Empty table, Somerled Av., NDG

I couldn't resist making one more post today because it brings my 2020 total to 52 posts, the same number of blogs I had from all of last year! The painting, done earlier in the week, shows a bright green metallic park bench and some large tree trunks, with a view of Somerled avenue in the background. Part of a car is visible just on the middle right. I planned to have more parked cars in the picture but the perspective was way off and I just painted over the outlines. Once again I found a nice, out-of-the way place to sit, and people still had to find an excuse to get 2 meters near me to sneak a peek. I guess I'm not the only one with the pandemic blues.

Depicting the colour of tree bark is remarkably difficult. If you ask anyone, they would say that a tree is brown, but really, tree barks are brown, purple, blue, grey, green... etc. The foreground coniferous tree was orange/brown, while the deciduous tree by the table was more purple-grey/brown with a green mossy tinge. I tried to use the neutralizing complements (red and green = brown) but it was not heavy enough, so I added some burnt sienna and indo blue. The scanned painting looks okay here but the original seems a little over worked and muddy. I practiced a few variations back at home, so next time I paint tree bark I will try out something different and see how it works.

5 x 7 " rough press, watercolour, April 2020

(last piece of rough press paper from the watercolour block by Fabriano)

View from hillside, Montreal

By now people really want to get out and about, it has been about 6 weeks of the pandemic lockdown. On my way back from getting groceries at the bulk store, I stopped along Jean Brillant street to sit in the sun up on a hillside. There was no one there at first I had the whole forest to myself, but then a few people got my idea and sat around the area. Luckily it is a large open area so everyone was socially distanced enough. I just painted what I saw in front of me, which was grass, roads, cars, houses, signs, and lots of trees.

To begin this painting I established the outline and the shadowed areas using a black paint called bloodstone genuine which is a mineral pigment by Daniel Smith company, made from heliotope stones. It causes 'granulation' which means the paint has a rough and textured appearance. If you look close at the stone wall of the houses, and the two big trees, you will see this effect. Once the grey scale drawing was complete I filled in the colours, adjusted the shadows, and added the details like the smaller trees, windows, bricks, the top part of the car seen below, and the stop sign. I had to establish a clear outline first because of how complex this painting was with the downward looking perspective and myriad of trees. I like the car details, I plan to include more cars in the paintings if possible but they are very hard to depict accurately.

5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2020

Sun coming through, Benny Park, NDG

Made in NDG as easy as one two three. When I went outside to paint earlier this week, the sky was a gloomy purple-grey, and the sun was struggling to get through. The rain was holding off just enough to sit out on location and make this painting from the vantage point of Benny Park, looking northwest towards Cavendish boulevard. I was sitting up on a hill in the park away from other people. It reminded me of an old painting I made in Caledon years ago which was an impression of a sunset. Of course, Monet made famous the concept in his painting 'Impression, Sunrise'.

To depict a sun coming through the clouds, I started by outlining the sun with clear water, no paint, then I gently flooded the wash with dilute yellow. When it dried (about 15 minutes) I did the same thing, but flooded with the purple-grey wash. In this way, I painted around the sun rather than paint the sun directly. Another feature of this painting is that I used a cyan-magenta-yellow palette, that is, it was restricted to only three paints, phthalo blue (PB15:3), magenta (PR122), and yellow (PY154). All the colours you see in the painting were mixed from these colours, even the dark black which was an even mix of the three.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020 

Cultural Center Looking at Benny housing, NDG

Finding spots to sit while avoiding people has become increasingly difficult as a lot of folks are emerging from their cocoons and walking about. This scene was done in the parking lot behind the cultural center looking at the Benny housing neighborhood and that big apartment building on Sherbrooke seen in the background. A little corner of the parking lot can be seen bottom right. Despite the initial solitude, no less than two cars, three families, and several dog walkers went by. Although I had selected a place to sit which could not be easily approached, when people see you painting, they all want to look, now they get within 3 or 4 meters and try to see!

