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