The Thought

The thought process here was to produce a doodleism painting! I went for a primary colour composition which means using red, green, blue, and yellow... the 'crayon' colours. I'm not sure that there is any particular message here- the design elements are all familiar to the style- the broken horizon, the flowing organic shapes and the strong use of outlines. At the left middle the painting 'opens up' revealing a blue sky and side of a building.... I have often used this element for example in the "Three ringed flying circus" series of paintings. In that series every painting had a little opening into a blue sky background.  I have a larger painting in the works now, it is mostly original design, with limited use of doodles from my notebooks.

22x16 cold press Nov-Dec 2013

The Uncanny Valley (Strangely Serene)

It has been awhile since my last post partly because the painting productivity has slowed down a bit this term. It is also difficult to take quality pictures in the winter because all I have is a regular camera and no professional lighting something that would be great to rectify. At any rate, here is a painting done in the doodleism style that also incorporates several composition elements designed to make you feel uncomfortable. The characters in the foreground are purposefully robotic and non-human looking... this concept is called 'The Uncanny Valley' it refers mostly to robots that are meant to look human- the Japanese Scientists have developed some robots that have fake plastic skin and look kind of creepy. Try googling 'Uncanny Valley' can see what comes up. The issue is that humans perceive small differences in faces as representing sickness or death, and naturally feel repulsed.

 To make matters worse I implemented the "dutch angle" a technique used in film to make a movie scene feel dangerous or exciting- Hitchcock used this a lot. In the painting I convey this with a diagonal horizon and skyline.

I combined the Uncanny Valley and the Dutch Angle as a sort of experiment- the final product however looks strangely serene...  perhaps I should subtitle it strangely serene?

22 x 12" cold press, watercolour, fall 2013

Lemon Sunset III

This is the third version of Lemon Sunset, curiously proceeding the first and second versions. I tried to refine the composition and create a sense of sunset reflecting on the water. The object with the people in it is better featured. There are a lot of things I like about this version, yet still a few nagging issues. A version IV is in the planning stages right now, this is the first time I have tried repeating a painting so many times!

The luminous glow of yellow was achieved by putting down a layer (an under-painting) of aurelian yellow, which is fairly soft and shines through everything.  The impressionists used this kind of technique all the time, Monet would prime his canvasses with warm orange tones so that the finished product would be filled with warmth and light. 

22x 16"

Restricted Space

 

Restricted Space was done on an unusual paper format, a long narrow strip that I had left over from some other paper sizes that I cut. It kind of looks like the upper margin of a lab note book, in colour. It is actually a composite of about a dozen doodles from notebooks. I called it restricted space because there just wasn't much space to paint on. Also, there is this theme of living in a futuristic tower and bubble-like abodes. I used this them in the past in many paintings, like Chiken No 5. or Lemon sunset for instance.

Restricted Space, watercolour cold press 3 1/4"  x 22 1/4" 2013 (No 1819)

Neighbors

Once upon a time there was a wedge of cheese perched upon a heron's leg walking through a forest filled with spirits and conch shells. Was there a penny lane, was Lucy in the Sky? We will never know. This painting is a reinterpretation of a landscape I recently did on a camping trip in  Mount Orford. Check out the blog on July 5th to see the original... I kept that in front as I created the current painting called Neighbors. The inspiration was from my parent's neighbor in Bolton who is also an artist, she commented that the trees in the original had faces in them. I also wanted to emulate some of the vibrant greens she put in her landscapes- though I went a little overboard perhaps with the yellow.

 Usually making green requires plenty of colour mixing to avoid an artificial appearance. In fact, green trees can be mostly purple or orange with only hints of green. In this painting however, the challenge was to come up with vibrant greens that still looked somewhat natural. I used a lot of blue and purple and mixed that with heavy pure yellow or pure virdian (a shiny emerald green). I also faded the colour intensity from foreground to background. In the fore, you will see the brightest yellow and green, in the back you see the pale blue-green/teal. In between are variations. In this way you create depth, and a feeling of natural atmosphere.

22 x 11" cold press. Sept. 2013

Lemon Sunset No. 2

Rarely do you see a lemon on the horizon, casting delicous yellow light across a lake filled with goldfish and coy. This painting was adapted from a previous abstract titled "Lemon Sunset" in fact it is painted on the back side. The goal here was to take my favorite parts from the original painting and wrap them into one composition. For the most part I think it was a success, Should I dive into the lake or eat it?

Colour composition is one of those traditional things they teach in art classes. Colour pairs such as red/green, purple/yellow are complementary and look good together, colour triads such as red/blue/yellow or yellow/purple/orange also look good together. I have relied on my gut feeling to guide colour composition-I just kind of 'feel' when it looks good or bad. In this painting the yellow stands out by providing a lot of complementary purple in the sky and the water. In the foreground I added triad colours orange/red and blue/greens. Using less details than usual also helped me refine the overall colour composition.

22x30" cold press (B side) August 2013  

Five Green Recycling Bins, Le Plateau Montreal

A recent landscape painting from a scene just down the street here in the Plateau Montreal. I was on a walk when I saw this scene, and immediately wanted to paint it. For those that follow my landscapes- painting garbage cans has always been a little bit of a theme. Here, the recycling containers were the inspiration... the colours were especially cool.

