Remotely Controlled

Remotely Controlled is another doodleism painting taken out of notebooks from around 2010. I have been trying to catch up to my notes, but now it is 2012 and I am still working on the 2010 and 2011 notes! Lately I have been putting less doodles in the paintings, and using the background elements more... for example here the water is done using classic wet in wet wash techniques. I think the painting gets more energy this way. I'm not sure this painting has a particular meeting, it is remiscent of "Stubborn Nature Revealing Herself" which was Lab book #8 I believe. The guy with the key in the front right must know...

I used a lot of paynes grey and sepia in this one to create the heavy outlines and the inky black sky. Ironically, the ink coming from the flying squid is not black. I once read that you should stay away from these kind of dark colours in a watercolour, beacause is messes up your palette, and also, the impressionists rarely used black in their paintings until later on in the movement, in the neo-impressionism phase. I also noticed that the Canadian watercolour association states that paintings should only make mimimal use of 'body colour' ...in otherwords, no heavy darks, instead a watercolour should be thin, tranparent, and colourful. Of course the best rule of all: rules are made to be broken.

Cold press, 11x15", fall 2011

Notre Dame Cathedral, France

This painting echos the very first post I made on this blog. In this version, done more recently in Paris, I am sitting outside of the left wall of Notre Dame Cathedral looking at the apse. In the forground you see the fence and the garden that surrounds the back of the cathedral; the first time I painted Notre Dame I was sitting in the same park but looking straight on the apse. In the side-view, I was better able to capture the elegant flying buttresses, and some of the detailing on the spires and windows.

It is quite difficult to capture a lot of detail on a small piece of paper, especially when it is cool and overcast weather conditions. In this case I started by putting down the brick colour, a sort of warm grey. As it was drying I worked on the fence line at the bottom, adding the green vines before the fence. I then waited for the brown shape of the cathedral to dry, as parts of it dried I put the details on top using simple outlines with a darker grey colour. I then laid down the shadows and finally the sky, which is just a mixture of pale yellows reds and blues that are barely visible. You can see where I misjudged the wetness, one of the spires on the right bled into the sky. Instead of trying to fix the problem, I just left it, it kind of makes it look like there is a bit of fog or something.

7.5 x 11" cold press, fall 2012

Parc Luxembourg, Paris, France

This painting was done in Paris at the parc luxembourg, a famous park where people go to sit in the sun and enjoy the summer air. Unfortunately it was fall and overcast when I was there, and there was a bitterly cold wind. The good news is that it was easy to find a chair (they have hundreds of metal chairs all over the park, not even chained down, so people can put them where they want). I tried to capture the essence of the scene, there is this big circular stone fence going around a central reflecting pool that has a statue in the middle, and on the fence there were flower pots filled with red yellow and orange arrangements.

I borrowed a few tricks from my "doodleism" style, namely the strong outlines which you can see surrounding the foreground flowerpots and for the Eiffel tower. The tree trunks also stand out quite a bit, more so than they did in reality. I did this mainly for a techincal reason... when you paint in the bitter cold when the sun is going down, and it is overcast, the watercolours do not dry fast enough. What tends to happen is that the definitions of your shapes tend to get lost. So I tried starting with the heavy outline (with paynes grey), which I think really helped keep the shapes in the foreground. I also like the mixture of styles, some parts of the painting just kind of fade into the background creating a good sense of depth.

11x7.5" cold pressed, watercolour, fall 2011

Instant Nostalgia

This painting was inspired by both sides of the world you could say. I began the painting having been in Montreal continuously for several months, then, leaving the painting half finished I went to Ile de la Reunion for a time. When I returned, I completed the work, working from right to left. The Bottom right section with the partial cathedral apse and stained glass and everything above was done pre-trip, and the central and left portions were post-trip. Without planning it, my mood influenced heavily the design, the pre-trip portion is grey and gloomy, a little overcast even, while the post-trip section is sunny and filled with light, no doubt inspired by the hot tropical island, and the acute sense of danger you get from live volcanoes falling rocks and deadly sharks. Oh yeah, and there is some kind of theme to this painting too but I wont say what.

