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