This painting was a lot harder than it looks. Half way through I was thinking, wow pretty high skill required to paint recycling bins behind a store. I started by establishing the outline with paint, and then filled in the base colours. Base colours are the ones "underneath" the real colour. As an artist you start to see these. For example, the brick has a base purple/grey, while the road in front has a base of blue. After the bases are dry you put on the coloured layers (brick red for example). Beginners could use this trick to create the 'volume' of a brick wall or road, it is also good for making skin tones where the base is lilac/blue and the colour is red/yellows.

9x12" cold press Aug. 2013

Lemon Sunset

Ok, catching up on the blogging here is the third one of the day. I did this painting in the doodleism style- entirely based on doodles (little sketches in notebooks) save the colour scheme which is established during the creation of the work. The arrangement of doodles is also decided on as I go... this time it turned into a sort of swamp/beach scene with snow?

This style is highly risky because I do not plan the overall composition and colour scheme in advance, like most artists would do. But hey rules were made to be broken they always say. Even the rule "never use black" in watercolour- I have on occasion used Chinese black ink to great effect. To be honest I am not a fan of this painting, something I can't quite put my finger on. The good things are that there is a strong sense of space and volume. The concept of a Lemon Sunset is also quite cool. Right now I am re-painting this work (on the back side of it!!!) to emphasize the sunset and put some of the elements in a more pleasing order.

22x30" cold press. August 2013

Château Frontenac

A departure frm the abstract style, this painting was done last month at the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. It is of course a major North American tourist destination which provides incredible scenery for artists. On past trips to the Quebec City I have not attempted the Chateau because of the complexity and huge number of windows, but this time I just sat down and went for it. It was a feeling similar to when I was in Spain painting the great cathedrals. One thing that really helped was the heat and strong sun which made the paint dry fast. I was able to put down an undercoat of warm grey, let it dry, and then do the over coat of brick-colour. Meanwhile I built up the detail and volume using confident brushstrokes and deep layers of colour for shadows. It was a race against time of sorts because I was sitting in nearly full sun getting baked.... by the sun. It turned out pretty good, and for a small painting it really captures a lot of energy.

7.5x11" cold press. July 2013

Shaping Up

Shaping Up was done entirely from imagination, as opposed to the doodle style where the ideas come from sketches. The idea was to combine two different glazing techniques and see how they look together. Glazing is when you put one layer of paint on top of another (dry) layer. In watercolour, this produces an optical mixing effect that is very bright. One glaze was green on red, for example the shape that kind of looks like a dog towards the left, while the other glaze was pink on blue, e.g. the humanoid shape in the foreground. The former creates a warm beige, while the latter creates a flesh tone. Two of the shapes were left with only the first red coat. The tree was also a glaze, thin orange over blue which creates a tree bark effect.
 
I think the glazes worked well together, they provide a pleasing variety. It was refreshing to make a painting from imagination!

7.5 x 11" cold press August 2013

New Image (Modified)

This painting was done using watercolours as usual. The image was highly modified using software to give it a psychedelic look which is somehow fitting. It is quite small for a doodleism painting measuring only 7.5x11. For awhile I was using this size of paper to do landscape paintings, but recently switched to a slightly more square format for landscapes.   

7.7 x 11" cold press Watercolour, 2013 (No. 1385)

Responsible for Reality (Dinosaurus)

The style of doodleism emerged in the early 2000's with a painting I did called 'Master of the Margin' based on a doodle from classroom notes, a sort of Mr. Potatoe head clown but without the potatoe. That painting sold quite some time ago, when I was still living in London Ontario. This painting is a commentary on the style itself, in the top left corner is a conveyor belt coming out of a brain, on the belt are abstract doodles falling off into a junkyard of drawings. The title in the notebooks was something like Doodle Brain Refuse, which is where the idea for the junkyard came from. The creature in the background is just hanging out...it is the dinosaurus.

I used a traditional technique for this work, establishing the outlines first (in watercolour, never pencil) and then filled in the colours as I went. Glorified paint by numbers perhaps. The style is 'traditional' now in that it has been nearly ten years since Master of the Margin was completed, and how many doodle paintings since then? Maybe 50 or so.  I tried to increase the light/dark contrast and punch it up with more colours in this painting. The objects in the front are strongly lit from below.

22x30" cold press, July 2013

Yellow Flower and Ink

Yellow Flower and Ink was part of a series of paintings I did in the summer of 2004 shortly after I finished my PhD in London Ontario. The idea was to sell them at art shows in the park but that didn't go so well, although I found a dime on the sidewalk on the way back from an art show, so I can say that I made a dime at least! The painting was done completely from imagination, though at the beginning of my painting career (1989 until early 90's) I did paint a lot of florals, so I kind of knew how to depict a flower.

Around this time I was experimenting with Chinese black ink, which I had obtained while taking lessons at the Chinese art and calligraphy group in London Ontario. The ink outlines you see were actually applied last... in other words, I did the flower scene using conventional old English-style techniques which do not use black or white, and then when it was dry, applied the ink outlines over top. The white star-burst patterns were created by throwing salt in the wet watercolour, or by dropping on a bead of clean water at the precise moment to create a controlled backwash.

