Decarie Square, Melting Snow

Sitting by the Decarie expressway, this scene looks north from the vantage point of the Decarie Square Mall parking lot. Piles of snow, encrusted in dirt and sand were melting into puddles. The expressway can be seen dipping below the overpass on the right of the picture. It was extremely windy and cold when I did this painting, things were blustering and I felt like I was sitting on top of mount Everest or something! 

I made good use of the new colours, the traffic signs on the overpass were done with helio green (PG36), and the big mall sign in silhouette used bright magenta (PR122) to give it that warm grey. I used ferrari red (PR254) to punctuate the garbage that was emerging from the melting snow, and bloodstone genuine to do the outline at the beginning. As usual by now, I used phthalo and indo blues for the sky. Due to the lack of automobile traffic during the pandemic lock down, I have noticed that the sky is more blue than usual. In the past I would see a pale orange on the horizon (smog), now it is a clear blue sky. Or should we call it a pandemic blue sky?

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, March 2020  

NDG, Rainy Day

What better thing to do on a rainy day than to go out and make a watercolour painting? Here, I am sitting under the front entrance to our cultural center which of course is closed due to the pandemic. It offered protection from the rain although some drops were getting onto the paper. This scene was great because it had a lot of colour- there was lime green, ultramarine blue, and cherry red in the building, lilac blue and emerald green in the landscape, and the pop of orange in the umbrella. Actually the umbrella was black but I wanted to capture the spirit of Hiroshige who used that orange colour to depict hats.

Using triangles can really liven up a composition. In this painting, the sidewalk has several polygons, as does the road and sidewalk. The actual 'triangles' would go off the page, try to imagine the beam on top, and the sidewalk on the bottom eventually converging on the same point, which would be to your left. Hiroshige used this composition a lot in his designs. Now that I understand the power of the triangular composition, I keep seeing new scenes that I can do, but hopefully the weather gets better soon!

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour (plus extra water from the sky), March 2020

Cote St. Luc road overpass (Decarie), NDG, Montreal

Going east on Terrebonne leads to Cote St. Luc road and the expressway, seen here is the overpass, and the apartment buildings on Decarie boulevard.  The trees seemed to pop up from the expressway from some unseen ground. Finding a spot to sit and paint was a challenge, Decarie is mostly narrow sidewalks and busy roads. I found a little chunk of lawn on a corner with the low sun coming across my left side. That is ideal on location, as a right handed painter I want the sun coming across the left so that I can see the paper and palette without shadow. It also makes the scenery lit from the side, in this case, buildings trees and roads. The back of a highway overpass sign can also be seen in the bottom of the picture, and a painted mural at the bottom of the apartment building.

For this painting I included a lot of new colours on my palette and I think some of the shadows were flat and the browns a bit muddy. What really worked was the two tone blue sky, and the potter's pink concrete and road tones. I also like the dirty, slightly scary feel to this paining (the trees look alive) considering what it felt like to sit right next to the Decarie for 30 minutes.

5 x 7 rough press, watercolour, March 2020

Revised Ending

In 2010 I did a painting called Altered Ending based off doodles probably from my old work notes. I have a habit of doodling at meetings in order to pretend that I am taking notes. Going through my paintings recently, Altered Ending caught my eye not because it was the best painting I ever did, but because it had some really great elements in it that were kind of hidden behind a lot of clutter. Back then I was insistent on cramming as many doodles as I could into the painting. In this version, re-titled "Revised Ending" the details have been pared back and the central lake and beach theme are emphasized. I still found room for the eyeball on the park bench, and the happy faces stuck in glassed-in metallic structures (which is a common theme in my dystopian future Lemon Sunset themed paintings). Speaking of lemons, one of my new colours bismuth vanadate is the most incredible lemon yellow ever invented. I look forward to doing a new lemon sunset painting soon, I think I am up to number 6 or something.