This painting is part of the overall 'pandemic blues' series which was all done during the lock-down. I used a rough press paper block from Fabriano. A block is where the manufacturer puts many pieces in a stack (25 in this one) and lightly binds them together so that you can paint on one, then peel it off when you are done, revealing a fresh new sheet. In theory it is fine, but the paper tends to buckle and split off because you cant wet the back of the paper. When one side of a watercolour paper is wet, and the other side is dry, it tries to buckle like a potatoe chip. I am glad to be finished with these papers now. There are several more new ones I need to post.

This painting was also a big chance for 'red opalite' to shine. It is a limited edition mineral pigment from Schmincke, I used it in the bright orange brick surfaces. The scan shows a bit of the granulation, if you could feel the painting, the bricks actually feel mildly like sandpaper! The last three paintings were each meant to be a pigment test on the Schmincke paints- lapis lazuli was the shadowed side of a warehouse by the traintracks, green porphyry was a spring lawn near a highway overpass, and red opalite was brick buildings in Benny farm area. I have to charge extra for these paintings because the paint was a rare limited edition ; p

Oh yeah, the birds in the sky were done because I dropped a bit of black paint in the sky, and if that ever happens you just make it look like birds. Believe it or not I read that in a book somewhere.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Cavendish Blvd Overpass, NDG

Depending on the time of year the colours can really change, for example the grass goes from a beige-light green to a bright green as spring becomes summer. In this painting the grass across the boulevard was in full sun and was already turning green, while the grass just in front of me is a neglected corner beside an overpass ramp. I sat there to avoid people, I was a full 5 meters from the sidewalk (and people were still walking by and gawking in my direction). The small blue blob at the very bottom of the painting is the shadow of my head and baseball cap, the sun was directly behind me by the time I finished the painting.

Another unique colour is 'Montreal Orange', the colour of a construction cone. Here, I used 'ferrari red' and some bright yellow paint to make the cone, and a similar mix with more yellow to make the other sign with the stripes. One reason I did this painting was to feature green porphyry, a special edition paint made from crushed stone. In the last post I used lapis lazuli for the shadowed side of a warehouse, here I used green porphyry to create that beige-green you see in the foreground grass. There is a bit of synthetic green dabbed in to show the new grass just starting to grow. There are several tulip beds in this area, so I will return soon. It is a pandemic-friendly (is there such a thing?) location to paint because there are several out of the way places to put my seat. It is the Fleet St. overpass.

5 x7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Trenholme Park, train tracks, NDG

All along Maisonneuve street, there are creeping vines taking over the disused telephone lines down by the train tracks. Poison ivy also grows down there in the summer so you have to be careful if you happen to be riding your bike along the path. I was sitting up on a hill at the back of Trenholme park (I seem to remember that it was called Victoria park, its between Sherbrooke and Maisonneueve and Park Row), trying to stay as far away as possible from other people. As a painter you tend to draw attention from curious onlookers, their kids, and their dogs! My priorities for finding locations right now in the midst of the pandemic: away from people, in the sunlight, the subject matter doesn't matter.

Recently I received three limited edition historical pigments, including lapis lazuli. They are really hard to use, I posted a blog on it for the Albania World Inspired painting. Lapis lazuli is an expensive natural version of ultramarine blue, it has a unique deep blue colour and granulating texture. The entire wall of the warehouse was done with lapis lazuli and some quinacridone red to give the purplish glow. To finish the painting I used neutral tint (PBk6, PB15, PV19) to get the train tracks, shadows, and the switching apparatus. The outline was bloodstone genuine, also a dark black tone. Usually I avoid black, but it gave a dark sooty feel to this gnarly industrial scene.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Lemon Sunset, Bloodstone Mushrooms

Just before the lemon sunset, we peered out of the lavender-tinted windows of our underground abode. Mars hung lazily in the sky, casting an antique red-ocher glow. We lived on the coast despite the inherent risk of being close to the sea, which was flooded with bismuth vanadate this time of year. In the morning we will forage for genuine bloodstone mushrooms and pick up some tinned tuna fish at the market.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 3020