5x7" cold press. 2004

L’Assemblée nationale, Québec City, Canada

A political painting if there ever was one, this was done in Quebec City in the scorching heat of a summer weekend. In front of the National Assembly protestors had erected six flags, including the provincial flag, Canadian flag, two separatist flags, a black flag, and a red flag. The first two (provincial and Canadian) were flying upside down. The provincial flag was flying at half mast to acknowledge the train disaster of last week. The red flag represents the student protest movement, and the black flag is, well I don't know. So out of all these mixed messages I did not appreciate seeing the Canadian flag upside down, whatever a groups beliefs I really think that was wrong. So to correct the situation I did this painting, notice the Canadian flag, second from the left, is right-side up. That is what you call judicious use of the Artistic License. Incidentally, the whole display- which included some sharp political messages- was taken down by the time I left.

11x7.5 cold press. July 2013

River Park Kyoto, Japan

Awhile ago I went to Japan for a conference and had the chance to visit Kyoto afterwards. I rented a bike and rode it all the way to the south part of the city where there was a very large park next to a river. It started to rain so I sat under a tree and made this painting. The rain hit the paper making a rain-like effect which was rather convenient.

Monet would often dangle a tree limb from the top of the canvas in his compositions. Over the years I have borrowed that trick, here you see two branches hanging from the top of the page. There is no tree trunk visible, but you still get the feeling of being under trees. This painting is also a good example of controlled backwash... I mentioned that a few blogs ago in the painting called 'In Sequence'. Here I used the technique to create the field of grass in the center. I also used it to create the trees off in the distance.

5x7" cold press. 2006 (No. 1213)

Mount Orford Park, Quebec

Here is a small landscape I did on location at Mount Orford Park, just one hour east of Montreal. It was done early in the morning, the low clouds were floating atop the mountain in the background. The scene was tough to find, when you are surrounded by trees the sight lines are blocked, so basically, you end up painting the trees. There is a nice relaxed quality to this painting, you get that camping vibe. It is hard to see, but there is a tiny orange construction cone near the lane way. Construction cones and garbage cans are signature features of many Darlington landscapes!

Painting trees is always difficult. The temptation for the amateur painter is to try and paint every leaf but this quickly becomes a hopeless task, especially in the forest. The better strategy is to try and 'represent' the leaves. In this painting, I represented the leaves by first doing a wet-in-wet wash. To do this, lightly moisten the paper with some clean water, then paint the shape of the trees using a medium green-orange or green-blue mix. When that starts to dry, add some darker versions of the base colour by adding some red and blue. Let this dry... it will look like an out of focus green blob at this stage. Then, drag some dark green paint over top of the 'blob' to give texture. Use the brush sideways and gently drag across in random directions. The texture gives the illusion of leaves, and the underlay gives the volume of the tree. This will take some practice to get the wetness correct on each layer, and judge the colours and values properly.

11x7.5" cold press July 2013.

In Sequence, B Side

Rarely do I paint on the back of another painting, on advice of my mother who realized that you may want to sell a painting one day and couldn't separate the back from the front. This painting was done on the B side of 'Perpetual Load Theory (The 2012 Question)'. I really didn't think Perpetual Load Theory was going to work out, and in fact abandoned the work by taking it off the stretching rack. At the same time I found a missing note-book in a drawer which had doodles done between 2011-2012. These doodles were earlier than the ones I had been using, and I wanted to keep things in chronological order, hence the name of the painting. The title also refers to the DNA strands that are saving (or drowning?) the character in the middle foreground- all DNA has a series of molecules, the 'sequence' of which determines life. After some time I realized that Perpetual Load Theory was actually ok, and finished it too (previous post).

Another first for this painting was the underwater scene in the front. I made the effect by copying the doodles from my notebooks using a squiggly line technique... just shake your hand a little as you draw. Then I filled in base colours using pale washes, and after drying, I overlaid the blue green water. Finally I put on the darker blue smears to create the light/shadow of waves. It seemed to work out pretty good- click on the painting to see an enlarged view.

There is also a very experimental technique in this work... you see the pillar of yellow fire in the top middle background emanating from what looks like a flower vase? That was done using a triple backwash technique. A backwash is when a wet layer of paint bleeds into a medium-dry layer of paint, creating a fuzzy jagged edge. Typically backwashes happen by accident in watercolour where you least want them, but over the years I learned to control them. To make the pillar of fire, I laid down the neutral blue sky, and when it was about half dry I dropped down a moist layer of yellow... when that was half dry, I dropped down a moist layer of yellow-orange on the yellow layer...when that was half dry I dropped down a moist layer of red-orange.The element is fairly unimportant in the overall scheme, but maybe I'll use this technique in the future.

22x30" cold press (B side) June 2013

Perpetual Load Theory (The 2012 Question)

The 2010 solution finally has a question. Let me explain... in 2010 I painted "The 2010 Solution" ... a pivotal work that established a fusion between the Dali-like landscape style and Doodleism. That painting featured a funny looking monster sitting in desert smoking. In this work, a woman sits cross legged in a desert, though her health habits are much better since she doesn't smoke. In fact she doesn't even have arms to smoke if she wanted to. On the top left, a funny object on the horizon echo's Dali. I really like the camouflage sky creature at the top. Perpetual Load theory refers to the time in my life (2012) when these doodles were made... I was just over my first year being a professor and the work never seemed to end!

