Experimental Abstracts, May Wrap

What do you call a group of octopuses? Trick question, octopuses is the answer, or perhaps octopi. But what do you call an octopus with three arms? I think it would be called a tripus. At any rate, this underwater scene made good use of yellow ochre (PY43) and burnt sienna (PR101) with some phthalo green (PG7) accents. After establishing the outline, the shapes were created wet in wet, then a background was filled in.

Consortium of Tripuses, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2675b)

 Paint landscapes in Montreal long enough and you get to appreciate the green spaces, not to mention the orange pylons. Some of the pylons have blue, purple and even pink. Apparently they cost $1 per day for the city to rent, so may as well get our money's worth. The theme of the painting is green space, and how it is challenged by development.

Green Space, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2673b)

 

This was essentially a palette cleanser, the new caput mortum needed a little TLC. A variety of red orange and maroon was added to compliment. Caput mortum is a marketing name, the pigment is a finely ground iron oxide red that appears as a dark dusty maroon, but the name suggests that it is made from the remains of Egyptian mummies. Whether or not this story was true at some point is anyone's guess, but it makes for good fiction. 

A lot of names of paints are carry overs from the past, like ivory black (not made from Ivory), Indian red (not from India), Turner's yellow, Payne's grey etc. (not the same pigments those artist used), and so on. Incidentally, I have boycotted Indian red due to the inherent racism of the name, even if it supposedly refers to India the country, many sports teams have come under flack, and the football team with a similar name has finally agreed to change it. I think it is time to change the name of a few paints to get with the times. Indian red and Ivory black are the two I am thinking of, it seems unnecessary to cling to those dated names, one has the negative connotations, and the other name refers to a history (and present time) of an illegal ivory trade that threatens elephants and rhinos. I finally purchased Ivory black, but have always referred to it as 'bone black' in the blog which I will continue to do so.

Earth Lines, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2674b)

Place St. Henri Station, Orange Line Metro

 

Like many stations, Place St. Henri is undergoing a massive renovation that will open two new entrances on either side of rue St. Jacques. To signify this change, some of the orange construction pylons were featured in the foreground, with the old station in the background. For a small painting there is a lot of detail, it took longer than usual to complete. It will be neat to go back when they are finished the construction projects and do some paintings of the new stations. There were other scenes around St. Henri that seemed cool to paint, but the rain was threatening this afternoon. This completes the first third of the Orange line Montreal from Cote Vertu to Vendome, the next phase runs through the downtown, and then towards the North to Laval. As the summer heats up these locations get tough, heavily exposed to sun and difficult to get to and fro when it hits around 30℃ as it will next week.

Place St. Henri Station, Orange Line, Pylons, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2675a)

Cote Ste Catherine Station, Orange Line Metro

 

Now that the curfew is over we can be out after 9:30PM without worrying about the cops. For my birthday Cilei got me a nice bike light but there was never an occasion to use it at night due to curfew. Today I headed out to paint for second time, just after 8:30PM sunset and made my way to Cote Ste-Catherine metro on a cool pleasant evening. The sun was down leaving the sky an inky night blue, the interior lighting from the station cast an amber glow onto the sidewalk. People kept asking me where the bus stop had moved, apparently some construction caused it to relocate, but I had no answer. Tonight I still wore the mask just in case.

Cote Ste Catherine Metro, Amber Glow, Orange Line 1, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2674a)

 

As the sky turned into a pool of indigo, I had more trouble seeing the colours and doing the brush work. Painting at night is more difficult than the day, you have to rely on instinct and luck to some extent. Inside the station you can see the top of the escalators that lead down to the platform. There were several light sources, coming from the interior of the station, cast from the unseen street lights to my left, reflecting blue light from the sky, and a window in the background had some fluorescent bulbs. In the foreground were delicate white flowers that seemed to be dancing under the night sky.

Cote Ste Catherine Metro, Orange Line, Windows, 2, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2673a)

De la Savane, Namur Stations, Orange Line Metro

 

The orange line metro has many little stops that only the locals would know well. Other than this painting, I have only been out to de la Savane a few times over 16 years of living in Montreal. It was crafted from that old 70's era brown concrete and had an industrial bunker design similar to Vendome. I rode around the small station trying to find the best place to paint the scene. Where could I paint this station? The front looked okay but was backlit, the back was nicely front lit but looked like a pillbox. An impressive pine tree, possibly a cedar, was growing on the shady side, it was held up with several steel poles so I could tell somebody had tried hard to preserve it. The tree was thriving, at the top of the scene you see little pine berries growing. For a few moments I was transported to Algonquin park, painting tree bark and smelling pine needles. 

