The Neapolitan Lemon Sunset

This painting was an exploration of saturation costs, a concept expained by MacEvoy on his website Handprint.com. When a red and blue are mixed, you get a dark dull purple, closer to what ou may call lilac, or the colour of red wine. That is because red has a bit of yellow in it, which produced grey in the final product of the mixing. It is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact it can be used to great advantage to create colour harmony. In the sky, you see the red (PR209) with blue (PB15:3) separated, and in the very top right, mixed at full strength. You would hardly call that purple, it looks like printer ink. A slightly lighter version was used in the A-frame structure on the hillside, there you can see it is a mauve. The same trick was used for the foliage, I combined a high chroma yellow (PY184) with a dark blue (PB60) to produce some olive green colours, with hints of the pure yellow and blue added in for contrast. As the idea developed I threw in some yellow emoticon-people and a lemon sunset on the horizon. The sky reminded me of Neapolitan ice cream.

The Neapolitan Lemon Sunset 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2525b)

Saturday Painting Trip: From Snow to Rain

 

The weather report today basically said to stay home. Blizzard in the morning transitioning to rain in the afternoon. Not exactly the watercolour painters ideal forecast. Undaunted, I braved the uncertainties, dawned a rain jacket, brought an umbrella, and strapped on my Baffin snow boots. I had prepared a piece of paper with some masking fluid dots, that is a liquid latex resist that watercolour painters use to protect the paper, you paint over it and then peel it off at the end. This painting was done during a snow storm, standing under a narrow overhang in front of the pharmacy looking east along Somerled Avenue. The billboard with my initials on it is the same one I painted at night. It was hard to know what the painting would look like in the end, the latex dots were a shiny dark orange, but when peeled off at home, they revealed bright white dots creating the illusion of snow.

Blizzard on Somerled Avenue 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2571)

 

My main target for the day was the Villa-Maria metro station, part of the orange line just north of Vendome. Not surprisingly, the whole thing was surrounded with construction fences. By now the snowfall had turned to sleet, wet snow was coming down, which eventually gave way to a misty rain. I stood under a pine tree to get some shelter, but great chunks of wet snow were falling off the branches above me from time to time hitting the painting. I had not prepared a second sheet of paper with the liquid masking fluid, so I painted the snow flakes the hard way, using brushwork. In the end, this is probably the most 'Montreal' painting I have ever done. Crappy weather, construction, cold wet day. I like the snow piles here, I got them good and dirty.

Villa-Maria Metro Station, Orange Line, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2572)

 

Determined to do a third painting, I found this scene looking northwest up the Decarie merge lane. Snow plows were rumbling by spraying everything with dirty wet snow including the 'End Fin' sign and trees. Luckily I found a place to stand about three meters from the road, and I managed to secure my umbrella handle in my jacket so it covered my head without using hands. I omitted the word End on the sign just because of space, and to adhere to our strict language laws that say English should be smaller font than french. Also my hand was freezing, having taken my right glove entirely off to get the painting done in style. The orange (PO73) came out a little more red in the scan, I will try to adjust the paint next time so it scans the right shade. A Montreal urban painter needs to know this colour well. (No. 2573)

La Fin du Monde 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021

Marche Somerled, Thaw

Today was another long day at work, but I managed to sneak out for a quick painting across the street. This is the grocery store formerly known as Steinbergs, the last residual of its identity was removed recently when they redid the sidewalk in front (it used to have a fragment of the Steinberg logo). The snow was starting to melt today, it created small puddles and dark streaks along the sidewalk, and the snow was brownish near the road. Usually I edit out telephone poles but in this case I made the foregrounded one a major feature in the painting. I made fairly detailed outlines with paint, which you can't really see in the finished product, that was the point of course, a watercolour should not have obtrusive outlines say from a pencil or pen. To me, the thought of using a pencil or pen in a watercolour is a little bit like the thought of using a knife and fork to eat ice cream. Weird. 

There were lights on within the store that were quite visible, I wasn't sure if I could capture them in the painting, but now that I look at the blog picture that detail turned out all right. 

Marche Somerled, Thaw 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2570)
 

Trenholme Park, Squid-Tree

On the way back from the laboratory I stopped at Trenhome park on Sherbrooke to make this quick painting. The temperature was only -5℃ but there was a nasty wind and blowing snow which precluded me from finishing this painting on location. At home I detailed the tree and filled in some shadow areas. The new burnt umber (PBr7) I have gave the tree bark a streak of warmth, the rest of the bark was raw umber (PBr7) with indo blue (PB60). Pigment code PBr7 is used to describe about a dozen different paints so you have to go by the paint name to know what you are getting. Even that doesn't help sometimes, the current raw umber I have from M. Graham is a dark chocolate colour, while the old one I had from Holbein was a toasted marshmallow, as seen in the painting called raw umber field. These new paints I have - both the dark brown variant of umber, and the reddish version called burnt umber, are so useful for landscapes I wish I could go back and time and use it forever. Perylene green and quinacridone purple are like that too- glad I discovered them. 