 Recently I have been thinking about how to make the pictures a little more 'classic' in their look. The old academic paintings, impressionism, and post impressionism all have a similar 'museum quality' to them. It seems to be based on plenty of value contrast- in other words light lights and dark darks... and saturated (bright) colours. Shaped are simple and compositions are unified. The sense of space is also clear, even in Dali, you can tell where the ground is, where the sky is etc. My work typically does not have the bright colours and value contrast,  namely because I use the old english method in watercolour, which does not use white or black paint. Watercolour also dries a little duller than oils. I also create a fragmented space... horizons don't align, there are multiple landscape perspectives, even different times of day are depicted in the same work. Anyways, I don't want to change my style just to look like the impressionists or whatever, but as an artist you should always be stretching yourself into non-comfort zones. I'll keep tweaking a little and see what happens.

22x30" cold press. June 2013

The Few

This is a painting I did a few years ago based on a doodle. The inspiration was based on the field of science...and in particular scientific funding... basically it says that only a few scientists (The Few) get financial support from the government. The support as it were is no more than an eaten apple. The scientists are worms and only a few get the apple scraps. The rest of the scientists -without funding- are writhing in a big pit of despair. Usually an artist is not supposed to tell their secrets, but to my (small but faithful) blog audience the rules don't have to apply!

The most time consuming part of this work was the worms. For a mere 5x7" painting it took inordinate amounts of time. I tried to put more detail in the worms near the foreground, and then do more abstract realization towards the background. You will also see that the colour of the worms is brighter and more red in the front, and fades to a more lilac towards the back to create the illusion of depth.

5x7" cold press, 2009?

Where We Were

"Where We Were" was drawn from doodles that I did over the course of 2011-2012. In fact, I managed to use all of the doodles from an entire notebook. It was almost an attempt to 'catch up' to the doodles that I have been doing at work (I'm always paying attention). One reason I am generating so many doodles these days (aside from numerous meetings) is that I am actually doodling with the mind that they will become a painting one day. In some ways then, this style of doodleism has gone from something of a convenience to more of an established and thoughtful process. Initially the style was a convenience because well, I did not always have a good idea for a painting when sitting in my studio, whereas when sitting in the middle of a (often dull) meeting my creative juices start to flow. Part of it has to do with claustrophobia that I feel when in a small room full of people, jammed behind a table... by making drawings I can ease the feeling by 'imagining' open spaces. Most of my doodles depict vast horizons and free flowing organic forms... visual escape I guess. You can see a lot of stressful elements in this painting like the angry house in the middle of a fire. 2011-2012 was a personally hard time for me, and while this painting was not intended to convey that emotion, the doodles themselves were produced as a result of that mindset. Knowing this I named the painting "Where We Were" because it shows a state of feeling from the past.
There is also a chicken-shaped apartment building, a motif I have used before (E.g. Chicken #5). I got into painting chicken-shaped buildings at the advice of a man I met at an art gallery who tried to convince me that artists in New York got famous for painting motifs, he mentioned cows as I remember. To be fair though, Monet painted turkeys a few times.

22x30" cold press, May 2013

Lac Delage, Quebec

This was a quick painting I made in the morning of a conference I attended at Lac Delage near Quebec city. It is very reminiscent of a scene from Algonquin park. Done just after dawn, there was a thick layer of mist on the water that I tried to capture.

Green is never green. In this painting the trees and grass are depicted with an array of blues, browns, yellows, oranges and even pinks. All of these colours are tinted with green. A common mistake beginners make is to reach for the green tube of paint as a starting point, resulting in an unnatural feel. Of course impressionist painters such as Mastisse and Van Gogh used pure greens to great effect, but they did it on purpose!

11x7.5" cold press. June 2013

The Conversation

From one of the smallest watercolour paintings I ever did (doodle study-posted today) to one the largest.... this painting is twice the size of a usual large painting that I do! The image is an artistic interpretation of the inside of a cell, not a jail cell, but a living biological cell. The planet-like thing at the top represents the nucleus. The objects all have their own personality. In the original design there was a stark horizon line, but to create the illusion of endless space I covered it up with clouds and objects. There was also a cartoon-like character with a fishing rod in the foreground that did not go with the overall tone so I covered that up too. Gee, an artist is never supposed to reveal their secrets eh!?

I used several interesting techniques in this painting.. the little white dots over the planet-nucleus were created by throwing some salt on the moist wash. The bubble shapes (vacuoles) were created by dropping paint with a plastic pasteur pipette (borrowed from the lab). I also used the pasteur pipette to drop water onto my palette, this helped to create large volumes of paint needed for the big scale. The design was completely original, no prior doodles were used, I just had a general sense of the composition. It was challenging technically and mentally, you really feel the pressure to paint something great on a large scale.

30x44" hot press. April-May 2013

Doodle Study 2

Here is one of the smallest paintings I ever did, only about two square inches. It was for a contest I entered years ago for miniature paintings. While I did not win the contest one of the judges did buy my entry. The style is very much like Salvador Dali, the barren dessert, the prominent oddly shaped object. Perhaps I will do more miniatures some time?

2.5 x 2.5" cold press. 2004

Geraniums in Rust Pot

Here is an eary work I did in 1991 after taking the watercolour lessons. It is a copy of an oil painting from a calendar, rather than a study of live flowers. By copying oil paintings I learned to create very bright and juicy colours. It is easy using oil paints but takes a little more work using watercolour paints. This early work displays many of the qualities that would mark my work...for example strong colours, brilliant light, and colourful shadows. The signature is quite different than it is today... the scribble signature was developed sometime in the early 90's, there is a piece of paper from that era where I was practicing the scrawl signature maybe it will be worth something someday? 