De la Savane 1, Orange Line metro, cedar tree, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No, 2670)

 

The feeling of being in Algonquin park did not last long. This station is right beside the Decarie and appears to be under heavy development as you can see in the background all the cranes. Overhanging the entrance was a broad concrete floating roof with lamps, it was similar to the construction of the Cadillac station. Controlling all of the browns and greys was easier than before with all the new paints, especially umber (PBr7) and caput mortem (iron oxide violet PR101). I used magenta (PR122) to make the metallic shadows, and cobalt blue (PB28) and indo blue (PB60) in the sign. I like the way the interlocking brick worked out, and the overall busy feeling.

De la Savane 2, Orange Line metro, overhang 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2671)

 

Not far from de la Savane is Namur, a busier station located near the big box store shopping district. The station itself was a big box of bricks with two standard entrances. Surrounded by the Decarie and with tight sidewalks there were not too many options to paint this one, so I found a spot standing near the entrance, partially standing behind a map-sign. With the hot press paper, paint tends to dry fast and you see the brush strokes more than with cold press. All you need is grey, green, brown, and blue, that's Montreal!

Namur Station Orange Line metro, 5 x 7" hot press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2672)

Dream Homes

 

After watching a lot of Grand Designs, a CBC streaming show that tells the story of fussy rich people building customized mansions, I got inspired to design some unique homes. This house comes complete with suspended patio, path to nowhere, and a brick pillar. To capture the night time atmosphere, I adapted the colour scheme according to Handprint.com (MacEvoy) who described the hue and chroma shift that occurs in scoptic (dark) light conditions. There were a few easy to remember conclusions: white becomes a shimmering blue, yellow becomes mustardy-ochre, red and orange turn dark maroon, and blue becomes similar to green.

Dream House 1, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2669b)

 

If manicured lawns and stately architecture is your taste, then we have dream house #2 for you to look at. Complete with manicured lawn, interlocking brick, a guest house, and a duck pond. Paradise in the city!

Dream House 2, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2668)

 

Before you make your final decision, let us look at another option, a water front property that is literally on the water front. Taking cantilever design to an extreme, this bungalow has excellent views of the sunset, and you can catch fish from your living room window. Moving in might be a little difficult, same with entering or leaving, but hey, style over substance.

Dream House 3, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No.2667b)

Somerled Oaks

 

There happens to be a good place to sit near the community garden boxes with a view of a couple of oak trees growing next to an apartment building on Somerled. The trees are shown on the left side of the painting, they are a tall narrow type of oak tree you see throughout Montreal. One of the people who waters the community garden boxes was curious to know if I paint portraits of cats, but I said not in a while. As a commercial artist  one has to paint commissions, and the customer may have some personalized ideas not always to the artist's liking. Even Rembrandt made commissions his whole life. I tried it for awhile, but those types of projects are very technical, it boils down to illustration.

Somerled Oaks v2, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No.2668)

 

This was the first try I did yesterday. Painting windows like this is kind of terrifying, which is why I passed on this scene so many times. When the frames are white against a darker background they have to painted in negative space. Getting it to look architecturally accurate is difficult because any line or angle that is off will be noticeable. In the v2 above, I lightened the brick, fixed some of the window shapes, and featured the oak trees more prominently.

Somerled Oaks v1, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2669b)

 

 

Fire Station Sundown, and palette tweaks

When the sun goes down everything becomes dim and takes on a progressively orange glow. At the beginning of doing this painting the face of the fire station was a pale yellow, about 10 minutes later it was this glowing tangerine. TO get the tangerine glow, isoindolone yellow (PY110) was applied in a thin wash over the yellow ochre base, which was done more as an adjustment to the light conditions. The shadow side was yellow ochre (PY43) and umber (PBr7) with a touch of perylene green PBk7) to get that rich shadow yellow. Other than the sky, there was no blue used in the painting, all yellow, orange green and some rust. The sun light playing off the yellow brick resulted in a toasty, radiant glow.
 

Fire Station Sundown, NDG, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2667a)

 

With each painting I learn more and make adjustments to the palette setup. This version has caput motum (PR101) a very useful dark dusty red earth, and perylene maroon (PR179) a high chroma earthy red located just to the left of indo blue (PB60). My old favorite phthalo blue-green (PG7) is back. The whole top row is meant for 'mixing' between each other to create browns, shadows, greens and darks. The bottom row has 6 high chroma paints for highlight colours, and off to the side, carbon black used for darks like in the tree shadows or window shadows.