"Colour temperature" is a classic artistic device that is taught in school. It simply means that certain colours (red orange yellow) are perceived as warm while others (blue purple green) are seen as cool. A painting usually has some kind of overall temperature, this painting being pretty much warm. I tend to use temperature variations to make the design more interesting, or provide depth. For example, on the right section of the painting the cathedral section is all in red/yellow/oranges, while the area above it is neutral, and the background is a purple/green. This gradation of temperature makes the viewer sense depth. I also used contrasting temperatures to draw attention to the two focal points of this painting (the skeleton holding the egg and the double-helix-DNA womb-woman). The skeleton is cool on top and warm on the bottom, and the background is reversed, warm on top and cool on bottom. By doing this, a persons eye will be drawn to this area. The DNA woman also has a contrast, the DNA is red, while the womb is cool green, again, this draws attention to this part of the painting. For other areas that I don't want the viewer to linger on (like the foreground bottom left) I kept the temperature more even. 


22x30" cold press. summer/fall 2011

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The Amazing Baloon Act

I'm not sure where (or when exactly)  this painting came from, possibly a combination of doodles and abstract ideas. It is a good example of how I sometimes combine the landscape technique with abstract. The landscape was no doubt inspired by some of the sunset work I have done on location.  As for the poor guy in the basket, he's probably wondering where the baloon went.

The colour scheme for this one is for the most part a purple-yellow complementary scheme. Generally speaking you want to have some kind of colour balance, red-green, blue-orange or purple-yellow, you can also do triads (three colours) if you have a colour wheel. Personally I try not to think about it too much, rather, I listen to my instinct... the colours are a way to convey your emotion. In this painting the overall feeling is sombre and everything in it contributes to that feeling... the colours are mellow, the tree has no leaves, the man has his shoulders down, and most of the lines are smooth and flowing. I was probably feeling sombre at the time. Whether you plan it or not, it is important to try and match your emotions with the theme of the painting, if you can do it, the veiwer will not just see, but understand. Sounds like a fortune cookie.

5x7" cold press watercolour, 2007

Downtown St. Denis, Ile de la Reunion

Most of the paintings I did on Ile de la Reunion were intended to show the relationship between the urbanity and the natural landscape, with the exception of this one. I searched the downtown for an hour trying to find a scene that would show the green-topped mountain and the emerald-coloured Indian Ocean, but when you're down town all you see are these kind of run-down looking white plaster buildings. Everything has a thin layer of moss on it due to the humid tropical climate, the streets all smell a little oily from the diesel cars, the sidewalks are narrow and crowded, and it is hot, really hot. Finally I found this scene with the sign for a Chinese food store, powerlines, and an array of yellow and red tones. There is no nature in this painting, just the building, but it really captured the swelterin chaos of the place, it is very reminiscent of a painting I did in Kyoto, Japan posted Nov 20 2008 on my blog.

Making a painting is kind of like being on a roller coaster. You get the idea for the painting and then feel a little nervous... is it the right scene, can I do it, will the sun come around too fast, will the store owner kick me off their front step? Then you just start it, sort of like getting on the roller coaster, where the first part hauls you up this giant ramp, with that ticking sound as the roller coaster car moves up the tracks a sharp angle. Then at the top you look down the other side with terror and it lets you go and scream and it pulls you all over the place, and then just like that it's done. I forget what my point was with the analogy, but basically, when you are in the middle of making a painting everything is twisting and turning and you're not quite sure what comes next. I remember this one being just that, I was convinced that it was going to be a disaster until I put the brush down, and presto, it worked out. Time to take the ride again!

5x7" watercolour, August 2011

The Roland Garros, Ile de la Reunion

The Roland Garros is a restaurant in St. Denis, right near the waterfront of the Indian Ocean. From the patio, the waves can be heard crashing against the rocky shore. You can also hear the cars and trucks going by, but with the sun and fresh air you hardly care about it. In the distance is the old volcanic mountain that is populated by houses, if you zoom in there are some little houses depicted on the mountain crest just over the roof. What inspired me was the way that the natural environment was encroaching on the restaurant, it was as if the building was swimming in a sea of jungle foliage.

When composing a picture, 'balance' is always a crucial element. Balance of course is an optical illusion because everything in a painting is flat and has no weight, but your brain is always finding ways to estimate the volume and mass of an object. In the Roland Garros painting the restaurant is dominating the bottom left of the picture, this is a very heavy visual 'weight' that would normally create an imbalance.  To offset this imbalance, I created a strong element on the right of the painting: the towering tree, and the distant mountain behind the tree. Creating an illusion of distance is a great way to balance the other 'heavy elements', the old chinese masters used it all the time, in fact they often kept half of their paintings completely blank, which suggested a blinding, distant horizon.