Geraniums in Rust Pot, 9 x 12" hot press. watercolour paper 1991 (No. 0088)

Love Left Leave Lego

Another doodle painting, completed in the midst of painting the big project (which is now hopefully complete... The Conversation), this one depicts an emotionally painful scene using lego and abstract form. It was based on doodles from my notebooks as usual, these ones would have been sometime during 2012. I have in the past depicted emotional subjects, but usually I hid the message in a highly abstracted design. Painting emotional scenes using lego form was a good compromise, where I could tell a story but still keep an artistic buffer in between. Does that make any sense? If you look into this one, you will also see Beatles lyrics from their great album "Help" which I was coincidentally playing as I painted this one. Their tales of love and love lost were fitting.  As for the bird, I don't know what she is all about but hey, art is definitely a journey.

22x15" cold press. April 2013

Swans near Lake, Stratford, Ontario (updated)

Stratford is a famous little town in Ontario Canada where they have a Shakesphere theater, as well as a big swan lake. I did this painting many years ago on a painting trip, the date escapes me, but I do remember watching the Toronto Raptors in the playoffs against Philadelphia which was 2001, so that must have been the year. It is a very small painting. As I remember the swans did not stay in the same place very long, so it was hard to capture this moment.

When "painting white" in watercolour, you actually just leave the paper blank... so the white swan is actually the white paper. In the style I use (old English) there is no white paint! This means that you have to paint around the object you want to depict. Easier said than done. Here, I had to paint the pond first, leaving a swan-shaped gap. The shape was not quite right, so you can see the brush strokes around the swans which I was using to better define their shapes. It is a hard skill indeed, I may have done a better job of it now. Also, in retrospect, I would have softened the edges a little on the swans. Anyways, hindsight is 20-20! 5x5" cold press, 2001 (excerpt)

 This painting was actually a two parter because I was running out of paper on the trip. Here is the full sheet, with the other painting oriented vertical, a nice scene of the sunlit river. They are on the same piece of paper divided by a line. 5x8" cold press, watercolour, 2001

 

Which Sense?

Another painting I did while procrastinating from the larger painting I'm also working on, this one was based on doodles. The doodles were just following the ones I used to make the last painting (Night Harvest). In fact, I just continually flip through the notebook and use up the doodles, in order, until the painting looks full. Not sure what this painting is all about, the title was because there were many senses depicted in the work.. taste, sight, hearing (I imagine that the people in the middle are playing a concert).

In the last blog I talked about glazing... that's where you overlap layers of paint. You do it by letting the first layer dry, and then applying a second wash. I used that technique extensively throughout this painting. The best example are the dark brown characters in the chairs, they were started with a layer of warm yellow (ochre), which dried overnight. Then I overlayed with cobalt blue. Finally I accented with some darker blues to produce the shadow and volume. Glazing was also used for the tongue-like thing... there are actually three or four layers of alternating blue-purple and red-orange layers. To make the tongue looked smooth, I quickly brushed over the finished product with a moist brush... this is risky to do and takes practice, but what it does is smooth out the appearance... I wanted the tongue to look soft and a little slimy even!

Another quirky note, I painted on the wrong side of the paper... rarely do I make this error anymore, there is nothing really wrong with doing that, but it does change the consistency of the washes, and I found that the overall product finally looked a little more matte instead of glossy, which kind of worked in favour of the overall mellow feeling.

Which Sense? 11 x 15" cold press, watercolour, 2013, (No. 1765)

Night Harvest

Night harvest was based on doodles made at work... of course I am always paying attention at the meetings, drawing just helps me focus ; ) I made the paiting while I was working on a much larger painting. Usually I do one at a time, but the large painting was feeling like work... so this one was a bit of a break. The scene was actually a daylight scene until I made the name for it ... Night Harvest... I then covered the back left part of the sky with the night sky, stars and the moon, and made the background a little grey. It would have been cool to do before and after photos because the scene transformed from daybreak to twilight in a few moments.

The dark red-brown colour in the shark-like things in the front was created from two layers of paint. This is called glazing... the trick is to put down one layer, let it dry completely, and then overlay a second layer. I did the undercolour in a bright pink (permanent rose) and overlayed a deep green (viridian). You need to control the consistancy well... if too thick then it looks like mud... it actually takes a surprisingly thin liayer of green to make the effect work. I first used this combination frequently in the "Three Ringed Flying Circus on Wheels" Seriese, and have employed it now and then ever since.

15x11" cold press. March 2013

Hanging Out

Here is a super quick painting I made recently, it was really just a quick sketch from a couple of doodles done in a note book. the funny character on the right is kind of hanging out, I thought he was chewing little bits off the moon, then tossing them over to his friend on the beach. The painting actually had no title on it, usually I write the title along the right side or bottom using watercolour.

To create the texture in the background I used a dry brush technique. To do this, make sure the paper is dry, and then load your brush with paint that is fairly concentrated (not watery!), then drag the brush lightly across the surface. This works best with cold press paper because it is bumpy, if you use hot press (or beginners paper) than this technique will be hard. I think the texture helped keep the background interesting.