The End of Curfew is Near

 

This Friday Montreal is lifting the curfew and a few other changes due to the improving situation with COVID and widespread vaccinations. As you know from the blog, there is an auto shop nearby, which I painted at night once before. Police cruisers are always parked there, maybe because they break down a lot, or just don't have anywhere else to park since they removed the station from our neighborhood. Without breaking the curfew, I made this painting sitting outdoors, it was extremely quiet with not a soul to be seen. Painting at night is a challenge, for one thing there are insects crawling all over, and of course you can't really see what the painting looks like, or your palette. I used the Van Gogh palette, it has heavily pigmented paint that really gets onto the paper easily, and I had memorized the position of the colours since they all look gray or black at night. Inside, I outlined the painting in grey (PBk11 diluted) to make the cop car and other highlights the lightest value of the painting, and I adjusted the contrast settings to make it look dim as when I painted it. One funny thing, the fence just above the car looked to be a perfect grey outside, but it was actually a kind of turquoise, and I could not see the green of the tree, but I could see most of the other colours, just not how much chroma they had. The sky is navy blue (PB60) with pylon orange (PO71), a mix I discovered in an earlier night painting of a Pizza store down the street.

Police Cruiser at Auto Shop, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2666a)

 

Last blog for the day: Four Abstracts

Last blog for the day! I catalogued the last month or so of paintings, that is where I name and number them and update the OpenOffice excel sheet. There are about 230 paintings so far this year which is outpacing even last year's output. The goal is not to make a mountain of paintings, but seriously, I am exploring all the new paints and ideas in every way, and doing a ton of location paintings too. In this one, I used a range of earth colours to produce the glowing gold lights, and in the background, every shade of green I know how to make. It was landscape format (horizontal) but I liked it better vertical format. Would be a good one to make a larger version.

Chromatic Idea, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2635b)

 

Naming paintings is always fun. I rebranded my Instagram today as "Gum Drop Tornado" which is the name of an old abstract. Heart beet seemed original at the time, a beet that sort of looks like a heart, but the phrase is already much used on the internet to describe a cooking method. You slice the beet, shape the slices like a heart, then cook them... heart beets. Now, if someone was living inside of a house that was in the shape of a heart beet, then you would have it "in a heart beat". Got to up the meme game.

Heart Beet, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2638b)

 

An incredible news story came out the other day, America was warning its people not to kiss chickens for fear of picking up salmonella poisoning. The real surprise was that American people actually kiss chickens. This painting shows some red white and blue things sucking water from a pond, with a pair of kissing chickens in the background.

Kissing Chickens, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2644b)

Inspired by the world inspired Bulgaria painting, this shows an underground cavern with iron oxide violet (PR101 caput mortum) structures, and a glowing turquoise cavern lake. I like the light bright effect here, if I were to redo Bulgaria, the cave portion on the bottom would look more like this. Actually, when I started the Bulgaria painting it was an abstract, and then started to look like a cave so I went with it. Maybe this one needs a few cave paintings on it, like in the Botswana painting.

Iron Violet Cave, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2645b)

 

Thoughts on Social Media (with Brazil Study)

Social media is all about sharing thoughts, ideas and images with the outside world. Making art is all about the same things, in some ways art was the original social media along with the printing press. Recently I posted the painting of Brazil, here on the blog and on Facebook. The Brazilians on Facebook seemed to like it, and one commented that the colours really capture the feel of the North. I get comments all the time, but this one was cool because this series is an attempt to capture the look and feel of a landscape using books and the internet. With Instagram now, people see me painting on the street and I can direct them to my account if they want to follow. If you read my blog there is no need to have the social media. After completing a painting or two I scan, crop, adjust contrast (the scanner makes everything a little cyan and low contrast), upload, write, and publish. I figured out now how to post to Instagram and have it auto post to Facebook. 

The painting above is also a form of socializing, you see the local people on the beach, in a paddle boat trying to sell things to the people on the ferry, and the ubiquitous ferry that carries people along the Amazon river to and from cities like Manaus. This is a small study I did before making the big version in the link above. The water was a little too 'orange pekoe', and the scaling of the beach and boats had to be adjusted. In the final version the river has the vastness and glow of the landscape.