By the way, the branches of this tree inadvertently look like a squid!

Trenholme Park, Squid-Tree 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2569)

Jester of Earth, and Pastel Wind

Earth colours include browns, oranges, greens, yellows, even blue. They tend to be less saturated versions, which means they are slightly grey or dull as compared to the bright colours. In fact brown is a dark version of orange. Next time you drink some coffee or tea with milk, you are looking at an earth brown. I mixed variations of earth colours in this painting, and included some of the brighter hues like red yellow orange. In the end, there seemed to be an image of a jester, hence the name.

Jester of Earth 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, February 2021 (#2526b)

 

 

What is earth without wind? We just need some fire and we got ourselves a popular band! (Earth, Wind and Fire) This painting was done on the last of my hot press cuttings, the paper tends to absorb paint resulting in an earth tint. I mixed the greens from primarily orange paint along with phthalo or perylene greens. The sky was all pastel tones, and it looked like wind blowing over the trees, hence the name. That also explains the name of my blog. I should have called this blog 'hence the name'.

Pastel Wind 5 x 7" hot press 90lb, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2558b)

Somerled Avenue Auto Mechanic, Front View

 Joe and Ralph's auto mechanic has never been painted so much by an artist! I had less than one hour to jump out of the apartment and do this painting, looking from the vantage point of kitty corner (across the intersection). I liked the contrast of the snow against the overcast sky, the two different greens of the shrubs versus the background pine trees, and the orange pylon of course for which I used my new winsor orange red shade (PO73). I will call that paint 'Montreal Orange' from now on! It was a surprising +2℃ today but the wind was biting. Unfortunately the next week will mostly be in the plus meaning that the snow is going to melt. I guess it's time to paint puddles instead of snow drifts.

Auto Mechanic, Snowy Shrubs  5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2568)

Palette Cleanser #60

Ideas sprang from the palette of colours. This was done on the last piece of paper from the Fabriano watercolour paper pad that I originally bought hoping to use it for the world inspired landscapes. One thing led to another and I did 60 of these so-called palette cleansers. I wanted #60 to commemorate the series, it depicts my palette with colours leaping off and mixing up in the background and foreground water element. If were ever to make a collection of these paintings it would go on the cover! I also signed it, not many of these were signed because they were just meant to be colourful doodles. I quite like this one, maybe I will do more...
 

9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2527)

Palette Cleansers #58 and #59

 

It occurred to me the other day that artists can be very stubborn in their ways, in particular when it comes to paint selection. I used alizarin crimson up until the beginning of 2020 when I finally jettisoned the paint in favour of some more lightfast red paints. The process started in 2017 when I bought quinacridone red, but I still used the trusty old alizarin for another 3 years before finally giving it up. My point is that artists get used to certain materials and techniques and change slowly, or not at all. That got me to thinking about improvement. To improve one needs to try something different, then get some feedback, either from others, or yourself. In the past year I have improved for sure, largely due to an influx of knowledge mostly from MacEvoy's Handprint.com and a few other sources, and a total revamp of my paint selection. With each painting I do, it seems to bring about steady growth. On the other hand, there are the palette cleanser's, where I basically clean my brushes and doodle! In this case, I used acid free sketch paper. Sometimes the simplest approach is the best one.

Palette Cleanser #58, 9 x 12" sketch book, watercolour, February 2021

 

I have a frame on the wall to show Japanese prints out of my copy of Hiroshige's 100 famous views of Eto. One of them depicts a swooping eagle over a frozen landscape. Maybe that was in my consciousness when I did this painting. When I started, I was actually thinking about the snow-glider parachutes that I had painted earlier on Saturday, you can sort of see that in the shape of the bird creature's body. Then it morphed into an eagle, or if you knew something about the Starcraft computer game, you would recognize a mutalisk. At any rate, it is another strange and beautiful painting from the imagination. There was only one more piece of paper left in my Fabriano paper pad that I had been using for the palette cleanser series, which I used to produce the final one of the series (#60). I will post it on Monday or so, it's going to be another busy week.

Palette Cleanser #59, 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, February 2021 (No.2526a)

Benny Cultural Center, Blues Harmony

 

I picked up a book on Bhutan today at the library, which is located in the NDG cultural center. They opened up part of it, and even had an art display in their community gallery. The art was an installation of silhouettes depicting people and animals, and the silhouettes were made from images of nature, outer space, maps, people, animals. It was quite a feast for the eyes and I realized how deprived of outside stimulus we have become. I made a painting on the way back, I found this scene at the back of the center, a large tree was casting a shadow on the periwinkle coloured wall (that is an actual colour name for 'powder blue') Considering my recent difficulties with painting blue, this location was kind of like a midterm exam. It was a matter of judgement, timing, and patience to get everything down, luckily there was a strong sun that dried the paint as I went. There were no adjustments at home, this is all on location. I am trying my best to finish the whole painting on location but the weather and conditions have predicated some adjustments from time to time. So how did I do? Since I'm also a professor I'll go ahead and give myself an A+. I can also post it on facebook and see how I do, every now and then Mr Clarke my high school art teacher gives me an A+ in the comments section!