7.5 x 11cold press March 2013

Colour, Posts, and Contour Lines

I often discuss colour on my posts, but how about discussing a painting of posts in a field of colour? While you are thinking about that, I'll just say that this was a little doodle in one of my many note books which was strong enough to be a whole painting on it's own. The fairly minimal detail makes it a little easier to look at than some of my other abstracts, and also allowed me as the artist to concentrate on the aesthetics of the painting without the burden of externious details. Anyways,  I like painting open spaces, all of my abstracts contain at least a little open space in them.
I suppose the style here is kind of like Salvador Dali meets Jimi Hendrix?

In a recent blog I talked about outlines and how they can contribute to the energy and style of a painting, not to mention the composition... in this examplea lot of the depth you feel comes from the contour lines of the land. The other way to create depth of course is to put warm bright colours in the foreground (red and yellow down by the signature) and cool colours in the background (greens blues and purply-brown at the back).

I got the idea for these kind of lines from a trick that the impressionists (and the group of seven) used a lot... directional brushstrokes. They arranged groups of bold brushstrokes to build up volume in their work, usually for trees, clouds, fields etc. In watercolour it is nearly impossible to show brushstrokes cleanly because it is a liquid medium, so instead I developed these curvy lines, which do a similar thing as the directional brushstrokes used by the likes of Cezanne, Monet, Tom Thompson...
another example where I used this was in 'Ground Escape'.

5x7" cold press, winter 2013

Skydome, Toronto, Canada

 Painted in the mid-late 1990's, this one shows what used to be called the 'Skydome' but is now called Rogers center I think... I only actually went there once or twice to see the Blue jays play and also the Argos football team. As I remember it was very hot at the time, perhaps July, and the paint was drying very quickly. I had to walk around quite a lot to find this scene... in Toronto the view is blocked by buildings and apartments. If I were to try and paint this same scene today it would probably be surrounded by condos!

This painting is only 5 x 7 inches (about 10x15 cm) so imagine trying to capture something as big as the Skydome on a paper the size of a postcard! It seemed impossible...yet is still worked out, you really get the feeling of the enormous arena. To give the feeling that the Skydome was big, I made sure not to have any bigger objects in the same scene... if for instance there was a 15 story skyscraper next to it (which as I remember was actually in the real scene), then the Skydome would appear small. I emphasized the trees in the foreground because they made the building look huge in comparison. This is one of the advantages of making a painting over photography, you can unceremoniously delete anything ...including skyscrapers. 

Skydome Side View, 5x7" cold press  1996 (No. 0189)

Sunset, Hamilton Ontario Canada

You might have guessed that this sunset painting was done somewhere exotic like Spain or southern France, but you would be wrong, it was done in Hamilton Ontario. Of course to a Spaniard or Frenchman maybe Hamilton would be considered exotic, who knows one has probably never visited. At any rate this was a great scene I found right at the end of my painting day in Hamilton... has it ever looked any better?

When the sun is behind your scene, it is 'backlit' ... when objects are backlit they are typically in a silhouette. To paint an object in silhouette start with the lightest colour and work up to the darks. For example, in the trees in the middle of this painting I started with the bright yellow shape and when that dried a bit I put on the medium dark greens, then on top of that some darker (and colder) greens. Finally I put a few darker highlights on top. This multi layer technique is tough on a good day, but especially tough when the sun is going down!

5x7" cold press 1996??

Swimming Pool, North Carolina USA

When you think of the southern US big blue skies come to mind, but how about swimming pools? This was a swimming pool right outside of a motel, the brilliant blue contrasted nicely against the pale sky and green grass. There was also a flowering tree of some sort, not sure what the species was. This is a good example of how an otherwise uninteresting scene can make a nice painting. The composition worked well with the strong vertical lamp post against the horizontal roof.

When using watercolour, painting white fences is complicated...painting black fences is easy. The reason is that there is no white paint in traditional watercolour, so you would have to paint IN BETWEEN all of the fence posts, which is incredibly difficult. On the other hand, painting black (or very dark) fences, you just put it on top of the existing scene. In this example, I finished the pool and area around the pool, and when it was dry, painted the dark fence over top. Unfortunately if you make a mistake it is difficult to fix, so just relax and plunge in (the pool?) !

5x7" cold press, 1999

Study of a Horizon, Hamilton Ontario

Another blast from the past, this painting was done in the picturesque city of Hamilton Ontario. Most people from Ontario would not call Hamilton picturesque but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in the eyes of the painter in the case. I liked this scene because of the composition... vertical posts with the diagonal slashing telephone wires... and also the depth offered by the distant treeline on the horizon.

I've shown a few 'pivotal paintings'... ones that influenced my style in some profound way, and this is another such painting. I discovered a combination of colours while doing this painting that has served me well in the years since. It was for the trees on the horizon. You see a purple-green colour that gives a tremendous sense of depth... suggesting atmosphere and reflected blue sky. Da vinci pioneered the concept of adding blue to the paint to create a sense of depth. Here I mixed ceurelian blue with some rose madder to create purple, and then dropped in a bit of viridian green and aurelian yellow. The key was starting with the thick purple, and just accenting it with some yellow-green. In the past I started with green and then tried to add blue, but it ended looking flat and lifeless. I have used this mixture in almost every landscape since.

5x7" cold press 1996?