World Inspired Landscapes: Brazil with Ferry Study, 4 x 6 1/4" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No.  2629b)

Walk down Fielding Avenue

Fielding Avenue runs through the middle of NDG connecting the west to the east, it is mostly apartments, with a stretch of small shops starting at Walkley. This is a pizza shop on the corner, a bright red car was parked there for most of the time but it drove off towards the end. To get the red colour I used pyrrole red (PR254), it is literally the same pigment that was probably used to paint the car, you see how bright it appears. The bricks were mostly yellow ochre (PY43) with some other shades. Today I brought a small ruler with me and used it to get the lines straight, although it worked out okay it was difficult to use a ruler and paintbrush while standing up. I think it worked okay though. 

88 Pizza,  5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2650)

 

On the north side of fielding were some interesting shops backlit by the sun. A cyclist zoomed by, and a person came out of the shop as I did the painting. If I can catch it early enough in the painting during the outline phase then I can get the moving objects into the design. The ruler helped get all the lines straight and to map out some of the angles. Making the dark brown and greys for the buildings in shadow required indothrene blue (PB60) and various earth paints like burnt sienna (PR101/PBr7).

Fruit Rocky Montana, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2652)

 

As the sun was going down, the shadows got long and the atmosphere took on an orange-yellow tint. I liked the way the window was reflecting the light and the trees, and how the shadows cast across the side of the building. The other reason for trying this painting was to test out the ruler idea, it helped to make true the roof lines, corner of building, and some of the windows. The one window on the side I did not use the ruler ended up looking crooked. My goal is to keep the paintings loose, so I may use the ruler sparingly just to get the key components lined up. I will have to walk down fielding again when the sun is still pointing north, probably before 1 pm.

Marché Oasis 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2651)

Gum Drop Tornado and Pineapple Hypnotism

 

Ready for a rebrand, Cilei and I looked through a list of names of abstract paintings I had done over the years and picked out a few that sounded catchy like cactopus, lemon sunset, the blue house, la parapluie rouge, and many more. While catchy, those names were already taken by bands and organizations. Finally, Gum Drop Tornado came up empty on a google search, no Facebook page, no Instagram tag, and no mention of it to be found, until now! The main thing was to have a catchy and original moniker that makes people curious. The painting done in 2012 was a surrealist scene of a field of grass inundated with a psychedelic display from above. I actually named the painting last year when making my art catalogue. So I will try this re-brand for awhile across the platforms and blogger.

Gum Drop Tornado, 6.5 x 6.5",  cold press watercolour, 2012 (No. 1581)

This name was also totally original, no signs of pineapple hypnotism on the internet. You are feeling sleepy. Look into my eyes. Imagine pineapples swirling into a colourful vortex. I dig this painting. What were you smoking? Dude, where's my car?

Pineapple Hypnotism 8 x 12", cold press watercolour, 2012 (No. 1372b)

  

Japan Paintings Final Batch from 2006

Going through some old backup disks I found a folder containing photos taken in the year 2007 of selected paintings. Some of them were earlier than 2007 like the ones of the Yangtze River, but most had been done around the time like 2006's Japan paintings. On the web version you can use tags to see all the Japan paintings, as far as I can tell they have all been posted now. The one you see above was a temple in Kyoto, the original painting was given away as a gift I believe, it was not on my catalogue, lucky I found the backup disk.  

Japan, Kyoto Temple 5 x 8" cold press Watercolour  2006  

 This was done at the same temple if memory serves me correct, it was some sort of good luck decoration hanging from an old tree. Considering the limitations of my palette at the time which I recently recreated in this blog, it is amazing how many earthy and gold tones I could produce. Too bad the alizarin crimson I used is not stable, these paintings would not be good to hang in the sunlight. Guess I have to go back to Japan and do some new ones when the pandemic is over!

Japan, Kyoto Temple Ornament 6 x 10" cold press Watercolour  2006 (No. 1209)  

 The bed and breakfast I stayed at had a bicycle to borrow and I whipped around Kyoto for an afternoon. A sprawling park in the south of the city had plenty of cherry blossoms and neat trees to paint, with amazing mountains in the background. You an see the cerulean blue (PB35) glowing in the distant mountains.

Japan, Kyoto leaning tree 5 x 7" cold press Watercolour  2006

 

It started to rain that day so I hopped on the bike and tried to get back in time. Then a crane landed on a tiny tuft of land in the middle of the river that surrounds Kyoto. I had to paint it, even through the rain was coming down. The crane flew away shortly after I started the painting, and there were people walking on the other side of the embankment with umbrellas. 