7.5x11" cold press watercolour, July 2011.

St. Denis, view from la Montagne

On ile de la Reunion there is an old, long silent volcanic caldera called la montagne where many people live. These is also a winding road up the side of la Montagne that takes a stomach turning 10-12 minutes to ascend. At the bottom right of this painting I suggested the curve of the road... if you could be there, you would see this little road with tiny little cars on it. I was sitting in a little view point where visitors could park and look at the great view of St. Denis, the main city on the island. The wind was very strong at this moment, and the shadow from the rest of the mountain behind me, was starting to fall over St. Denis, if you look at the bottom half of the painting and squint your eyes you will see the shadow of the mountain.

There are a lot of elements of a painting that need to come together for success, including colour, technique, the idea, and most importantly, the composition. This painting is a good example of a classic "S" composition... forget for a second that you are looking at an island and an ocean, then look at the coast line, it forms an S shape going from top right to bottom left. This type of composition really allows the eye to move up and down and side to side. Controlling where the viewers eye will wander is the basis of good composition. This is also an example of how to 'suggest' detail....it looks like there is a city there, but when you examine it carefully there are no defined buildings or houses. The trick is to keep the detail level similar in the whole painting, if some things are really detailed then the viewer thinks everything should be detailed, but in this painting everything is a little fuzzy, so the viewer is more prepared to accept the 'suggestion' of a city.

Watercolour, 10x11" cold press August 2011

Sunny Day (Back Alley) Le Plateau, Montreal

The Plateau has many wonderful scenes, for example the view down Laurier, the cafes on St. Denis, and the Cathedral on St. Viateur, but the alley off St. Guthbert is probably not considered to be one of them. It is only a few steps from the famous Schwartz's, just off St. Laurent Street, I won't mention what the sidewalk smelled like though. I had actually walked around for about half an hour looking for a decent scene to paint, it was a a beautiful sunny day in September, when this alley caught my eye. Something about the way the sunlight reflected off the dumpster really inspired me.



Painting silhouettes is quite difficult especially when using watercolour. In this example there are three major silhouettes, the building on the right with the windows, the building on the left, and the dumpster in the foreground. I used a similar technique for all three, involving a procedure called glazing. To do this, I first put down a layer of cool blue/brown, then when it was dry, overlayed with orangey brown tones. I varied the intensity of the second layer for the three silhouettes, the left was a pale orange, the right was a heavy brick-red, and the dumpster was a lively transparent reddish-orange. I wanted to do it this way to make the dumpster stand out the most, and the right side to really hold your attention on the alley. The left brick structure was there to hold the composition, and to provide a neutral backdrop for the dumpster.

watercolour 5x8" cold press paper, Sept. 2011

St. Denis, ile de la Reunion, view from the Hospital

The plane came while I was painting this one, it was heading for the Roland Garros airport west of the city. The skyline is St. Denis the biggest city on the island inhabited by about 150,000 people and nestled up against the Indian Ocean. I remember having difficulty with this one because the weather kept changing, it was overcast then sunny then raining a bit, then partly cloudy. I think the painting reflects that turbulent weather, you can also see the sun beams piercing the clouds and shimmering off the ocean.



I rarely use this format of paper on location, in fact this is probably the first time (after thousands of location paitnings) that I remember trying it. The dimension is very short and wide, I thought it would help give the sense of this never-ending city skyline completely surrounded by the indian ocean. In retrospect it worked okay although I wish I had more space to paint the clouds and sky which I had to compress into the small gap between the ocean and the top of the paper. Choosing the right format of paper is important though, usually I go with a 5x7 rectangle, and before I start I try to imagine what the scene would look like on either a horizontal or vertical format. In general I do the natural landscapes on a horizontal, while many of my city-scapes or vertical to better portray the buildings.

Watercolour Cold press paper, 6x15" 2011 August

Have a Ball, Washington DC, USA

Recently I was in Washington DC for a conference, near the hotel there was a little sculpture of the Amercian flag wrapped around a globe, not sure what the symbolism was supposed to mean but it made for an interesting painting subject. Normally I do not like to paint pictures of 'other people's art', for example, as seen here, a sculpture that somebody else designed. But in this case the sculpture was only part of the larger landscape, I liked the way the red of the flowers near the sidewalk played against the reds of the flag, and thought the fence line was interesting enough to carry the painting and make the sculpture an accessory rather than the main focus.