Benny Park, No Playing Allowed! NDG

Visiting parks these days is odd, very few people and most things taped off or fenced off. I found a nice place to sit on the bleachers in Benny park across from the sports complex building (top, brown orange building), and the cultural center that houses the library (top, left red and blue building). There was a green steel fence right in front of me with a 'dog on leash' sign, it was overlapping the baseball diamond filled with sparkling peach-coloured sand. Being in the midst of the pandemic lockdown, I chose this location to be away from other people, and to represent the big, ugly metaphorical fence standing between us and having fun in the park.

I had my Winsor and Newton series 7 Kolinsky sable brushes with me for this painting which was a joy after mostly using my old synthetic brushes. The sable brushes allow for maximum precision and good even washes. I could capture the extremely small details in the top of the painting, and get the loose flowing steel mesh of the fence. Using sable brushes does present a moral dilemma of using animal fur, I may have to read up a bit on how they are treated. It would be nice to say that no sables were harmed in the production of this paining. How about no horses were harmed during the production of this painting?

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, 2020

Lemon Suset; the Purple Bobble

It wasn't global warming, nuclear war, or a even virus pandemic that changed the world. Many years ago the Earth shifted its orbit in the solar system, or maybe Mars shifted its orbit nobody knows for sure. Our planet is still called Earth and we are happy. Sometimes it is cold and other times it is hot. Most of us live in industrial-design enclosures with round windows. There are also large apartment buildings built in the shapes of chickens. They are the only buildings intact that remain from our ancestor's time before the orbital shift.

Under the bright warm glow of the lemon sunset we sheltered in the purple bobble constructed with sturdy metal and thick glass protected by quinacridone magenta and lapis luzuli pigments to block the UV and to give us a unique style that would impress the neighbors. On the crumbling road we saw mannequins. They may have been left outside by accident.

5 x 7" rough press. watercolour April 3020

Bike ride near mega hospital, NDG

Finally, the weather was great yesterday, mostly blue sky, lots of sun, and minimal wind. I took my bike out to around the Vendome metro area, this scene is the cross road of Maisonneuve bike path at Decarie Blvd that heads up to the station, and to the right would be to the Glen mega hospital. There is a little triangle of lawn with some pine trees away from the bike path where I found a place to sit by myself in social isolation. Some kids still rode their bikes up and around me just to see what I was doing. Can't a guy find some peace and quiet in the middle of a pandemic?

After that painting, I turned right, rode down past the hospital, and turned onto the road that goes to the new bridge along St. Jacques street that goes over the Decarie highway. I rode around looking for a good angle, and finally found a cul de sac with a direct view of the suspension part of the bridge. The sun was blasting down on the white paint creating pearlescent effects. I captured the shimmering colours with diluted tints of violet, yellow, and blue.

Both 5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Magenta Worms (The Worms Take Over the Earth)

Kids have such imaginations, and I was no different. In elementary school I wrote and illustrated a very short story for a project set by Edie VanBeek and influential teacher. My story was called "The Worms Take Over the Earth" and I still have the finished copy on my bookshelf. Now and then I have incorporated the theme into my abstract paintings, as you see here at the bottom of the painting a parade of worms is moving along. As usual these days I was also testing out paints, including the magenta paints and black paints to see how they looked together, along with some red and green. It definitely created a dystopian appearance, very unsettling. But then again, worms are invading the Earth, that is what they do after all, and it is unsettling. In summary, I dig worms.