Japan, Kyoto Crane 5 x 12" cold press Watercolour  2006 (No. 1210)

     

For a day trip I headed up to a small mountain village in the hills north of Kyoto where they hold a fire festival each year. Some of the other people I knew from the Conference I had attended in Nagoya were there too! Many of us had taken the extra week vacation after the conference and headed to Kyoto. This view is from the very top stairs of the temple complex looking back down into the valley. Another valley scene is in this blog, it was a magical place.

Japan, Kundai, Top of Stairs View, 5 x 8" cold press Watercolour  2006 (No. 1208)    

 

 

 

 

World Inspired Landscapes: China

 

I started the World Inspired Landscapes series in 2020, but in 2001 I made a couple of paintings inspired by the Yangtze river in China. They were painted on a very thin watercolour paper using professional watercolour paints mostly from Winsor and Newton at that time. I was part of a Chinese art and calligraphy group for a few years and learned many things about art and culture. The first painting shows the steep cliffs and lush greenery that used to be there before the Yangtze was flooded to build a power dam. The chartreuse is particularly brilliant in the water reflections. 

Yangtze River with Boat, 9 x 12 Watercolour paper, 2001 (No.1418)

 

Here is a magnificent panorama of the mountainous spires that guard the flanks of the Yangtze. Pastel tones suggest a misty sunrise. A lone tree clings to the mountainside, and a group of birds flies in the distance. The tints are likely rose madder genuine an impermanent pigment, perhaps I will repaint this one with modern pigments on a better quality paper. It reminds me a little of the painting Sunrise on the Saguenay, Cape Trinity by Canadian painter Lucius O'Brien which you can see here. I also did a painting on Réunion island inspired by 'Sunrise on the Saguenay', which I used to have a poster of on my wall.

Yangtze River Panorama, 9 x 12" Watercolour paper, 2001 (No. 1754)

 

 

Irises, Plamondon, Côte-Vertu, du College Orange Line

 

"Looking for a place to happen, making stops along the way." Tragically Hip lyric

Making good time on along Plamondon, I caught a glimpse of purple irises growing between the sidewalk and a fence.  Speeding by on my bicycle, it occurred to me that Van Gogh would have stopped to paint that. And so I found a decent little nook beside a fire hydrant to stand and paint the scene. Of course I used the Van Gogh watercolour paints that I recently purchased from Kama pigments with the metal palette, with the addition of indothrene blue (PB60 Winsor and Newton), quinacridone magenta (PV19 Schmincke), and raw sienna warm shade (PBr7 Stone Ground Paint Co.). Glad I brought along those colours, they really helped capture the violet irises and golden warm sunlight. Like Van Gogh's famous painting Irises, I cropped out the sky and focused on the flowers. To make it a Darlington I had to include the sidewalk too!

Irises next to Sidewalk, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2647)

Still on my way to the final destination, I rode by the Plamondon station of the orange line metro. There was not very much real estate to stand and paint, but I found a nook beside some recycling bins. Unfortunately a big SUV parked in front of me partially blocking the scene, and the people came out and met friends on the sidewalk, stood right there in front of me talking very loudly indeed. Luckily I had my medical mask on just to be on the safe side. They took interest in the art and said it was good. Then they offered me a Krispy creme doughnut to which I said no thanks. This painting was a test of concentration, but I am very focused when painting. I rushed the background a little, but kind of like the blurred effect it created, like a photographic-style depth of field. 

Update: In October of 2021, I made one more painting of a back entrance of Plamondon during a pastel sunset. 

Plamondon Station, Orange Line Metro, 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2648)

A few more kilometers and I made it to Côte-Vertu Station the orange line terminus. Last year I completed the 27 stations of the green line metro line, starting in Angrignon, and ending on Honoré-Beaugrand Station. One of my goals this year is to complete at least half of the Orange line stations, I already bagged a few such as Villa Maria station, Vendome, Beaubien, and a the cross-over stations like Snowdon and UQAM. I would like to include people and cars in the scenes but I need to practice a bit more, it has been awhile since I painted these type of complex urban scenes. To make the incredible brick colour I used iron oxide red (PBr7/PR101 mix of Uradori Red Ochre and Sennelier Red Brown), and the caput  mortum (PR101 Sennelier) that I recently picked up at Deserres and used to make a painting of the parking lot. It felt a little excessive to be buying yet another earth paint, but after using caput for a few paintings it is turning out to be extremely useful. The brick colour you see in the painting is just what it was like, a deep red/rust brick that was back lit by a strong sun. The caput paint is a dull dark red with a bit of granularity, the mixtures have to be stirred frequently.  I've been carrying cobalt blue again on my palette, you see how useful it is to get the window frames. The whole face of the building was in shadow. Luckily I found  good landscaped boulder to sit on under a tree it was a great location. Some people watched me paint and asked some questions. Now I tell people that I am a blogger and on Instagram!