Blues Harmony (Benny Cultural Center NDG), 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2567)

Saturday Painting Trip, Lachine Canal and St. Lawrence River

 

Saturday started out promising, it was a sunny blue sky day with moderate wind but I knew that cloud cover was in the forecast, and that St. Lawrence River can whip up some cold wind. The canal path had not been plowed all winter so it was mostly fresh snow with a narrow trail used by cross country skiers and intrepid hikers like myself. Every now and then my boot would punch through the snow and it would almost up to my knee. I arrived in good time at the open air museum park, a spit of reclaimed land that contains sculptures and trees. This tree was leaning over the shore line, which was mostly frozen. The St Lawrence was moving so fast that the river wasn't frozen save about 10 meters of ice. You could hear the crunching of ice chunks as they careened around the frigid waters. I painted this tree before from the opposite angle. The painting was done entirely on location, I didn't tweak anything at home.

Leaning Tree St. Lawrence River with Ice Flow, 5 x 7 1/4" cold press, watercolour, February 2021

 

I was pretty far out from home, almost 7 km by foot, but decided to get right to the end of the park. As I approached the point (which is marked by the tower with the angled top seen top left) I saw all these kids and adults zooming around the snowy ice on snow boards with colourful mini parachutes. It seemed fun but I noticed the water wasn't completely frozen near the shoreline, as you see in the painting it was a glassy brown-blue under the snow. I liked the contrast of the orange-turquoise parachute against the approaching clouds. In the painting, the colour is a bright neon-orange but in the scan it is a bit brown. RGB computer monitors do not show bright orange or bright blue due to technical limitation. I added the dark blue para-glider at home, I say it on location but the painting was too wet to add this detail.

Snow Gliders St. Lawrence River, 4 3/4 x 7 1/2" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2549)

 

 

 On the way back I wanted to do one more painting on the Canal, and found my favorite bridge, which was backlit by a cloud-covered sun. There was a warm glow over the sun and frozen canal which I captured with yellow ochre (PY43) and winsor orange red shade (PO73). Just as I packed up my gear, the sun came out of the clouds and the entire scene was illuminated like it was a postcard, had I been 20 minutes later I would have caught the perfect lighting condition. Next time maybe I will be lucky. At home I added the black fence, railing on the bridge and sharpened some details on the wooded areas. I also adjusted the snow shadows to give the ethereal glow. You can see the sun trying to pierce through the clouds.

Hiding Sun Lachine Canal,  4 3/4 x 7 1/2" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2550)

Snow Shadows, William Hurst Park

I wasn't planning on three blogs today in fact I was writing one long one and then decided to chop it up into three shorter blogs each focusing on a related theme. Painting snow shadows has been a challenge, so I performed some colour analysis on a photo and some paint tests to see what worked best. I found out that indothrene blue (PB60), slightly dilute and grayed worked best. All set to use my new found knowledge, I stopped off at William Hurst Park on Grand Boulevard on my way back from the bakery. The sky was actually overcast with a thin cover allowing a bit of blue through. The shadows were not as dramatic as the other day when the sun was shining, the shadows were delicate and tinged with blue. The new mix worked perfectly, I see on the painting that snow-glow shadow, especially on the eaves of the houses in the background and the snow ball in the foreground. 
 

Snow Shadows, William Hurst Park 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2551b)

Seeing the Blues

 A person can be feeling the blues especially this time of year, but how about seeing the blues? In a recent post I made a colour analysis of a spectacular shadow crossing over a tall pile of snow. The result showed that my painted shadow was too light and turquoise as compared to the photographic shadow. It's not like I want to be a 'human camera' otherwise known as a 'photo realist' but I was curious to know what type of paint mix would work best. The painting above used a variety of blues I have, and mixed with varying amounts of bone black (PBk9) which is an orangeish black, and water to thin out the paint. I also wanted the paint test to have some style! 

Seeing The Blues 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, (No. 2540b)

To make a long story short, indothrene blue (PB60) was the only true blue option, all the others leaned to turquoise, which explains my earlier painting which used phthalo sapphire. Here is the colour pick from indothrene blue:

The hue angle (H) at 216 is literally identical to the hue angle I measured off the photo. However, the mix was a little to dark and slightly more saturated. Here was the colour analysis from the photo for comparison:

Notice the exact same hue (H=216) but the saturation is lower (S=63) and the value is higher (V=63) as compared to my indothrene blue test. This means that adding black paint was wrong. In fact, the solution is rather simple, just add a bit more water to indothrene blue paint, and a touch of gray. Here was a follow up test, I also included burnt sienna orange on the right to see what happened when mixed:

 

The third circle was extremely close to the shadow blue I detected in the photo. Adding burnt sienna, the neutralizing complement that all books recommend, actually throws the hue off, it goes back to leaning turquoise (greenish). Therefor, to paint a snow shadow on a sunny, blue-sky day, the formula is indothrene blue, diluted with water and touch of grey ideally diluted carbon black. (No. 2616b)