On occasion I have had to paint spheres, they most commonly appear in lamp bulbs, but similar types of shapes are found on cathedral domes, or in this case, globe shaped sculptures. There is going to be one small area of the sphere that is reflecting maximum light, you should decide where that is and make sure to leave it totally white (blank paper, as there is no white in watercolour). Around the white dot I then do a gentle fade from pale orange, blending it into the shadow part. Usually that never quite looks right so I puton a third layer or even fourth layer to get the shadow looking right. At the bottom of the sphere in this case, there is some yellow reflected up from the grass which I made with a few drops of lemon yellow and a touch of virdian (a deep green). Overall it is a high level of difficulty to paint a sphere, and in this case there was the overlapping flag elements, which I put on last. Then I wrestled with the thing for awhile, lifting paint here and adding shadows there. Fortunately it turned out okay in the end.

watercolour 5x7" cold press 2011

Petite-Ile, La Reunion

In the south there is an area called Petite-Ile, the water is very rugged so the beach there is not safe to swim at, in fact they had a sign saying that you could die here... citing shark attacks and rough water as the main potential dangers. The sand was cool too, it was a mixture of white coral and black volcanic rock, I took a small sample for the collection. This scene was up on the embankment, looking towards the south. The rain was just about to come on, so the clouds thick and the scene kind of grey, yet still warm feeling.

I have always tried to emulate Monet's technique that he used in his materpiece 'Field of Poppies' which of course was an oil painting. He placed thin layers of sky-blue on the field to give the feeling of the light from the sky reflecting off the grass. The same type of effect was needed in this painting, but it is impossible to put light blue on top of anything when you are doing watercolours, so instead I started by painting a purply/blue field, then waited for it to nearly dry, then on top layered on the greens and organges of the grass. Finally, I put on top some suggestion of grass texture, the details not too much, and a little palm tree effect too near the foreground. In homage to Monet, I also left in the little peach-red flowers on the shrub. Incidentally, I once copies the "Field of Poppies' using acrylic, it is the long lost Monet sketch that will one day be discovered and sold for millions, as long as nobody notices that Monet used oils that is....

Watercolour, 5x7" cold press, 2011

Festival International de Jazz de Montreal 2011

'Jazz Fest' as it is usually referred to by the anglophones, happens once a year in Montreal, situated in the downtown core in the newly renovated entertainment district. In the painting you see the new light standards, twisting and curling around eachother like cats tails. In the background is Place de arts, decorated with banners and signs. The usual crush of people is depicted in the middle ground, and for the few lucky ones, they are sitting at tables in the foreground, no doubt enjoying some brand named beer that sponsors the event.

There are several signs in the painting, three large posters on top of the place de arts, and a long banner just over the windows of the same building. There is also text printed along the umbrellas in the foreground. When painting landscapes, it is rarely worthhile to try and make the writing that you see on signs and posters actually readable. You're painting a landscape afterall, not an advertisement. At any rate, it is exteremely difficult to try and copy the writing you see, I have tried, and failed many a times. So I just kind of represent the letters as blocks and curves and circles, so you get the sense that there is somehting written there. As a strange fact, I also find it very difficult to write words when I am in the middle of painting a picture...the brain has switched into an abstract mode of colour-shape-line-feeling, and so when I have tried to write something into a painting, it feels like being a child again almost, and I make many spelling errors. There are more than a few obvious spelling errors in the painting titles (which I often write immediately after finishing, or during the making of the work), and some obvious attempts to correct the error (which is really hard in watercolour) can be seen in the titles too.

5x7" cold press, 2011

Red, White, and Blue, USA

 This painting is called Red, White, and Blue becuase I painted it in Washington DC the capital of USA, and also because the scene itself had this profound red white and blue colour scheme. The port-o-let and the sky were blue, the white roof of the device was white, and the letters on the sign on the front of it, as well as the bricks from the houses in the background were red. Seemed fitting. I suppose I have had a history of painting port-o-lets, outhouses, and garbage cans. Ususally when I location I do try and find definitive scenes that give the viewer a sense of where they are, and in some ways, maybe that works with this one too?