5 x7" rough press, watercolour (B side of the Loyola campus painting 3 amigos) April 2020

Place Guillaume-Couture, NDG

Now, this is the end of Terrebonne street, if you walk all the way down and get to a small park called Place Guillaume-Couture you know you have arrived. The park has a lot of trees including some rare urban birch trees like the one seen in the painting. On my left, unseen, was a large apartment building casting a shadow across the road and creeping up onto the grass. It was very windy when I did this one late last week, in fact, on my left unseen, was a literal wind tunnel of freezing cold wind. To keep the paper from blowing away I used a wide elastic, which left a blank spot in the painting that I covered up later on at home with the beige tree you see on the far left.

Since I removed alizarin crimson from my palette, a deep crimson red, I have had trouble creating rich shadow tones for brick buildings. I studied complementary colours at Handprint.com, and then inspected my Schmincke brochure, which has a colour mapping of all pigments, and then did some testing. To make a long story short, I could create amazing brick shadows using perylene maroon (PR179), indo blue (PB60), and potter's pink (PR233). That mix was used in this painting on the left building and right building in shadows. The shaded side of the white brick building in the middle was completely different, is was a mix of helio green (PG36) and magenta (PR122), with a touch of vanadium yellow (PY184). Who knew the paint colours could have such cool names?

5 x7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Angola, World Inspired Landscapes

Angola is a large country in south west Africa with a variety of landscapes and geological features. It has a prominent cliff that cuts across the otherwise flat hilly terrain near the coast. In researching Angola it reminded me of that classic South African movie "The Gods Must be Crazy" where a tribal man finds an empty coca cola bottle and after the elders decide it is a source of evil they send him to dispose of the empty bottle at the end of the world. After a series of misadventures he arrives at a huge cliff with only clouds below and he decides to throw the bottle over. So in the painting I places a likeness of a bottle flying over the cliff in the bottom right. The large flower is from an imbondeiro tree (or baobab tree) the national tree of Angola. The flower only appears for one day per year to help the tree propagate. The elephants are there for scale, these trees can be up to 25 meters high.

I used some of the complimentary colour pairs listed on Handprint.com where MacEvoy painstakingly mapped out all the colour pairs that create perfect greys. In the tree branch is a deep magenta (PV19) mixed with phthalo blue (PB15), and on the cliff face is a deep red (PR179) mixed with a deep green (PG7). They definitely go well together. I also used a lot of indo yellow (PY110) and tangerine orange (PO62) maybe a little too much! The stamen is french ultramarine and sennelier yellow. For the composition I went for a Hiroshige-inspired foregrounded element, the flower and branch, which puts the viewer (you) sitting at the top of a 25 meter imbondeiro tree!

 5 x 7 " cold press watercolour, April 2020

Montreal, St. Laurent, Lufa Farms

Here is an interesting painting done in ville St. Laurent at the Lufa Farms location where they grow rooftop greenhouse vegetables and distribute a wide variety of organic local foods. As a result of the pandemic lockdown they are doing a first come first serve system and deliveries have stopped to the normal pickup points. One option is to pick up your basket at the center. So I rode my bike up there today just to see if I could make my way in good time and it took about 40 minutes to go 10.5 km. Luckily there is practically no cars on the road and the air is clean so I had a great ride.

Composition is the most important part of any painting no matter what the subject or the media. Balance is an important aspect of composition, it means to have approximately equal 'visual weight' on both halves of the painting. Of course nothing weights anything in a painting, but the human visual system is good at judging things like weight and distance. If you had an elephant on one side and a mouse on the other side, the picture would appear to be unbalanced. In this painting, everything is leaning towards the left due to the perspective, so I had to include the large brick tower, the forklift, and my signature on the right to try and balance it out.

The yellow everywhere is isoindolinone yellow py110, I really unleashed it on this painting just to see what it could do. It does cut through the coldness and bring a nice bright glow. Incidentally it was 5 Celsius with strong biting wind when I did this, and I needed a little psychological warmth!