Update: I made five more paintings of Côte-Vertu Stationin November 2021.

Côte-Vertu Station, Orange Line Metro, 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2656)

After perusing the google map on my smart phone, I found the next station Du College, which has a main building, and a secondary entrance that looks like newer construction. There were cool angles behind the station but the lighting was not right, so I did this view of the metro sign casting a shadow and a glimpse of the entrance. The shadow caught my eye- I thought  'can I do that?' You may notice how smooth and bright this painting appears, that is because it is done on hot press watercolour paper, the same brand (Fabriano) as the cold press one I have been using. It handles completely differently, the paint absorbs quickly, and the brush strokes are really consequential. It seems best to paint fast and confidently. There are 31 stations in the orange line metro and I have painted 8 of them, so that leaves 24 to go!

Update: I returned to du College to make two more paintings in November of 2021.

Du College Station, Orange Line Metro, 5 x 7" hot press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2649)

World Inspired Landscapes: Bulgaria

Bulgaria has an amazing variety of landscapes, similar in that respect to Albania or Australia. It was hard to choose one theme for the world inspired landscape so I thought about doing two paintings, then had the idea to combine the compositions into one painting. The top of the painting shows the black sea (which is not actually black, black meant North in ancient languages), sprawling white sandy beaches, and a lush mountainous countryside bathed in sun. Towards the bottom, the landscape transforms into a rocky cliff leading to an underground cavern. Bulgaria has some of the most elaborate and beautiful caves in all the world open to tourists and adventurers. Colourful lichen grow on the rocks, which appear as earth colours like burnt sienna, umber and yellow ochres.

World Inspired Landscapes: Bulgaria, 10 x 11" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2664)

Marche Central Parking lot

Marche Central is a sprawling parking lot surrounded by big box stores, a lot like Ontario in some ways. The parking lot seemed well kept and I could compose an interesting scene showing the yellow safety paint on the curbs, colourful cars, and some landscaping. The third car in the background was done with caput mortum (PR101) a dark dusty red iron oxide by Sennelier. The paint was also used to create the green shrubbery in the foreground by adding a touch of it to phthalo green yellow shade (PG36). To liven up an otherwise normal scene I kept the brushwork loose and didn't fret too much about the details. One thing Van Gogh conveyed was a sense of joy in his paintings through colour and brushwork. David Hockney who is still painting, recently did a series of plein air paintings using a Van Gogh inspired palette and approach. I am often inspired by these great masters and try to imitate some of their colourful and energetic style.

Marche Central Parking lot, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2646)

Sports Dome and PERFORM Centre Spring

 Today was another hot and muggy day, mostly overcast which made it possible to stand out in the open and do this painting from a similar vantage point as last winter. It was hard to judge the exact spot because in the winter this lane-way was bordered by great mounds of snow and looked quite different. Today the dome appeared to blend into the overcast sky, and the PERFORM Centre (french spelling) window was reflecting the foliage that they planted beside the building. It is nearly 10 years now exactly that I joined Concordia University and started doing research in the laboratory that is located on the top floor of the Centre. I also played a lot of Ultimate (frisbee) in that dome. Usually they dismantle it after the winter but since the pandemic it has stayed up all year around, unused. One of my biggest blog fans liked to see the paintings done of the same subject but different times of year. So here is another one!

 Sports Dome and PERFORM Centre Spring,  5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2645a)

World Inspired Landscapes: Brazil

 The amazon river is lined with white sandy beaches, small villages along and the occasional big city like Manaus. When the ferries go by the locals watch with interest, and some intrepid entrepreneurs paddle their dugout canoes to intercept the ferry and climb on board to sell goods. It seemed dangerous indeed. In the last Brazil post I mentioned a video where we saw this whole documentary on the people who live near the river and their culture. 