February Palette

 

The winter conditions call for less yellow and more blue/grey/brown colours as compared to spring and summer. I made some adjustments and included a few new colours. Another problem was certain paint brands freeze more than others making them difficult to use in the winter outdoors, while other paints that were gooey and messy in the summer perform perfectly. Here is the run down: 

1. Lemon yellow (PY175 Daniel Smith) a benzimida pigment, leans to cool yellow. 

2. Yellow (PY154 Holbein), a benzimida pigment, quintessential yellow. 

3. Yellow-orange (PY110 Daniel Smith), an isoindolone pigment, similar to a school bus colour. 

4. Yellow ochre (PY43 DaVinci), earth yellow, works better than raw sienna when freezing. 

5. Raw umber (PBr7 M Graham), dark earth brown, works better than the DaVinci version when freezing. 

6. Burnt umber (PBr7 M Graham), dark earth brown-red, new colour for me, works well when freezing

7. Burnt Sienna/Iron oxide red (PBr7, PR101 various brands), earth orange-red, I mixed in a bunch from different tubes here. 

8. Orange (PO36 DaVinci), a benzimida pigment, quintessential orange, it gets messy though

8b Bright Orange (PO73 Winsor Newton), a pyrrole pigment, new colour for me, bright 'construction pylon colour

9. Red (PR254 Holbein), a pyrrole pigment,  quintessential ferrari red!

10. Dark red (PR175 Daniel Smith) a benzimida pigment, similar to the old Alizarin crimson but superior lightfast

11. Rose Red (PV19 M. Graham), a quinacridone pigment, between red and magenta

12. Purple-red (PV55 Schmincke) a quinacridone pigment, closer to magenta

13. Dark green (PBk31 Daniel Smith), a perylene pigment, actually a lime green but near black

14. Green (PG36 Schmincke), a phthalo pigment, quintessential green  

15. Green-cyan (PG7 Holbein), a phthalo pigment, leans into cyan

16. Cyan (PB15:3) a phthalo pigment, close to cyan 

16b. Cyan-blue (PB27) prussian (iron) blue, dark 'greenish' blue

17. Cyan-blue (PB15)  a phthalo pigment, near to a  quintessential blue

18. Dark blue (PB60) a indothrene pigment, blue leans violet, very dark. 

19. Black (PBk6), a carbon pigment, near black no hue

20. Black-orange (PBk9), a carbon pigment, leans orange

 

 In summary, this is a versatile palette of extremely lightfast and chemically stable pigments. I have a mix of bright 'synthetics' along with a range of earth colours. I also avoided the moderately toxic pigments such as cadmium, cobalt, nickel, and copper.  I like the new orange (winsor orange red shade from winsor newton) so much I will replace the other one I have been using. The prussian blue is a little wonky so I may just use it in the studio (aka one end of our kitchen table).

Snow Pile with Shadow, with colour analysis

On the way home from the lab this morning I made this painting real quick, it is a view of a giant snow pile and in the background the main building of Loyola Campus. I did a painting here before but the snow pile was smaller. A bus parked briefly and I managed to get in in there, middle left. Due to cold and paint not drying I packed it up and finished at home after establishing the main colours. After about 2 months of painting in the winter, the snow shadow colour still escapes me, in this case I added little drops of yellow that I thought I saw, reflected from the building behind me that was casting the shadow.
 

Snow Pile with Shadow Loyola Campus, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2557b)

To solve this once and for all I took a cell phone photo and analyzed it using image J and a colour picker from the internet. Here was the picture, you can also see what I was working from, 

 

Considering that there are differences in the optics (my painting does not look as yellow as it does in the scan), it seems like the photo shadow is darker and more blue, and I don't see yellow reflections. Here is a colour analysis of the snow blue shadow from the photo. 

The hue is almost exactly blue, and it is about 30% de-saturated (less blue) and 30% darker (lower value). I analyzed other parts of the shadow and there was surprisingly little variation, certainly no yellow. The lighter areas were shifted left on the color plot (about 50% de-saturated), while the dark areas were shifted down on the colour plot, about 50% darker, but in either case the hue did not change much, still blue. The conclusion is that the entire shadow area is blue, with some slight de-saturation and darkening here and there. So how did I do in the painting? Lets look at colour analysis of my painting, centered on the shadow. 

 

Not too far off, A for effort! The hue is not exactly blue, it is leaning towards cyan, you would call this teal blue. It is also heavily de-saturated, like 80% or something, and the value is too high (too light) compared to the photo. If we assume that the both the photo and the scan of my painting are equivalent, then I needed to make the shadow more blue, more saturated, and slightly darker than I did. I also analyzed my painting shadow and to my surprise, there was no yellow anywhere even though I literally put yellow in the mix. The areas were almost exactly gray because the blue and yellow cancelled out. The idea of adding yellow was wrong anyways. Next time I will go with a true blue like phthalo sapphire (PB15) and mix it with water and varying amounts of ivory black perhaps. 