8 x 10 " cold press, watercolour, March 2020

Spring leaf buds, Benny Farm, NDG Montreal

My neighborhood Notre Dame de Grace can use a little good publicity these days it is not exactly a tourist hot spot, although it probably never was ! This area is called Benny farm, it used to be a farm, and then a dilapidated run down apartments and now it has a sports complex, a cultural center and library (seen on the left), a medical clinic (seen on the right) and community housing (seen in the middleground). In the far distance is that huge 17 story apartment building on Sherbrooke. Today was an amazing day, the sky was electric, the sun was shining and the breeze was cool. I liked this scene because of the composition, and also because the tree was just making leaf buds which made me feel good about spring coming. There is a small snow bank at the end of the parking lot melting away.

I will try to finish this blog without talking about pigments, how about I write about my signature? For years I used the scribble signature you see here in the bottom right... P---- D---t---- , but lately, I have been using my initials PJD from time time if there is no good spot to sign. I now add the year somewhere hidden, in this case it is written on the side of the building like graffiti. I said I wouldn't talk about colour, but just one thing, I used potter's pink (PR233) for the warm grey in the road, sidewalk, and branches of the tree, and it was fantastic.

5 x & " rough press, watercolour, March 2020

Ultramarine Sickness

Hobbies are a good thing to distract from real life sometimes. As the pandemic unfolds I have found some of the thoughts creeping into sketches and paintings like the last landscape I did outdoors which showed social distancing in real life. This painting came from my imagination, it appears to be a sort of microbe floating around in a gelatinous mass. Maybe it is the immune system fighting off a virus?

Recently I learned that ultramarine blue has a problem with acids... even weak acid will degrade the colour and result in rapid fading. There is a well known phenomenon called 'ultramarine sickness' that art experts use to describe a type of damage that can occur to really old paintings. A painting can literally be sick. On the back of this painting I put some test-strips of ultramarine blue along with other colours, and I applied some diluted vinegar to see what would happen. After about an hour, the ultramarine blue was about half strength, while the other colours were unaffected.

By the way, the grey border, which is part of the painting, was done with potter's pink mixed with some phthalo blue and sennelier yellow. Potter's pink (PR233) was featured in the last blog- after researching it, there seem to be no problems with that pigment so I think I will use it a lot to make landscapes. The main question I face now is, should I abandon the use of ultramarine blue? Ultramarine blue was the first blue paint I ever used, and I have used it in probably every painting in the last 30 years. So dropping it would be a tough habit to break especially after dropping alizarin crimson, another long time mainstay of my palette.

5 x 7 " cold press, watercolour, March 2020

Potter's pink (PR233) test

Just because Bill Clarke, who was my highschool art teacher, loves numbers so much I did this one. Just kidding, he seems to be a big fan. Potter's pink is one of the original synthetic pigments that has been around forever, its pigment number is PR233, and it is commonly used in ceramics. One of the paints I removed lately was rose madder genuine which has issues with lightfastness (it fades over time), it was a great colour for making subtle purples, greys, and for glazing over areas to make them warmer. This pigment has nearly identical colour, along with a neat granulating effect. The painting was just a quick doodle I made to test it out along with a new paintbrush I got from Avenue Art, the brush as you might guess is a rigger #4 from Escuda. Other colours in the painting are french ultramarine and a yellow, I forget which yellow it was they are all the same. The thing in the front is supposed to be a pot.

5 x 7 rough press, watercolour, March 2020 (painted on the back of NDG Sherbrooke looking East)

NDG Sherbrooke (Decarie) on location

With spring on the way we are getting some clear blue skies and very chilly wind. It was about -10C with windchill when I did this painting. I was sitting on the Decarie overpass on a small piece of road that is permanently blocked off to traffic, looking east towards downtown Montreal. Just behind the concrete barricade there were a few people waiting to cross the street which made me think about social distancing. There I was sitting on a derelict piece of road on the Decarie overpass, looking at some people 10 meters away behind a concrete divider. You can't get more socially distanced than that!

Lately I have been changing my paint set substantially, one colour I removed was Cerulean blue which was an amazing pigment to use in the sky, but unfortunately it is toxic to the environment. To depict the sky in this painting I started at the horizon line with a dilutes wash of phthalo blue (PB-15), and then mixed in some indo blue (PB60) which is very dark and cool. Getting the consistency right was tricky. The final result is an electric bright blue sky. In fact, it is the best blue sky I have ever painted on location. Maybe change is a good thing?