The foliage was created with benzi orange (PO36) and phthalo green (PG36) which give some intense olive greens, and perylene green was used for the shadows (PBk31). With my new earth palette, I was able to easily include goethite (PY43) for the amazon river water with streaks of cobalt blue (PB28). French yellow ochre (also PY43) with some Italian deep ochre (also PY43) was perfect for the sandy beach. Burnt umber (PBR7) provided the tree trunks and stilts upon which the colourful houses are built to protect them from frequent floods. 

I was committed to getting the Brazil chapter just right, and I hope this one fits the concept. Most of the world inspired landscapes have avoided traces of humanity, but in this case I felt the people who live and travel along the amazon tell an important story. The scene is also striking, we get to appreciate how vast this river is and the wonderful earthy colours of its abundant water and beaches.

One last comment on the design, which I worked out in my sketch book, the composition uses one of the old tricks the Japanese print makers such as Hiroshige and Hokusai developed in the 19^th century. They added strong elements like trees and roofs in order to provide a sense of depth, along with triangular shapes at the foreground to liven up the composition.  

World Inspired Landscapes: Brazil Amazon with Ferry, 9.5 x 11" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2663)

Paints Galore

After some thoughts on paint mixing, I decided to simplify my location palette by reducing the number of paints and by using a physically smaller palette (Holbein 1024-1500). In the sketch above, there are 18 paints. They are organized across the top into 4 browns, 3 blues, and 4 paints for mixing greens. The empty well on the top in between the blues is for mixing up the sky colour. Across the bottom are warms, magenta and carbon black. After doing a few painting on location, this setup is definitely optimal because it is easy to hold with one hand, and the mixing strategies are rather straightforward. Grey, green, brown, blue and some orange. Pretty much describes Montreal!

But wait, there is more! A paint buying binge resulted in over 20 earth paints, including 15 in tube format. I love these paints so I set up an 'earth max' palette with 24 slots (Holbein 1024-3000). The earth paints are across the top, ordered roughly by their hue from yellowish to red-black. The 16^th slot is empty since I am missing iron oxide violet, otherwise known as caput mortuum which I will inevitably get in the collection one day. On the bottom row are 8 bright, lightfast synthetics to provide accent colours. This palette should make for some fun abstract paintings.   

If you act now and buy 2, you get a third one for free! I've had this physical palette for years, it was a catch-all for miscellaneous paints. Now its been organized with 28 of the colours clockwise from yellow, red, magenta, black, blue and greens. Tucked away in the bottom left is burnt sienna, just to provide some grit. Every paint has a personality, and it takes time and experience to get to know it. I call it 'the everything palette'.

A matter of perspective

Today was supposed to be very hot but it seemed cool and breezy, maybe due to overcast conditions. When the sun popped out it did indeed get toasty out there. I stopped at Beesborough street, an unremarkable suburban street in NDG, that happens to have a good place to stand and paint just beside the Dormez-Vous which you see as the building on the left. The trees were an interesting variety of yellow-greens and chartreuse. 

Perspective is tricky in landscape painting, the scale of things and the shape of linear objects is all affected by distance. The simplest and most widely taught approach is to use a vanishing point, and make all objects scaled or aligned with lines that emanate from the vanishing point. In the painting you can imagine the lines of the road, sidewalk and building converging on a point somewhere in the middle of the scene. The problem with linear perspective is that it only seems to accounts for objects at a certain distance from the viewer. It never seems to work accurately when objects are very close, or very far from your eyes. 

To test perspective, I set up a ruler at a fixed distance from my eye, and then moved an object away from me 1 meter at a time. Then I measured how big the object appeared to be the farther away it got. You can do a simpler version of this by holding your two hands near your face, and moving one hand away until it is about half the size of the other hand. You have to move your hand about 40cm away to have it appear to be half the size of your other hand. Now, try to move your other hand so it is half the size of the hand you moved. It seems like a real stretch now. In fact, in my object test the object had to be about 2.5 meters away to appear one quarter of its original size. 

However I look at it, perspective is not linear, objects that are close to the viewer will loose a lot more of their apparent size than objects that are situated further away. Depth perception is very complex, and I could not find an adequate equation to explain the phenomenon. Perhaps a deceleration curve or inverse log curve. 

What is this to an artist? Sharp angles such as the one you see in the painting above are very hard to get right. I believe the roof line of the building should have been shown as logarithmic, not linear! I was doing a painting of the Lachine Canal a few years ago, in that painting, as I sat quietly, almost meditating, I saw the curvature of the canal wall that I was sitting on. You see in the link, I tried to emulate it by making the straight lines curved. Your brain's visual system is telling you its straight. Anyways, it will take some trigonometry, calculus, and focal point knowledge to figure this one out.   
 