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Loyola Campus, Three Generations of Architecture

May as well make it an even three blogs for today. Three is not even is it? How about an odd three blogs? I spotted this scene a long time ago, like at the end of last year when they were nearly finished the new building (seen in the background), and finally took the chance today since it was sunny and decent. On the right middle is the old building from the Loyola college days, now part of the psychology wing, while on the left middle is the relatively newer extension done in the 90's I believe. The doors are part of the glass and aluminum connecting hallway between the two wings. In the background is the new research building, not opened yet, it looks like a big air conditioner, I like to call it the cubical death star since it is all tinted black and dark grey.

What inspires a landscape location choice? I look around a lot, and see what grabs my attention, and I think about what shows the character of a location. In Bolton Ontario I liked to paint pictures of old farms that got turned into housing developments (the vanishing landscape), while in the urban setting of Montreal I like to find unique architecture and nature within the city. In this painting, I show the trees and grass in the reflection of the glass windows at the front (bottom left). The yellow tape on the doors may have been part of the pandemic lock down, but in fact, that yellow tape has been there for over a year due to a broken door!

I was also quite happy about how the brick tones turned out, I am finally starting to understand the new paints that I recently added to my palette.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

NDG, Parc Gilbert-Layton

Very soon the sun will be out all the time and everyone will be excited to go to the parks and be outside after a long winter. We can still go for walks but the parks are all shut off and Montreal starting fining people for gathering in groups. So the playgrounds are all empty too, this scene was done towards the north part of NDG at Parc Gilbert-Layton looking at an empty sand box. Even the shadows of the trees were not touching the sand!

I picked this scene because of its rare commentary on the lock down, but also the fantastic array of oranges that contrasted the bright blue sky. There is orange in the dried up tree leaves, the school in the background, the swing set post (visible on the rightmost side of the picture), and the sand. Is it wrong for me to be somewhat enjoying the artistic opportunities brought about by the pandemic? There have been other positives, like millions of sea turtles laid eggs on a beach that is normally too crowded with people, Los Angles has the lowest amount of smog in recorded history, and the Montreal Candiens may actually make the playoffs if the NHL goes with the 24 team format. So a few things looking up.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Andorra, World Inspired Landscapes

Deep in the Pyrenees mountains nestled between France and Spain is the small country of Andorra. Using a combination of colours, I created this mountain scene complete with a mountain lake (known as a tarn), sweeping tree covered slopes, and a small house in the lake for good measure. These mountain lake views seemed to be the most common type of landscape in Andorra, as well as the wonderful hiking trails.

The other reason for doing this painting was to try out some of the new colour combinations that are possible with watercolour paints. I was going for electric secondary colours. The water is a combination of phthalo blue with winsor green to create that cool teal. The mountains are a combination of french ulramarine blue with quinacridone magenta producing the warm violets. The rocky ground is a combination of raw umber and burnt sienna, giving it that earthy orange. For small accents I included a primary colour group, in the sky (blue), the roof of the house (red), the trees (green) and the building walls (yellow).

5.5 x 7.5" cold press watercolour, April 2020

Railroad Crossing, near Coffee Street

Yes there is a street named Coffee street- what a great name. As I did this painting it started to lightly rain, more of a fine mist that picked up in intensity. I managed to pretty much finish it, the final touches of black and red blurred a bit, and the actual rain made little pock marks in the washes. At least I got a rain effect in the painting without even doing anything!

Making decent purples is always a challenge, even the store-bought (tube) purples come out looking like burgandy. In this case I used phthalo blue and quinacridone magenta for the blues and purples in the wet road. Quinacridone is a relatively new type of pigment, at least it is new to me. In retrospect I had quinacridone red/orange in my collection for awhile but never used it much. Now there are over a dozen variations ranging from red to purple to violet.

The dark colour was bloodstone genuine, a Daniel Smith mineral paint formula that is quickly becoming a favorite- it is a warm, dark coffee colour (!), granulating mixture that has a lot of gum arabic, so it stays in place. I was surprised and pleased that I could use it on the final details and have it mostly stay considering how wet everything was. It was used to create the railroad, the fence, the trees, the crossing bar, and the ever present cracks in the road.