5 x 7 rough press, watercolour. March 2020

Albania, World Inspired Landscapes

Looking down the mountain and looking up the mountain at the same time. This painting was inspired by Albania, a small country just north of Greece on the Mediterranean sea. It is a very mountainous region known for its hiking and beautiful beaches. In the scene, a hiking path winds down and up the mountains with a plunging cliff line looking out onto the brilliant sea and sailboats. The colour notes were coral, lime, lilac, ultramarine and rusty orange, while the composition was inspired by Hiroshige who always created amazing lines and depth.

I used only three pigments for the entire painting from a Schmincke's Horadam limited edition set I got from Avenue Art. The paints were called green porphyr, red opalite, and lapis lazuli. They are derived from finely ground minerals. It felt a bit like painting with sand, and resulted in an almost crayon-like texture. In the original painting you can feel a gritty, sandpaper texture. I attempted this painting several times using bright synthetic colours, but for some reason, this version done in pastel tones really captured the feeling of light. The lapis lazuli (seen almost pure in the sky and water) was particularly rich.

8 x 10" cold press watercolour, March 2020 

NDG Loyola Park thaw

Keep on truckin' as the Greatful Dead once sang. This painting was done in the nearby Loyola park near the west side of the park where they have the recreation area and the zen garden which is just seen as the wooden arches behind the tree. The snow was melting a bit, and the grass was just struggling to come up. To paint this, I had to find a spot to sit where nobody would get near me, on account of the social distancing. Still though, a lady and her grandson came by to see what I was doing and she even took a picture of me, so now I am famous!

I made sure to include some of the new paints I got recently such as the perylene maroon which I used in the tree bark, pine shrubs, and the concrete. I also used a new kind of brown called antique red ochre from Holbein, a Japanese paint company. The red ochre is from their Irodori line of paints which meant to recreate the ancient Japanese pigments that were mostly earth and plant-based pigments. The ancient Japanese paint definitely warmed up an otherwise chilly scene.

5x7" watercolour, rough press block, March 2020

Afghanistan, World Inspired Landscapes

A to Z is the plan, starting with Afghanistan. One day, the series will end with Zimbabwe? Luckily this not a poetry collection! Initially I set about creating landscape paintings direct from source material until I learned more about copyright rules. The series is now based on a variety of sources including books from the library and internet sources from which I draw inspiration, like shape, colour notes, and cultural aspects of the landscape. After researching a country I then create a work from my imagination and memory of the research. I am glad I took this route because it caused me to learn a lot more about countries. For example, Afghanistan has amazing mountains and valleys with narrow blue rivers and pockets of lush greenery. Many minerals and ores can be found in the mountains. In fact, Afghanistan was  one of the few sources for high quality lapis lazuli, a brilliant blue mineral that was and still is used to make ultramarine blue. Nowadays ultramarine blue is synthetic although some special edition releases still use genuine lapis lazuli. I actually acquired a sample of lapis luzuli from Avenue des Arts on Victoria street, the owner Pierre gave me a free sample along with two other amazing colours I will talk about in a future blog.

In this painting, I used french ultramarine prominently in the flowing river, and burnt sienna (an iron oxide) in the mountains. I also used a paint called iridescent moonstone from the maker Daniel Smith which is titanium white (PW6) with finely ground mica. The black bands on the left slope, and the bluish band on the middle right slope will sparkle when the light shines on them due to reflectance off the mica, creating the sensation of minerals embedded in the mountains. Unfortunately the sparkle effect doesn't show too well on the computer screen. I wanted to use pigments to create an artistic statement regarding the value and beauty of the mountains and mineral resources of this country rather than focus on the political issues.

5 x 7" watercolour, 140lb cold pres (painted on the back of "Av du Parc"). February-March 2020

NDG Somerled Street

Somerled has never been painted so much by an artist! The sun was just going down when I went out to make this painting on location yesterday evening. It was very cold, a chilly breeze and near freezing temperatures which made it hard to complete the painting without numb fingers. This view is looking eastward, sitting on the corner across from my building. Without even thinking about it, I created a kind of Japanese composition, with the strong triangle shapes of the sidewalk, and the foregrounded sign post going off the top of the picture. My initials and the year are inscribed on the bottom of the sign.