Regardless of the technicalities I think the painting is wonderful, and in the end what you notice is how much darn snow there is!

 

Lufa Truck, Winter Night

 

After picking up the vegetables I found a bench to sit on and made this painting real quick, at least half of this painting. The orange glow in the snow drifts was from the park light behind me, the same one I painted previously from a different angle. The delivery truck had a red light on the rear, and the headlights were on because the driver was keeping the truck running to stay warm. It is hard to see, but the headlights were illuminating the falling snow creating a laser beam effect. A few adjustment, I made a pencil outline so as to get the painting centered properly which is hard to do when I use the wood rack. Also, I had my new 'woolies' long john and socks made from merino wool in Sweden, and my new moose skin gauntlets. By the way, the logo on the side of the truck is the Lufa logo, but I got it from their reusable bag and decided to brand the truck here in the painting. I had to finish the painting at home due to the blizzard that was developing. 

Lufa Truck, Winter Night, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2553b)

Lab Book #22: Global Warming Colours, and some cutting edge abstracts

Prussian blue is one of the oldest synthetic pigments, it first appeared in the 18^th century and was used all over the world including by Japanese print makers and French Impressionist painters in the 19^th century. It is still a popular paint but modern alternatives exist that are much easier to handle. Prussian blue changes substantially as it is thinned out, or as it dries, as explained by MacEvoy on Handprint.com. My experience with the colour is limited, I used to great effect painting the St. Lawrence at the end of May last year, and used the last of my tube on some abstract paintings. The new one I bought was from Winsor and Newton brand, and it looks great so far. Another thing I learned from handprint.com is that venetian red (PR101) is a complimentary paint for prussian blue (PB27). The red cancels some of the greenish hue, leaving an interesting gray. In the painting, I used lab book doodles once again, and coloured it in with mostly venetian red and prussian blue, along with some raw sienna for the golden highlights. I quite like the mix, it gives a metallic texture in the right proportions, and interesting earth shades.       

Lab Book #22 Global Warming Colours, 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, February 2021

 

The background of this painting is venetian red mixed with prussian blue, one thing I noticed was how well this mix covered the surface, I could see using it is a background fill. The yellow cup contains shades of yellow and some reflected orange.

Cutting Edge Abstract the Golden Cup, 1 x 11" watercolour paper, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2615)

 

I called this one the endless Winter because the colour scheme resembles an old movie poster I had from Dad called the Endless Summer, it was all in fluorescent orange and yellows. Too bad the scan makes the orange more of a dull red, try to imagine this a fluorescent-tangerine. Oh, I called it endless winter because we are supposed to get another 15cm of snow soon!

Cutting Edge Abstract the Endless Winter, 1 x 9" watercolour paper, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2616a)

Pizza Welat Nocturne

 

After endless hours teaching on zoom today I realized the curfew was fast approaching, and I wasn't about to let a pandemic ruin my day. So I got out under the inky sky and found this place to stand on Cavendish and Somerled, looking north towards Pizza Welat. The light was red, well, it was cycling through red yellow and green as usual and i had to pick one, and made it red. The snow on the sidewalk was illuminated red. A glowing billboard said something, now it says PJD 21 Info Crime. A fellow walked by and took a look and said 'nice'.... best review ever. To paint the sky I used indothrene blue (PB60) mixed with my new winsor orange red shade (PO73), and gradually added more orange closer to the top of the building. In the scan the sky has a reddish glow but the painting is an intense orange-brown. This was another 'impossible' painting that I almost walked past but decided to give it a shot. Rather, my brain was fried from teaching on zoom all day and I thought this painting would be cool. It is definitely a treat for the eyes, with all the contrasting earth brown and oranges and the simulated appearance of neon and city lights. It is just missing Elvis sitting in the pizzeria having a slice with Marylin Monroe. Oh, and I made home with ten minutes to spare before curfew.

Pizza Welat Nocturne (at Night), 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2562)

What's the Idea Paintings

 

After Saturday's painting trip I had some palette cleaning to do, and a few scraps of paper cuttings that I was testing out for winter painting. The paper absorbs the paint to such an extent that the colours come out a little dull and pastel. To adapt, I used a graduated value trick in the sky, where successively lighter brush strokes are juxtaposed creating a Tye-dye effect. Note: In the future painting Saturation Costs, I went with a more conventional tree and ground but kept the essence of the tye-dye sky.

Saturation Costs Tree and Tye-dye Sky 5 x 7" hot press 90lb, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2558a)

 

This one has a kaleidoscope effect, built up with interlocking areas of earth orange and earth yellow colours. Trippy. 

Burnt Toast Kaleidoscope 5 x 7" hot press 90lb, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2559)

 

Inspired by wood paneling, this painting is a maze of brown squares and rectangles. It reminded me of a box of chocolates, fitting for Valentines day. I also painted a Valentine's card today with a painting of a box of chocolates included.

