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?