After all these years I have never had an orange paint in my palette. I figured you can just mix red and yellow to get orange, which is true, but when you do that it makes for very muddy mixtures when combined with a third colour, and it makes glazing kind of messy. In this painting I used azo orange (PO62) from Schmincke to glaze over the side of the building and the sign post support in order to create the effect of setting sun. It is also in the green shrubs and the tops of the trees that were catching the last of the sun.The rest of the picture is mostly burnt sienna with various tints, the sky is phthalo blue (PB15) and the sign azo yellow light (PY154).

5 x 7" rough press, 140lb watercolour block. March 2020

PR122 purple magenta test

Go figure, there are many kind of magenta out there to pick from and I picked the wrong one. At least until now. In 2008 I visited Paris and had the chance to shop in the original Sennelier pigment store. That is a very old company that makes art pigments; the store was a three level building with narrow aisles, creaky staircases, and display cases all over showing off the pigment powders in jars and old equipment they used to use to make paint. They also had a box full of discounted paints that were a great bargain for a traveling artist.

Unfortunately one of the pigments I bought was Tyrian Rose- a natural pigment from shellfish used since ancient times also called Tyrian purple. Its chemical structure is a fluorescent molecule called rhodamine B which is quite toxic if ingested, the pigment is called PV1. By coincidence we also use this molecule in the laboratory- it will emit fluorescent magenta when excited by a laser which can be detected by the microscope or flow cytometer. As a paint pigment, it is considered terrible because it will easily fade in sunlight. That makes it a 'fugitive pigment'. I took it out of my palette at the beginning of this year, but I can tell that I used a lot of it, probably 10mL over the last 12 years.

To make a long story longer (hey we all have more time on our hands at the moment?), there is a new line of pigments called quinacridones that fill the magenta spectrum quite nicely. Quinacridone magenta (PR122) it almost identical to the old Tyrian rose, in the test example here you can see flamingo pinks, intense purples, and blazing yellow/oranges. Amazingly, when mixed with winsor green (PG7) it makes a neat lilac grey. There are some suspicions about the lightfastness of this pigment, Schmincke rates it only a 3 star our of 5, although handprint said it was about 7/8 on his scale.

I also bought PG36 (a yellow green), and PO62 a thick orange which are pretty cool too, I will post some new examples of them soon. In fact, on the bottom and left of this test I mixed PR122 with PO62, it creates a brilliant tomato colour.

6 x 6" watercolour, pad paper, 2020

Algeria, World Inspired Landscapes

Here is another painting that I created from memory and imagination based on Algeria, a large county on the north shore of Africa. I read a book on Algeria from the library and perused google maps to know more about what the country looked like. It was a mixed landscape of blistering desert in the south, with rolling hills and lush greenery in the north. At the Mediterranean shore there were ancient ruins from some long past civilization. This small painting captures all of that in one design. I also used some of the Hiroshige tricks including the three boats on the sea, the neopolitan sky, and the rooftops tucked away in the bottom right.

Another goal of this painting was to try out some of the new colours I got including indo blue, or PB60. The entire Mediterranean sea was done in this rich, deep blue colour. I also used it to make the greens and browns of the foreground. The sky was another blue PB15, called phthalo blue. The reds are done with ferrari red (PR254). I am listing the colour code in the blog now which was recommended by Bruce MacEvoy in his blog. He pointed out that many popular watercolour texts only say the name of the paint without mentioning the pigment code, which is the only definitive way to know which colour was used.

5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, March 2020

Argentina, World Inspired Landscapes

Nowhere, inspired, time, space and imagination. No I haven't been drinking again, just trying my hand at poetry. This painting was inspired by Patagonia in southern Argentina from many views that I could find on the internet including Google maps. Then after some time I made this painting from memory and imagination using some of the new colours including pyrrole red (PR254) otherwise known as Ferrari red. There is also bloodstone genuine (Daniel Smith) which gives the brown/black appearance. For contrast I included yellow and green. The composition is inspired by Hiroshige a famous Japanese artist from the time of the 19th century who liked to use the birds eye view and a lot of overlapping elements to create depth. It turned out pretty nice for a small painting, there is more space represented here than meets the eye. Hey, nowhere did it say I had to follow all the rules.