Brown Town 5 x 7" hot press 90lb, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2560)

 

What would an idea session be without a lemon sunset painting. Set in a desolate future where people live in bunkers and chicken shaped condos, this installment shows a canoe rushing to get to the shore. I always make the canoe red, that was the colour of our family canoe for years.

Lemon Sunset, Rainy Day 5 x 7" hot press 90lb, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2561)

Lab Book #22: Doodle Roulette, new paints, old jokes

 

To test out my new paints I made a quick doodleism painting from my laboratory notebook #22 which has been quite full of ideas. The doodles on these pages weren't very coherent, so I used the swirling eddy form in the middle - slightly off center - as the core of the design. The pencil is churning its way through, and appears melted on the beach. A little nod to Dali, who often included melting items most famously clocks in his paintings. Most of the colours here are from my new paints I bought today, although I threw in some yellow and other accent colours from my palette. Its official now, I have all the colours. Well, almost.

Doodle Roulette 9 x 10 3/4" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2529)

 

Here are the new colours with pigment code and brand, from left to right: 

Pyrrole Red (PR254) Holbein

Purple Magenta pink (PR122) Schmincke

Winsor Orange Red Shade (PO73) Winsor and Newton

Burnt Umber brown (PBr7) M. Graham

Raw Umber brown (PBr7) M. Graham

Prussian Blue (PB27) Winsor and Newton (with phthalo and indo blue comparisons)

Viridian Hue green (PG7) Holbein

Ivory Black (PBk9) M. Graham

     And here are a few obligatory notes...

Pyrrole red, any colour that is also known as Ferrari red is okay with me! I already have a small 5mL tube of this, and got a larger 15mL one today.

Purple Magenta, also a re-buy, I had this paint before and decided to sacrifice the tube last year to produce "Your Melting Heart", totally worth it. The real reason I needed this paint was to paint flamingos. Wait for it.

Winsor Orange Red Shade, according to Handprint.com: "I have very high regard for this pigment; it is everything modern pigment chemistry should be."  Bruce MacEvoy. I find it to be the exact colour of construction pylons, which should come in handy this summer. The computer screen makes it look too red though.

Burnt Umber, how do you like your umber? Burnt. Actually it turns reddish, and looks like milk chocolate. Diluted it becomes a flesh tone. With green it makes olive. There is a lot to explore with this one. 

Raw Umber, how do you like your umber? Raw. The main reason I bought this is because M.Graham uses honey in their paint, which does not freeze the same way as the other brands. I've actually bought paint because I can use it at 20℃ below. That will be chapter 2 of my book entitled 'how to paint while freezing your arse off'.

Prussian Blue, (also known as iron blue) another paint I sacrificed last year to produce an abstract painting. Something about this paint is intoxicating. Maybe its the cyanide? It literally has cyanide in it, albeit complexed with iron and non-toxic. In fact, prussian blue is used as a medicine to treat radioactive heavy metal poisoning. Now when I go out painting I'm ready for anything. 

Viridian Hue, the original viridian is base on chromium and goes way back to the time of Claude Monet. Perhaps Monet never had black paint, but viridian and alizarin crimson which he also had, make black when combined. The new viridian hue is phthalocyanine, not cyanide, cyanine. Who knew you needed a degree in chemistry to understand paint names. Luckily I have one of those.

Ivory Black, screw Monet I bought more black paint. Just kidding, I revere Monet like every good landscape painter should. This paint is warm and granular, which makes it surprisingly versatile. It does not actually contain ivory, but they do make it from de-greased animal bones. I am all ready to paint a series of paintings called 'sacks of coal'. Monet painted hay stacks. Darlington painted sacks of coal. I don't even know where to find a sack of coal. Maybe there will be some fresh asphalt somewhere, I'm ready for it.

Saturday Painting Trip, Deep Freeze

 

On my way back from the art store I meandered over to Westmount park and found a spot to sit. The location is above the underground recreation center, on the roof in a way, but they turned it into a park. The snow was deep and well trodden. I couldn't resist using one of my new paints I had just bought, raw umber by M.Graham. It is a rich chocolate brown that works well with brick and tree colours. The rest of the painting was a race against time. A couple walked by and the guy said "I don't know how he does that" to which I replied "fast".

Westmount Recreation Center 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No.2563a)

 

Vendome station has been rebuilt on an adjacent location. This scene is the old station still in use. I liked the combination of the sumac trees superimposed on the industrial forms of the station. In the background I painted the hospital, it is the yellow bricks towards the top left. The hospital is a real eyesore, so this little yellow snippet is about as much as I ever want to paint of it. There were no touch ups at home for this painting, I wanted to leave it just the way it was done on location. I almost didn't paint this, because my first thought was 'impossible'. With cold weather the paint dries slowly, making this complex overlay difficult. Luckily I did the impossible and it is one of my favorites.

