Letter Be, Hue Too

The title, definitely inspired by the Beatles, as was the design, a crazy theme park in the desert with a giant elephant in the background. The other one, below, has got a similarly glib title, meant to convey the two colour composition of purple and yellow. These are the final two works in the lost pieces collection, mainly because I have run out of lost pieces (of paper) to paint on. It was kind of fun doing miniatures for a change it got the creative juices flowing again. I just finished a larger one, when the sun comes out I can take a picture and post it. Painting small paintings is a great way to learn faster than if you paint large paintings. That is how I started, with small works.

Letter be (left) 7 x 15 cm, Hue Too (below) 18 x 7 cm, 300 lb cold press, Watercolour, April 2016

Cyclist, suggestion of detail

Working from photographs is always a little more challenging than in real life except when things are moving like here where the scene is of a mountain biker riding away into the sunset. In this case it was an advertisement that I was working from, from a Mountain co-op flyer or something like that. Painting sun highlights is done by leaving the paper blank, so all the halos on the helmet, the arm and legs, and the tires are the unpainted paper. To make the highlights look bright you juxtapose dark colours, such as the dark suit of the rider, or the dark highlights of the background foliage. The main challenge when working from photo is trying not to overwork the details too much; in this painting I simplified the ground and there is very little actual detail on the bike, just a suggestion of detail. This was sold to a friend of the family having been framed, the mat is visible in this scanned photo of the original.

4 x 10 " (10 x 25 cm) cold press, Watercolour 1995?

Small Study 2015

One theme in my work is shrubbery, not just any shrubbery but THE shrubbery, the one in Monty Python's Holy Grail movie that is requested by the Knights that Say Neep. Since 1990 I have used the same technique to paint the small bushes as seen in the middle ground towards the left of this small doodleism study. It starts with the yellow underlay, sometimes let blend into the background sky, and then, when the yellow is starting to dry, layer in some light green or bluish hues, let it blend and dry a bit, then overlay with a dark green, let dry slightly, then dark blue (red), and then red-green sepia. It takes practice to get the timing... let one layer dry too much and the subsequent layers do not blend and blurr, while if the layering is too fast it all blends together and you loose the gradation effect. The amount of water on the brush also matters, too much the colours run together, too little they wont blend. The same technique was used in the sky to make the cloud, and in the grass to create the electric shadows, and in the red sky to make it look like darkness is approaching. 


5 x 8 "  (12.5 x 20.3 cm) cold press, watercolour. 2015

Lemon Sunset #4

Another lost pieces painting, done from some cutouts of a larger painting that I had scrapped. This is the fourth version of "Lemon Sunset", it is actually based on a doodle in which I was trying to work out the composition. In the miniature it was more about the colours and trying the technique for the lemon sun.  

To paint the lemon I started with painting the sky around a blank space shaped like a lemon. The sky is in purples, which is complement to yellow. Then I added some yellow-green in the center and yellow orange around that, leaving the edge blank paper to make the lemon glow. When dry, I put some dark dots on to give the lemon texture.

3 1/4 x 2 "  (8.5 x 5 cm) 300lb cold press Watercolour

Stratford Jazz (updated)

Jazz happens everywhere including in Stratford Ontario in the park. This painting was done on location, it was some time ago because it was the year the Toronto Raptors went to the semi-finals and lost in game 7, which was the year 2001. While I was painting this one somebody wanted to buy it along with one of the others and so I sold them on the spot, just taking a quick photo before they went off in the world. It was tricky doing this one because everyone was moving and stuff, but it was nice to paint along to some live jazz music.

5 x 7 " (12.7 x 17.8 cm) cold press, watercolour, 2001

 There was a second painting I made in the same little park, and the fellow bought that one too. I made a second one quickly which is what you see here. It shows a cannon & lilacs. (Guns & Roses?) 5 x 7 " cold press, watercolour, 2001

 

Rockley Resort, Barbados

 

Awhile ago I took a trip to Barbados for two weeks and made a number of paintings under the bright Caribbean sun. The first few I did were bland and lifeless, probably because I had just arrived from London Ontario in February where it was grey, cold and overcast. A local person saw my paintings and told me to add more colour, to make them brighter. The trick was to exaggerate the colours and push the contrast as much as possible, and to channel the energy from environment to brush to paper. This was a little scene across from the motel I was at, near Accra beach. It goes to show how important it is for an artist to be on location to properly paint landscapes.

Rockley Resort, Barbados 5 x 8" cold press, watercolour, November 2001 (No. 1165)

The Lost Pieces Collection

Good things come in small packages or something like that. I found an old painting that was done on 300 pound paper, that is very thick like the cardboard used in boxes. It's 100% acid free rag, cotton, with a lifespan of over 200 years- not that we will ever find out. The initial painting was not very good in fact I had already painted on both sides which I do on occasion if a painting is bad or I want to try something experimental. There was a lot of blank space so I cut out all the white parts of the paper and made a number of small paintings on the pieces. The paintings are quite small, they are a composites of several small doodles made during a long meeting at work with a Dali-like surrealism. Here are the six of them, in my longest blog ever! Reading across they are: Boxes, Second Samples, Kappa, Safe T, Reverse Flow, and Lost Pieces.

Top Left: Boxes, 3 1/4 x 4" (8 x 11cm), 300lb cold press Watercolour March 2016

Top Right: Second Samples, 3 x 5 3/4 (7.5 x 14.5cm), 300lb cold press Watercolour March 2016

Center Left: Kappa, 3 1/2 x 5" (9 x 12.5cm), 300lb cold press Watercolour March 2016

Center Right: Safe T, 2 3/4 x 3 3/4" (7 x 9.5cm), 300lb cold press Watercolour March 2016

Bottom Left: Reverse Flow, 6 3/4 x 2 3/4" (16 x 6.5cm), 300lb cold press Watercolour March 2016

Bottom Right:Lost Pieces: 12 1/2 x 3 1/4" (31 x 8cm), 300lb cold press Watercolour March 2016