5 x 7 rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Raw Umber Field

On the back of the Loyola park painting I tested out this old tube of raw umber I have had for years but not used much. Every colour in this painting was a mix of raw umber, in the middle of the hay field is approximately the pure colour- a warm straw/toasted marshmallow kind of hue. it made great greens, and some rusty rich oranges. The only problem is when it dries on the palette it is hard to bring back to life, so it really needs to be squeezed fresh. Like orange juice.

The was no particular motivation for this subject, I started with a random brush stroke across the middle, and then the orange shapes, and went from there. The mixing colours were almost everything in my palette, I just wanted to see what happens when you mix raw umber with a bunch of other colours. I would definitely use it again if I paint somewhere warm  with a lot of sand, or hay fields.

5 x 7" rough press watercolour, April 2020

Loyola Park (Danger!), NDG

I started this painting on Wednesday but it starting raining so I came back on Saturday to finish it. Usually I don't paint pictures of kids parks but since the pandemic got worse they closed all of them and put police danger tape around the apparatus. In this painting you see the yellow tape blowing around on top of the slide and on the ground. A man was practicing boxing moves too, although he was actually behind me a ways off, I just glanced out of the corner of my eye and composed his likeness into the scene. The slide, the mans pants, and the sky were all different shades of blue. This painting is part of what I am calling the 'pandemic blues' paintings.

For 30 years the only shades of blue I used were french ultramarine, cobalt blue, and cereulean blue. Around 2008 or so I stopped using cobalt blue, and used cereulean blue sporadically until 2020. Recently, I learned that french ultramarine is not really blue, it is called blue-violet, and it can be acid sensitive. In this painting, I used another blue called phthalo blue for the slide, pants, and the sky, which created that bright blue shade. Did you know there is another shade of blue called azure, and a lime-green called chartreuse? The official name for cyan-green is 'spring green'. You learn something new every day.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Pandemic Blues, Grocery Store Lineup

On a nice sunny day the sky is blue, but is it too blue? Or true blue? At the moment the sky is pandemic blue. Over the years I learned how to paint an urban sky and it always involved some brownish tint on the horizon and a touch of grey in the sky. Lately, due to the lockdown there is less traffic in Montreal, and the sky has become a range of brilliant blues, nearly perfect cyan at the horizon and a rich 'smurf' blue colour in the sky. By coincidence, I recently redid my colour palette and discovered the power of phthalo blue and indo blue. I learned of these colours from Bruce MacEvoy's website handprint.com, and Peter Ward's watercolour blog which is also on this platform, blogger.

I have stayed away from depicting the effects of the pandemic, but as a landscape painter I can't help but observe the changes. My paintings over the last month show a change in season- melting icicles, puddles, old snow, tree buds forming, and a change in society. Less cars, clear skies, less people, but more lineups! The grocery store only lets in one person at a time to control the number, and here you can see people on the bottom left lining up to get in. On another note, I used perylene maroon and ferrari red to paint the car in the foreground- both of those pigments are known to be car paint (literally) so I put them to good use here !

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020

Hot times in the land of the lemon sunset

Over the years I did a series of paintings called The Lemon Sunset, which featured a dystopian future filled with crumbling cities, underground dwellings, and strangely shaped apartment buildings. Many of my paintings work along this theme of a distant future, a surrealist world perhaps. In this painting, a bright orange sun illuminates a plume of smoke with a prominent tree stump in the foreground.

The new colours I was testing here included the cadmium red and cadmium yellow hues from Daniel Smith company. They are truly great colours, and they do not contain any actual cadmium (hence the word hue in the names). Unfortunately I realized too late that these paints contain nickel compounds which are also toxic to the environment. So I pulled them out of my regular use palette and put them in a bag with the other toxic paints like cobalt and coppers. I used bloodstone genuine (also by Daniel Smith) for the outline and the granulation effects, luckily that one is not toxic and is now part of my regular palette.

5 x 5 cold press, watercolour, February 2020