Vendome with Sumacs 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021

 

Even an apparently mundane scene can catch my eye. I walked past this several times on my previous trips but the sun was never at the correct angle. What caught my eye was the dramatic diagonal trees that seemed to reach over the bike path and road. Also, the shadow colour on the snow on the tree with the crisp highlight. The train tracks are in the background left middle. As a bit of humour, this sign is pointing to the bike path, but I didn't see a single bike go by the whole time. Perhaps the frigid 20 below temperature kept them home.

Maisonneuve Diagonal Trees 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021

Bike Rack in Snow, Loyola Campus

 

Like a faint reminder of warmer times, this bike rack was poking out from under deep piles of snow on Loyola Campus. The building you may recognize from a previous winter painting, it is the PERFORM Centre where I spend a lot of time up on the top floor in the Immunology Laboratory. Last time I painted a snow pile around here, I tinted the snow shadow slightly purple, this time, I tinted it slightly green (cyan). To my eye it looks more accurate, and makes more sense, the snow shadow reflects the sky which is cyan, with a slight darkening. The three trees off to the left work well with the wedge-shaped reflective glass. Frigid temperatures have made the painting a new challenge, so far the key is to put salt in the water, dress warm, and paint fast!

5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2539)

World Inspired Landscapes: Benin

 

 

For each one of these paintings I do extensive research from multiple sources. In this case a children's picture book and a music CD by a Benin musician Angélique Kidjo known as Africa's premier diva according to TIME magazine. It was truly great music and spanned many genres from Jazz to traditional. As usual I poked around google maps 3D but found little inspiration there. Finally I watched a YouTube documentary called "Deadliest Roads, Benin" which, despite the name, was a well told tale of society, history, and hardship in Benin. And of course a deadly road, the narrator follows a cotton truck that barrels down narrow populated highways at top speed. Cotton is one of the main agriculture crops in Benin, the people grow, pick, process and ship cotton out to many other countries. The tragic history of Benin is that it was among the busiest slave ports where the local government sold war prisoners to slave traders, many would perish and those that survived may have well ended up on cotton plantations overseas. Knowing that cotton is the biggest cash crop in Benin, one one hand means that the people now have access to the jobs and a little wealth, but on the other hand they make very little money at it, which is shown in the YouTube documentary. 

For the painting, I started with a patchy wash of very light golden yellow, then applied the purplish shadows while wet. I filled in the caramel-browns of the earth and yellow-orange cotton truck. The design shows a deep cotton field from bottom to nearly top, and a small band of west African Savannah. Benin is also known as a refuge for lions and elephants, it is a popular tourist destination for Safaris. The cotton on the back of the truck is light and fluffy like a cloud in the sky. The top of the cotton field undulates at the horizon line as if it is a mountain. The tree in the middle is overwhelmed by the cotton crop and trying to escape, the tree is symbolic.

9 x 11" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2528)

next up in the series... scroll down to find out!

Bhutan, then Bolivia

Palette Cleanser #57

 There was plenty of cleaning to do after a succession of night paintings in the cold. I built up a collection of abstract shapes using a range of blues, greens, yellow, red and purples with black accents. Today had a bright blue sky and sun, and I actually had a few spare minutes, however I had a bit of a problem with my finger tips and thumb after last night's painting effort and decided to give them a rest. I also ordered new gloves from a Toronto outfitter The Canadian Outdoor Equipment Co, the gloves are made in Winnipeg from moose hide. Chapter one of my book on how to paint in the winter we be all about how to stay warm!

Palette Cleanser #57, 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2525a)

Somerled Av Fire Station at Night

 

Painting at night for now is mostly due to some long work days this month, laboratory, zoom teach, etc. I contemplated night painting for some time, and then did a series of moonlight paintings for example the Harvest Moon. I also studied Handprint.com by MacEvoy to learn more about luminence and colour perception in low light or artificial light. To sum up, you paint night scenes darker than day scenes. You also have to find somewhere to sit or stand under street lights, and dress warm, For this painting, I managed to finish most of it on location just some touch ups at home. I made a fairly detailed outline this time, and then it was a kind of paint by numbers. The sky had a dark orange cloud on a dark blue-grey background, and the lights were turned on in the fire station windows. I used digital image adjustment after scanning it to make the painting appear darker, so you can see it on your screen the way I saw it on location. The computer screen will brighten the image and it looks weird, so I tried to simulate the dim light effect.

Somerled Av Fire Tower at Night, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2557)

Trenholme Dog Park at Night

  Painting at night brings about a whole new set of challenges, but the dogs don't care they just want to run around! Trenholme park has a dog park, which is open all year around including winter. This location is nearby the Lufa Farm vegetable drop off point, so I made a quick painting on my way to pick up the haul. Only the underpainting could be completed, I finished the details (including the dog) later at home from memory. I used my cell phone to pull up a picture of a running dog. At night the snow takes on an eerie amber glow from the lamp, and the sky is a dark blue almost turquoise. Van Gogh did some famous paintings on location at night including "Café Terrace at Night" and "Starry Night over the Rhone" by affixing candles to his (straw) hat. His most famous painting "Starry Night" may have been done mostly from memory. I can see the appeal of night paintings, the colour and compositions are completely different than during the day.   

