last year, I am still trying to catch up on my lab note books which are full of doodles but I continue to make the doodles faster than I can convert them into finished pieces. To take a break from it though, I tried an original design for this one, it is not based on pre-existing drawings but done fresh from imagination as I sat at the paper. This strategy is more risky, you never know what comes out, but I kind of had this idea in mind of a caravan of abstract looking characters walking down a trail.

The other inspiration was the movie Avatar which we had just seen. In Avatar, there was this incredible scene where the characters were running through this neon forest, the objects were all luminous and their light was reflecting off other objects creating this eerie green glow. In the foreground I tried to capture that effect, each object has it's own neon light source that impacts on the surrounding ground. The rest of the characters are light from the sun-set sky, although they are mostly in shadow. I usually like to include multiple light sources in my paintings. There is no doubt that as an artist, you should think carefully about where the light is coming from and how it impacts the objects in your scene.

14x11" hot press paper. 2010.

Missing Us, Mexico

What is missing in this painting? Us. The beach is there, the umbrella, the water... actually we were there just sitting a little bit behind the scene. The location is Mexico, on the Mayan Riviera... which sounds pretty exotic but in reality you have a highway, lots of construction that looks like it will never be finished, and an endless succession of resorts that have impressive looking facades. One thing they also all have in common, amazing beaches and all you can eat buffet, not to mention less mosquitos than Dominican Republic.

There are a lot of subtilties to capture when you paint on the beach. In your mind, the sand should be yellow and the water should be blue, but in most places the sand is more white, and the water can be anything from deep purple to brown, green, and even brilliant turqoises. To make it more complicated (and as you see in this example) there many different colours at the same time, near the horizon you have the deep blue (french ultramarine to capture it), then the emerald/sap type green and sky blue teals. The variations in colour are caused by the underwater sandbars which add yellows and browns, and the sky tones reflecting in the waves, and the white foam of the crashers. The best way to master painting the sea, is to physically go to the sea as often as possible. The only other thing missing from this scene is you!

5x7" Mayan Riveria 2010.