Painting shadows in a field of grass is somewhat tricky, I have tried several techniques and it usually ends up looking overworked and too detailed... keep in mind that a patch of grass which is usually at the foreground of the painting, is something that the viewer is unlikely to really notice...in fact you dont really want them to notice it becuase you want them to focus on the center of attention (the port-o-let in this case, oh what a crappy subject matter!?). So in this painting I tried to make the shadow pretty diffuse and undefined... to do that I put down the light yellow-green-brown layer for the entire lawn, going all the way from the bottom edge of the paper stopping just under the middle ground elements. When it was partly dry (on that day it was humid so it took a few minutes...on a dry day it could take only a few seconds) then I put in the dark blue-green shadow colour. To mix the shadow colour I used the same light green mix I used for the lawn, and just added a bit of ultramarine (a warm transparent blue) and cereulean blue (a thick sky-blue). When the shadow was nearly dry, then I put on some 'scratchy' details to suggest grass blades... in places these details just bled around, in others they are more defined.

5x7" cold press, 2011

Insignificant Details

This paiting despite it's name contains a lot of details, some of which I would say are significant. I will not say which details mean what, instead I prefer to let the viewer 'figure it out'. As always though, the relationship between artist and viewer is fraught with ambiguities in interpretation. Maybe it should stay that way, kind of like a Magician who doesn't share the secrets to his tricks, although these days you can go on the internet and find out just about anything including how magicians do their tricks, and apparently now, how Darlington does his watercolours.

With that segway, let's think about how I did this one... the doodleism technique has been in my repertoire for several years now, the first one probably sometime in 2003. As I read some of the old blogs I made an interesting find in how my thinking has changed. Originally to do this technique, I went through my old notes (which are always filled with doodles done during lab meetings and presentation... I swear I was paying attention the whole time though), and from those small doodles I would select the best ones to compose a design. The change somewhere along the way was that I stopped being selective about the doodles and instead forced myself to use every doodle in the book. As matter of design this creates a lot of interesting problems... if you inspect the painting above you will see several different horizon lines and discrepant perspectives, this is me trying to fit together completely different drawings into a single landscape. In the end though I think it makes a very intersting contrast. To give away a small tidbit, I will say that there a number of elements of this design that are physically connected with some degree of intent of meaning. I'll let the critics figure the rest out.

22x30" cold press. 2011

Washington DC Duke Ellington Bridge, USA

This could have been a picture from my Spain collection from 1998, however it is a recent painting done on location in Washington DC. The bridge is decorated with bronze pillars topped by eagles, and the rest of it is made from a kind of brownish stone. There was a cherry tree perhaps, blossoming in the foreground, and in the background some red tile roof houses that belong in the Mediterranean. 

Maybe the most exciting thing about painting on location is the sort of 'energy' the final painting has... careful inspection of this painting reveals a whole bunch of what you would call mistakes... I wont say what specifically, (ok, the perspective is a little off on the bridge arches, and the bridge was obviously a lot straighter in places.... but that is not the point...) when I look at this painting I can almost feel the humidity, sense the cool breeze and the hot sun, hear the cars on the bridge... I hope the viewer also gets this kind of energy. Doing things quick, and letting the paint 'do what it wants' is one way to get these effects, but the danger is you are working on the fine line of creating a disaster or a masterpiece... I guess that's what being an artist means after all.In a practical sense though, when I do studio work where you have more time, I do try and recapitulate some of the spontaneous elemts of the location work. I think doing the two types of painting (studio and location) can really help you grow.

5x7" cold press, 2011.

Land Escape

Landscapes can be so much fun to paint when you are making them up in your head. I tried to draw on landscape motifs from things I have painted on location, to the left most is a classic beach scene with white sand and turquoise water, on the right top, you see rugged Canadian shield reminiscent of the work I did in Algonquin park years ago. In the middle of the painting there is a visual transition from the two types of landscapes, with the flying character sort of torn between the two (or is she tearing them?). The feathers of the character are woven into the landscapes, is she escaping, or being held back?

This painting was based almost entirely on doodles from my lab notes, but instead of following them to a tee, I introduced some visual elements that were necessary to convey the tension that the flying character was feeling. Firstly, the pine tree in the top right is dissolving into the sky and streaking into the form of the flying character, and the loopy lines on the foreground are flowing into the tail feathers making it look she is either trying to tear away, or the land is holding her back... I intended the message to have an ambiguity. As for the two characters in the bottom right, not sure what they are doing, but they look like they would also want to be on the beach....