Trenholme Dog Park at Night 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No.2556)
 

Somerled Fire Station at Night

 After the sun goes down the lighting changes dramatically. Usually the sky still casts a dark grey glow for example on the snow surrounding the decorated tree in front of the local fire station. Ironically, there are more light sources when it is dark, at least in the city. The two lamps flanking the side door of the fire station produced amber cones of light that illuminated the side wall as if it was near a camp fire. The decorated tree lights also lit up the snow creating a skirt of illumination. Finally, there were several street lights projecting onto the front of the station (which is actually in the left of this paining seen in perspective). I had to finish the details of this painting at home for two reasons. One it would not dry enough to make the details, and two, it was very close to the 8PM curfew and I had no way to tell time with me. By the time I got home it was 20 to 8 so I had more time than I thought but didn't want to get a big fine. Then I would have to charge more for this painting if I ever sold it!
 

Somerled Fire Station at Night 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No.2555)

World Inspired Landscapes: Belize

Next stop Belize! Why not, with all the snowy blizzards here in Montreal, Belize would be the perfect tropical paradise to visit, it is half jungle, half Caribbean beach. The people's history is a long and traumatic one, thousand of years ago the indigenous people had a thriving collection of societies called Mayan. They developed sophisticated writing, math, and economic growth, not to mention brutal warfare and ritual sacrifice. Mayan civilization was on the decline when Spanish colonialists showed up with more hardships such as slavery, disease and more war. As the Spanish moved out the British colonialists moved in until Belize finally made a peaceful independence movement and became a sovereign country in the 20th century. The Mayan people, descendants of slaves and colonialists, and other regional indigenous people still live there, although the great Mayan cities are abandoned by all but tourists. 

The painting is an in interesting story, I cut an old practice painting in half, it was a scene of a grassy field in London Ontario. With some adjustments and additions I turned the old painting into this tropical Mayan ruins on the coast of Belize. As the viewer, you are standing on top of a Mayan pyramid looking down on a grassy clearing and more ruins in the jungle, all the way to the Caribbean sea. Just imaging dozens of tourists crawling all over the place and you get the point. Or, if you can, imagine a Mayan overlord dressed in Eagle's feathers standing on top, it is night time with a full moon, and thousands of Mayan people are chanting and cheering.
 

World Inspired Landscapes: Belize, 10 x 11" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2530a)

Saturday Painting Trip, Adventure on M2

 After all the preparation, the new boots, the salt adjustments, the cold adaptation, I was ready to go for the summit of M2 today, also known as Mount Royal, a towering 233 meter pyramid of rock and snow. Accessible only by a road or a sidewalk, it is the remotest of places in Montreal. I set off before lunch and decided to walk the whole way, if I was going to feel a sense of accomplishment I would not rely on the bus, that is for casual mountain climbers. I walked briskly careful to wear my COVID mask and avoid walking past people who were not wearing masks. Other than the virus, the sidewalk was very hazardous, a hard flat concrete surface you wouldn't want to fall down on it. As I slowly ascended upwards, perhaps 50 meters over sea level by now, I reached the precipices of the climb. The highway underpass. I stopped to make this painting with a stiff cold wind but a nice sunny sky. Then I turned left an headed onward and upwards.

Forest Hill Overpass, near Mount Royal, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2552)

 

 

 As I plodded up the sidewalk on Remembrance Road, the cemetery was clearly visible- hundreds on hundreds of tombstones. This was a stark reminder of the dangers of climbing M2, they knew the risks, and they went ahead with it anyways. Expert climbers call it summit fever, when you sense the summit and already have your life invested, you just go for it. Maybe it was more like cabin fever, I wanted to get out of my condo. From the sidewalk I made the dangerous traverse across the parking lot. An elderly couple was trying to get across but they didn't see the path, I waved to them and they followed. Maybe I saved some lives today. In the parking lot I saw this sheer vertical wall of rock and snow, probably 5 meters high or even 7 meters. I didn't try to scale it today, instead I made a reconnaissance paintings to study the rock formations and possible climbing route.

Snowy Rock Face Mount Royal, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2553a)

 

As I reached the south summit, still a long walk to the true summit, I saw hundreds of people having fun on the skating rink, skiing, walking, laughing, and with children and infants too. Clearly M2 has become commercialized, and these naive people seem oblivious to the dangers of high altitude alpine climbing. At around 200 meters, the oxygen is only 99.98% of sea level oxygen, making it technically harder to breath. I was strong though and didn't even notice the thin air. Following a snowshoe trail I found this scene looking south towards the river and Samuel de Champlain bridge. A bitter wind howled through the forest and I knew it was time to head home despite the fact that I had not made it to the true summit of M2. Many accidents in the mountain occur on descent, so I carefully headed back retracing my steps through the deep snow, and lived to climb (and paint) again.

Champlain bridge from M2, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2554)