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