22x15" cold press, 2011

Scene on the Seine, France

In Paris this spring I had the chance to paint late in the afternoon and the sun was rapidly going down so I headed to the Seine river, this scene would be looking onto the tip Ile St. Louis where a bunch of people were catching the last of the sun and in the backdrop would be Ile de la Cite, if the painting extended up and to the right a bit, you would see Notre Dame Cathedral. I took a bunch of pictures too, maybe one day I c an expand it into a larger work... the idea of putting Notre Dame cathedral in this small painting was rather daunting and the time was short.

Painting the water in the Seine was indeed an interesting challenge and quite the opposite to painting the Indian ocean or carribean sea, here the water is muddy and choppy, the buildings shadow a lot of it, and the boats going by constantly create a lot of waves. I tried to capture it best by laying down rather thick brushstrokes in a Monet-like fashion, or maybe like Tom Thomson in 'Jack Pine' where he used interlocking brush strokes to create the illusion of a sunset reflecting on the water. Here I use the technique to create the illusion of brown sludge reflecting off the water, mixed with highlights from the blue sky and white foam of the waves.

5x6" cold press, 2011

Colorado Park, La Reunion

This painting was done on a mountain-on-top-of-the-mountain, in Colorado Park, just when you think you have gone as far up as you can go, there is a long winding road leading to this park. When you get out to walk, there is yet another grassy hill that you continue walking up until you reach a gazebo over looking the  west and east side views of the mountain. The view shows the west bank of a large gorge that runs down the side of the mountain, at the bottom of the gorge is a torrent river, the river is not seen in the picture, but it would be just about where my signature ends in the bottom right. The city depicted is St. Denis, and the sea and beach can be just barely seen... the misty clouds were creating a real fog that came and went as I painted.

Depicting a city on this scale can be quite challenge, the size of this paper is only 5x7 inches, so you don't have a lot of space to paint every little window. I concentrated on keeping the egg-shell white and soft red colours very prominent, these were the colours of most of the houses, and then I put in a but of detail to suggest windows, you have to zoom in to catch them. The trees between the houses provided a dark contrast to make the off whites stand out. To maintain the illusion of distance, I kept the colour saturation (brightness) high in the foreground (edge of the mountain on left), and kept the colour saturation low in the city and water, including lots of blue there to give the atmosphere some depth, a classic trick invented by Da Vinci.

5x7" cold press, 2011

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

Reunion, view down the road, France

This is a painting just completed from the Ile de la Reunion, a small French island in the Indian ocean. The view is just down the road from the supermarket, believe it or not this is more or less the view from the supermarket.  The scene was done from atop la Montagne, the inactive volcanic mountain on the north part of the island adjacent to the city of St. Denis. The ocean provides most of the background for the picture, with only a thin strip of sky at the top.

I have had a couple of chances to paint this type of water... in Mexico and Domincan, and way back during my Europe trip. The colour is very tricky to get right, and in fact the exact colour is a mixture of different blues and greens with purple mixed in. I used a strong base of french ultramarine (fitting mais oui?) with some viridian and rose matter genuine. Where it gets faded in the background, the water is mostly the blues and reds with some cerulian mixed in. I work fast making sure the different colour washes blend together. By allowing the brush strokes to not fully combine in places you can create the wave effects. Alternatively you can lift the paint to create waves. I used both techniques here to create the white caps.

5 x 8" cold press 2011

Dwarfed by a Drift

Here is a small painting made years ago on a new-years-party-trip to Montreal... the weather was "real" Montreal, lot's of snow and really cold. I was young and foolish enough to want to sit in -10C and make watercolour paintings on location. This particular scene was right outside of the youth hostel, not far from the Bell Centre which would be just off to the right a little. The snow drift behind the car was really that high, a mini mountain of snow that looked like it was going to avalanche on the poor little hatch-back.

I have talked about painting windows in previous blogs, it is always a challenge when painting scenery in the cities. In this painting you may not have even noticed that the windows on the buildings are just single brush strokes, and they are dark on a light background, which is much easier to do in watercolour (you can never paint light on dark, it is impossible because the paints are transparent).The simplified strategy for the windows was necessary because the paint does not dry very fast when painting in sub zero temperatures (you put salt in the water). If you look at the windows on the right building you can even see the edges kind of rough, which is what happens when you put a layer of paint on top of another layer that is not quite dry. At any rate it is worth the effort to paint on location in winter because as an artist you can see the colours and the shadows much better and capture the correct tones in the snow that would never come out with a photograph due to the low winter light.