I have been changing around the name of this series, they are landscapes inspired by the countries of the world based on a variety of sources and created from memory and imagination. 

3 x 11.5" cold press, watercolour, Feb/March 2020

Meldrum Movers, NDG, Montreal

Today was the first time I attempted an outdoor painting this year, in fact this decade. It was en plein air as they say en français! This scene is at the end of our street, Walkley which can be seen to the bottom left, at the cross with Sherbrooke, which would be just at the bottom of this scene. I was sitting on the other side of the street looking due north west. Meldrum movers has been there forever, they have a beautiful old building with a large, rather gaudy sign on top that proclaims Meldrum, Allied Vans, Entrepot. At night it lights up in neon, that will have to be the next challenge.

In the palette today I had some new pigments and some old ones, including quinacridone red (PR209), Sennelier yellow (PY154), winsor green (PG7), pthalo blue (PB15:3), violet (PV19), and burnt sienna (PR101). The first five on that list a very strong staining pigments that have bright transparent qualities. Burnt sienna on the other hand is a thick brown 'muddy' pigment. The colours in this painting were entirely based on burnt sienna, and I used the other ones to tint it one way or the other. It was a new way of mixing colours and I think it worked well enough. The biggest problem was at +5 C my hands were getting cold!

5 x 7 " cold press (Fabriano block), watercolour, March 2020

North Carolina, US Flag

The last blog post showed an example of a simple transparent palette consisting of basic primary colours. This painting was done with a more complex palette that contained cerulean blue, emerald green, and a warm red probably winsor red or vermilion hue. The cerulean blue was used in the sky, it is a cooler blue hue that granulates in the cold press paper leaving a textured effect. The emerald green was probably a mix of cerulean blue and a yellow, although now it is made with less toxic materials. It was used on the powerlines that overlap the flag in order to create a contrast of colour with the red stripes. The warm red was used to create the highlight areas on the stripes, so that it feels like the setting sun is reflecting off the flag. For the browns and oranges of the pole, tree, and light standards it was likely burnt sienna and ultramarine blue with some yellow.

5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, 1999-2000

Colgan, Rural Caledon, early location painting

As I am reviewing my colour palette it is interesting to think back to when I started painting landscapes. This painting was perhaps the first location painting I ever did in the Bolton area. It was the first time I brought my painting equipment with me on my bike and rode out into rural Caledon looking for a scene. I remember being nervous about the idea of painting on location so I rode really really far until I was in the middle of nowhere which happens to be Colgan Ontario way north of Bolton. I had a basic palette of alizarin crimson, french ultramarine, aureolin yellow, and viridian green. It gave a full range of colours and values, especially in the green and red ranges. It looks like I used glazing here, the shadows on the bottom are the green glazed over or under a purple, and the building has the alizarin glazed over top of the brown. I like how the shadow of the tree changes colour when it gets on the parking lot where I was sitting. The heat of the day really comes across well.

5 x 7" cold press, Watercolour, Summer 1996

Loyola Campus, Icicles

In the winter it can be very hard to paint outdoors, I used to brave the cold in my younger age but nowadays it is not so appealing. For this painting I made a detailed pencil sketch on location, along with detailed colour notes. Then I painted this scene from the notes and memory back at home. I was sitting inside the bus shelter waiting for the shuttle bus that goes down town. Past the fence is the Loyola campus sports dome where they play soccer and frisbee in the winter. The main interest was the amazing collection of icicles against the bright blue sky.

I am in the midst of redoing my colour palette, and some of the colours have been harder to replace. In this scene, the sky is done mostly with French ultramarine, along with some phalo blue to give the brighter tones. The shadows of the fence are French ultramarine with some violet (PV19) tint. I would have used cereulean blue and alizarin crimson in the last, but those are toxic, and not permanent, respectively.

8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, February 2020