Ancestors

Ancestors was made up from a composite of drawings out of my work notes from last year. It was done on the back side of the painting that I recently posted called "A Little More Brazil". Rarely do I paint on the back of paintings because you obviously can't frame both unless you are especially clever... but I just wanted to get this one done and had not prepared any more paper. The style is classic doodleism with  bold outlines mixed in with free flowing washes. The theme is evolution... strange fishy creatures emerging from the primordial soup and floating into the starry night.

The outlines are not just an aide, but there to provide energy and form to the composition. I started the painting with the outlines... filled in all the colours, then I went over the outlines once more. I tried to make the outlines look alive.. they reflect the light from the fire, they get colder as the reach towards the night sky, they have a life of their own. Notice though, how not everything has outlines... the clouds on the far right are a good example, and the yellow, blurry fire in the background. The elements in the distance have much weaker outlines than the elements in the foreground, which helps create a sense of depth.

In summary, well controlled outlines can give energy, form, colour, light, and depth to your composition.

11x15" cold press (B side) 2013

Study of a Shadow, London, Ontario

New tricks can be discovered by experimenting and just trying new things. This is a landscape I did back in London Ontario, probably in the early 2000's. It was cold as I remember probably during or just after fall? The building was one of the new residence buildings they put up to house the 'double cohort' students of 2003... that was when they decided to get rid of grade 13 and put all students directly from grade 12 into University. Anyways, I snuck onto the construction lot and made this painting. Of all the paintings I have done there are perhaps half a dozen that were pivotal... absolutely important... and this was one of them for one simple reason... the shadow.

Painting shadows is half the battle when doing a landscape. The other half of the battle is painting light! Of course you can't have one without the other. In reality shadows are filled with light and colour, look at this example and you see a rich purple with reflected blue tones from the sky and reflected warm light coming off the pile of dirt and ground. The trick I learned in this painting was to use value contrast to make the shadow appear to be luminous. I started by putting down the base colour of the building, a warm, pale orange. On top I put the shadow, a mixture of blue with touches of red and yellow. At this stage the shadow looked dark and muddy and in fact awful... I felt that the painting would be a failure. Then I put the windows on top of the shadow... they are simple lines made of a really dark purple (near black)... and then... like magic... the shadow came to life. It was a transformation before my eyes, a few simple brushstrokes had turned a boring dull shadow into a vibrant alive shadow. It worked because the dark window provided a contrast that made the shadow look a lot lighter. Since then I have used this trick in nearly every landscape.

To put it simple... paint your shadows in a medium value with lot's of colour. Then overlay a high value (dark) object or line to provide contrast. The original shadow will now look brighter!

5x7" cold press  2003?

A Little More Brazil

This painting was done after a short break... sometimes it helps to recharge the creative batteries. Brazil has been an inspirational force for me lately, and in this painting I tried to capture a more colourful world with free flowing lines. The drawing was a composite of doodles from last years notes, a dali-like clock sits in the middle of the scene... but not melting!

To make the painting more colourful I chose a complementary triad of red blue yellow, which gives it a primary school crayon feeling. The key to making this colour scheme work is keeping the primaries fairly low key... if you blast off with the yellow straight from the tube than it will look really fake... so in watercolour this is easy to deal with, dilute with a bit of water and add some 'dirty paint' to neutralize. By dirty paint I just mean that brown-grey soup that accumulates at the corners of the palette, it is very useful for neutrals.

11x15" cold press Feb. 2013

Darlington Nuclear Reactor, Ontario

Nuclear power painted in the traditional, old english watercolour technique... what a contrast in ideas and media. I did this one years ago while working at my Aunt and uncles house in Ajax... you are looking at the Darlington nuclear reactor that supplies 20% of Ontario's power. If I turn the lights off the painting glows green too... hehe. as I did this painting a massive storm came over the sky, you can see the dense purple clouds on the left.

Painting sunlight coming through the clouds is fun.. and not so hard. You can do it with a wet brush and just lift off some of the sky... this works well if you did the sky with ceurelian blue because this colour lifts off easily. You can also make vertical blur brushstrokes and then blurr them a little afterwards... the 'white' of the paper in both cases becomes the light. That is the basis for the old english method.. no white paint, use the paper for the 'white'. I also use the impressionism rule of 'no black paint'. Too many rules. I'm going to do a black and white painting just to flout the rules.

5x7.5" cold press, summer 1996

Impression of a Sunset in Cedar Mills, Ontario

Painted years ago not far from Bolton, Ontario, this painting shows a sunset over a pond in a quiet neighbourhood called Cedar Mills. I was obviously inspired by Monet! In fact, he did a painting called 'Impression of a sunset" which some people say is the reason why they called the whole art movement "impressionism". So I kind of stole part of the title for this one, a homage as they say.

 This is a good example of a purple-yellow colour scheme. Very rarely do you see these colours in nature... the last painting I remember with this kind of colour was the Place Furstenberg, Paris.This one was tough, the paint would not dry, you see the rough edges everywhere because I was using a clean brush to blot out all the paint to create the shapes. Somehow it worked I think!

5x7" cold press. 1997?

The Round Trip

The Round Trip is a departure from what I usually paint, again, I forget exactly when it was painted but 2005-2006 sounds about right, I know the charcter in the top left was inspired by a minature painting that I entered into a competition back in London Ontario. When I posted "Ga Ga Science Fair" in Febuary of 2012, I talked about wanting to improve the narrative of my work, and in retrospect that hope did not really develop in 2012...  but seeing this painting reminds me that narrative is something I was interested in awhile back, in this work an almost comic book or graphic novel approach was taken with action panels.