5x7" very cold press, 199something

Group of One

"Group of One" was inspired by Tom Thompson's painting called The Jack Pine. Tom Thompson was a Canadian painter in the mid 20th century who painted the Canadian landscape along with his contemporaries who made up a painting group called the 'Group of Seven". Tom Thompson was never officially part of the group of seven although he was considered an honorary member after his untimely death in Algonquin park due to a canoe accident in Canoe Lake. The title of my painting was both a tribute to him, as his own group, and also a comment on my status as a painter, without any like minded colleagues I consider myself to also be part of the "Group of One".

This is a 'classic' doodleism style, only classic in that the first one I did was way back in the 2000's.... basically I make a composite of small doodles that creates a larger image with it's own character. It is kind of like those posters that look like a big picture but are actually made up of a whole bunch of little pictures that you can only see if you look up close. In this painting I also tried to emulate some of the key features of the original "The Jack Pine" including the rich green and orange tones in the tree, and the interlocking pastel-coloured brush strokes that make up the water. The tree has an organic flowing quality, it kind of reminds me of a painting I did called Happy Days (Alien Hand on a post apocalyptic earth).

11x15" cold press 2010

No Place for the Fool

This painting was based on more doodles, I tried to put them together in a way that provided both an outside exterior (left side) and a closed interior (right side). The interior was based largely on a single drawing that depicted a cathedral with eerie-lighting and soaring spires that go from the ground to the roof. The outside contains items floating on the horizon, and a spiral octopus tentacle towards the bottom middle. A train of ants walks into an eddy. It should be obvious why the painting was called No Place for the Fool eh? The fool is nestled into the bottom right corner, along with a collection of other characters.

 I wanted to focus on the technique used to depict the shadow that is being cast by the sphere-on-the-stick, the item that can be seen in the outside space, next to the brick wall. Most times a shadow is sharpest at the point of contact with the item that is casting it, and the farther away it gets, the edges of the shadow become blurred. I captured this effect by painting the shadow, and then using a moist brush to gradually soften the edges. As the shadow is cast over two surfaces (the red platform and the green grass), I had to do the shadow effect in two separate stages for the two surfaces. For the red platform I used a a warm purple for the shadow, for the green I used a cooler purple.

22x11 cold press, 2010

The Sepia Solution

This painting was derived directly from the previously posted painting 'Sleeping Giant'; it depicts an assortment of alien objects set in an otherwise normal scene. In this version there is an eerie glow from the horizon, and the incubator object to the right has it's own light source illuminating the eggs in an amber yellow glow from below. The light from the incubator also reflects off the alien-orchid to the left, and illuminates the ground around. This painting is a good example of how a self-taught artist can continue to learn ... by being first critical and then using innovation to solve the problem.

The main change I wanted to discuss was the grassy field, which in the original looked thin and faded, and now looks rich and lush. To get that effect I put down a layer of thin sepia, which is an inky brown, which I mixed with some ultramarine blue. When dry I put down a bright green/yellow, which combined with the underpainting to create a nice earthy-green. I also used sepia to accent the shadows on the objects, which helped create a high contrast glow.

There were several composition changes to this version starting with a switch to a horizontal format which opened up the ground and gave the objects a more comfortable space to sit. I also downplayed the face element in the background, which gave the painting more depth (when you put detail in the background it brings the background visually 'closer' to the foreground thus reducing the illusion of depth).

5x8" cold press 2010

Sleeping Giant

This painting was based on drawing from the lab notes, a full page image that was more or less as you see it in the painting. I will take a picture of the original drawing with my new camera and post it later. This painting has some merits of it's own, the creative ideas are flowing... a giant's face on the horizon, an alien orchid in the foreground, and some kind of incubator on the right with glowing yellow eggs. The sidewalk invites the viewer to 'walk' their eyes into the composition.

The main point I wanted to make though, was not so much this painting, but what it led to. This painting although having some merit was rather disappointing, the composition was a cluttered and compressed, the colours which I wanted to have an eerie glow, came out kind of thin looking like an over-washed tye-dye shirt. In particular, the grass was nearly transparent. I will now post a follow-up painting I did to make a few improvements on the design and techniques.

5x7" cold press, 2010