House View, Reunion Island.

This is the last blog of 2016, it has been a good year for painting, I did less large works and more small works. Over all I probably painted a lower number of paintings but concentrated on the quality. In this post I am showing an old painting done on location on Ile de la Reunion in the Indian Ocean in the town of St. Denis. The old volcano is visible on the horizon. They call it the old volcano because it is no longer active, as opposed to the one to the south of the island which is quite active. At least this paining reminds of warmer times in the midst of a cold and snowy winter up here in Montreal.

Complementary colours are important to emphasize, in this painting the organe awning complements the blue sky. There is also a purple shadow on one of the houses that complements the yellow tones. I rarely think about complements in a literal way, instead I just try and feel the colours. Another trick I used here was to put some dark lines over the window in shadows to give it a luminosity.

5x 8 " 2011 Cold press watercolour.

Stress Fix

We all need a little stress fix now and then, sitting on the bottom of a pond under pressure, negotiating the creepy crawlies. This painting was done from a doodle that I did during a conference that was very stressful, in fact the conference was actually on stress, as a scientific topic rather than a set of feelings. The painting is pretty much the drawing as it was composed and detailed in the preliminary work.

I have often tried to create the eerie glow of the bottom of a lake or ocean, in this case it ended up looking more like the bottom of the pond due to the green and yellow glow and idea that there was a strong sun over top. It was not intended to be an underwater painting at all but somehow the combination of the kelp, and the wavy sand at the bottom, and the fact that one of the creatures looks like a fish, all combined to give it an underwater appeal.

7 x 9.5 " (17.5 x 24 cm) watercolour, cold press, Dec. 2016

Camoflage

An angry hamburger might have been a good alternate title for this painting. Or pink slime perhaps, the synthetic version of beef that fast food chains sometimes use. Soylent green also comes to mind. My work often depicts eerie landscapes and creepy creatures.

Red and green make up the classic complementary colour scheme. In this painting, the main object has the two colours featured, as does the background element in a more pastel fashion. Most of the brown is also made up of red and green combined.

8x 10 " cold press Watercolour. Fall 2011

Sideways Trees

Is looking at a painting sideways while it is right side up the same as looking at a painting right side up when it is sideways? This painting attempts to answer that question using some visual trickery and clever design. I was somewhat inspired by that painting of the guy with the apple in front of his face.

Painting things that appear to be sideways is not so hard, you tilt the paper on an angle while doing the art, and when it is finished, you put the painting back to being upright. 

11 x 7" cold press water colour 2016 Nov