In case you can't read it (click to zoom) it says starting from top left going across: 1. "I saw her inspiration yesterday" 2. "But, where was she going?" 3. "She was not alone anymore." 4. "Escape!" 5. "Nothing to fear." 6. "A journey across the river to a car, she presses on fearlessly, rewarded and confident, making no assumptions or judgements, we are stronger now."

To be honest I have no clue what it all means, no wait... I know what it means but I'm not going to tell you ;) . I did use an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired camera angle on panel 3 on purpose to give the sense of the wolfs chasing the car. Hopefully I can figure out how to make this technique work, and still produce a viable piece of artwork in the traditional sense, since my goal right now isn't to produce obtuse comicbooks.

7x11" cold press... 2005-2006?

CN Building, London, Ontario

Way back in the old days I painted this one, probably mid-nineties. This was the old CN building where the train stopped in London Ontario (not to be confused with London England), it was since destroyed and replaced with a more modern looking building with a red roof. The temperture on this day was extremely cold and the windchill was brutal. I rememberhow cold it was, and you can see in the painting at several locations where the paint actually froze.
In the foreground you see the train tracks, suggesting that I was sitting somewhere inside the railyard. I did have a penchant for sitting where I shouldn't in order to capture the correct angle.

At the time I had a lot of courage and would quite often paint outdoors in the winter, the trick was to put salt in the water and a little bit of vodka in the belly. Despite salt the paint would still freeze, and so would your brushes, and the paint on the pallette too. The other issue is that the paint dries pretty slow which is super annoying when you are freezing your arse off. So in this painting the most layering I did was on the shadow on the right side of the building... it is two layers. The more layers you do the more time it takes, so in the winter (or in the summer when it is humid) you want to keep it simple!

5x7" cold press, 1996 (No. 713)

Space Noodles

Abstract painting has always interested me, the first real abstract I did was one called "Science v. Art" in 1995. After that I concentrated on landscapes for the most part, it was not until 2000 when I literally woke up on January 1 and said to myself that this would be the decade of abstract. So it is 2013 now and no looking back! In this painting I worked hard on the overall craftsmanship of the work, making sure that each part received the necessary attention to detail and finish. As for the inspiration behind it, this is a composite of about three doodles I made in my notebooks last year or so. The theme relates to mankind and what defines a person... or something like that.

The green creature in the middle was created with many layers of paint, maybe a dozen. Usually I do not use such complex layering, but the goal was to have a very realistic depiction of a textured reptile like skin. To begin there was a blue wash, followed by several light green, and finally orange washes. The orange was to give the sense of reflected light. Then I applied dry-brush washes to give a roughness to it all, like it was a dimpled scaly surface. Creating a realistic image is challenging, but it does give the viewer a sense of craftsmanship, and enhances the believability factor. I was inspired to do this after viewing some of my older paintings during Christmas (which hang in my parents house), I had gone through a photo-realism phase where the final work, mainly landscapes, looked like photo. I'll try to get these strange abstracts looking like a photo... that would look cool.

11x15 cold press. 2013

Fruit and Veggie Store, Left bank Paris, France

This small study was done on location in the left bank area of Paris along a very busy street famous for it's cafes and bakeries. On the corner there is this fruit and vegetable store depicted in the painting, I was inspired by the contrast between the bright colours of the produce and the typical pastel tones of the Parisian buildings. It was dusk by the time I finished the painting, making it very hard to judge the colours.

This painting although small, was quite difficult because of the time of day... when the sun goes down the paint dries very slowly. I chose to start with a layer of blue over the entire painting except for the areas where the fruit was going to be, I left that blank white paper. It took a long time for the blue to dry, when it did I put on the brick colour... a sort of rusty green-orange. It had to be correct the first time, because it is difficult to get a third layer when the conditions are like this. Layering in watercolour is very useful... it takes time but adds a lot of rich tones and luminosity... even the bricks of a building can be made to look beautiful with layering. The formal word for that is 'glazing'.

5x7" cold press, 2012

Untitled (Ice Palace?)

This is a surrealist-style painting I did awhile back, I forgot when exactly, but judging by the style and technique it was done around the same time as "Creative But Can't Escape"... I can tell by the fluffy snow on the trees, and the coloured light reflection in the brick wall... they are things I was working on back then, approximately 2007 ...but I feel this one may have been a bit earlier than that. It is not a doodle-based panting, where I use doodles for the idea and design, rather it was directly from my imagination. I would have sat down at a completely blank paper and started painting with no idea in mind... a sort of 'free association' or 'stream of conciousness' technique that sometimes works well (but with mixed results). It is hard to say what inspired me, it looks like a sort of bleak scene, but there is an eerie festival lighting... are the people visiting some kind of ice palace? I think that will be the name for it: Ice Palace?

As you can tell I have little memory of doing this painting which is quite rare I usually remember doing it, but it is interesting to try and dissect my own work. I can tell there was some sort of massive mistake or paint-over here, the entire lake region is hiding some sort of design that suggests that an abstract was underneath or something... in fact now I do recall trying to do a fix on this painting and nearly throwing it in the garbage... but now you can hardly tell there was a problem. I'm glad I didn't throw it out, the colour scheme is particularly cool, a kind of RGB-television thing.

Cold press, 11x15", 2006?