Av. Beesborough View 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2644a)

Silver Dandelions, Trenholme Park

Not far from home, this park used to be called Victoria park I believe, but was renamed Trenholme Park at some point. The dandelions were starting to go to seed, creating a silvery wisp across the field of green grass. The sky was overcast, but still had clouds floating about, which created an interesting silver-on-silver appearance that mirrored the dandelions. I did the trees in a about three layers, working from light to dark, and finishing with some yellow washes, and the bark and branches. After some refinement I have my palette down to a simpler format. Basically I have set up areas for browns, greens, blues, warms (yellow-magenta) and black, using 18 paints. That sounds like a lot of paints, but it is about as low of a number I can go without giving up any convenience, and besides the palette literally holds 18 paints so may as well fill it. For all the other paints I own, I set them up on different palettes for studio paintings, I will make a post about it soon. 

By the way, the heat is starting to come on here, going to be 30℃ tomorrow, time to wake up early. I did a little research into the weather this year and discovered that February 13^th was the coldest day of the winter at more than -20℃ below, I made a blog called deep freeze that day after doing some paintings. If I can do a painting tomorrow that means I will have painted in a 50℃ window (from -20 to +30) in just a little over a 3 months span of time. I will try not to melt, or thaw, or whatever happens in that situation. 

Silver Dandelions NDG, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2642)

Probe meets Probe

Lately various countries have been landing probes on mars for exploration. But what if some other planet sent a probe at the same time? The painting shows just that moment, when probe meets probe. To create the intense red atmosphere of mars I started with an under-painting of graphite grey to establish the shadows, form and some texture. The sky was done with rose-red (PV19, M. Graham), and the surface was burnt sienna deep (PBr7 Da Vinci) and yellow ochre (PY43 Da Vinci). Other colours were dilute organic paints like benzimidazolones and phthalos. Most modern pigments are derived from coal tar (petro-chemical). I found an old document from the mid 19^th century and they were mentioning 'new' coal tar pigments (e.g. aniline) but the authors were commenting on how unstable they were at the time. Since then, azo chemistry was figured out, and that resulted in a whole slew of new 'coal-tar' pigments all around the colour circle. Ironically, the coal tar pigments are extremely light, bright, and colourful in appearance. Actual black pigments are more commonly made from iron oxides or from carbon made by calcinating (burning) petroleum or bones.  I wonder what kind of paint could be made from the surface of mars? It would be pretty expensive I'd imagine.

Probe meets Probe, 9 x 12" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2665b)

Lab Book #23: No More Doodles

What was my new year's resolution? No more doodles? Certainly not, there have been plenty of doodles in the recent lab book. The books are numbered consecutively from when I started doing research in 1997, so that makes 23 books worth of science and some art. Aside from the pandemic, 2020 was rife with protests over social issues such as black lives matter. The painting captures some of the protest idea, it depicts protestors holding signs and a banner, and surrounded by a plethora of doodles. This painting is called a study because I might make a larger more planned out version later this year. It was done on the last of the d'Arches paper that had some issues with it, the colours tend to fade out so I really used strong colours to compensate. On a molecular level, watercolour paper is like a sponge, the pigment will travel into it loosing a bit of intensity along the way. A thin fatty substance called 'sizing' prevents the pigment from going to far into the paper, meaning that it sits nearer the surface and looks brighter as a result.
 

Lab Book #23: No More Doodles Study,  9 x 12" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2665a)

Colour Puzzles

 

Wouldn't these make great puzzles? They are already like puzzles, with each piece somehow aligned with the next. The two swans represent a unity of colours such as the graphite grey and red, or the magenta and blue. For a more literal example of the style check out Addictive Puzzle.

Hue Relationship, 8 x 10" cold press (Winsor and Newton), watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2660b)

 

Earth colours are rusty, earthy, and much like shades of tea or coffee. They also provide a great backdrop for brighter colour. This scene was meant to represent an underground cavern with water, and various forms of like snaking through the crevasses.  

Between Earth, 8 x 10" cold press (D'Arches), watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2661b)

Finally, this painting started to become the inside of a brain on a microscopic level, with connecting axons and astrocytes. In between the brain tissue are little pops of colourful objects that are dreams. Everything we think and dream exists on the grey and red stuff called brain!

Colour Dreaming, 8 x 10" cold press (D'Arches), watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2662b)