Montreal Island End-to-End: Painting Notes

 

This blog is an artist's retrospective on the 'end-to-end' bicycle trips I completed recently. Maybe other artists or readers will find this interesting, it is also a way for me to remember and record a few notes while the memories are still fresh. Above is the eastern-most painting at Parc du Bout-de-l'Île.

For the trip out east I used the exact palette set up seen in a previous blog. Here is it is again, note PY43 is yellow ochre from DaVinci, not Raw Sienna as written:

The only changes I made going out west were to remove PG7, shift PBk31 over one slot, and add a big dollop of PY154 yellow in its place. I made this change because I was not using PG7 very much, it is a strong blue-green paint used to use to make dark green and turquoise. Here is what the hue looks like for PG7, although the actual paint is much lower value (darker).

It was just redundant with the perylene green (PBk31)... I used to mix PG7 with PR83 (alizarin crimson) to basically get the same colour as PBk31. Looking back, I think perylene green would have saved me a lot of trouble over the years. If you look at the scene below, which was painted at the western-most park I could find, all of the dark green parts, and some of the distant blue mountains are made with perylene green and indothrone blue.

 

The other reason for the change was I needed a lot of yellow paint on the palette for Cap St. Jacques park. Since I realized last year that dark yellow makes a greenish colour, it really changed the way I painted. Instead of neutralizing PG7 with burnt sienna (PR101), now I start with yellow, and adjust with phthalo green yellow shade (PG36) and perylene green. I can then neutralize with the benzi orange (PO62) to create olive and army greens. It is flexible and leads to lighter, brighter foliage.

I had fully loaded the palette before the trip so as not to run out. You may wonder why I didn't just bring the tubes, but its because squeezing out fresh paint while traveling can get messy when it wont dry out enough. 

Looking at my palette now, I can tell which paints were used a lot, or not so much, and reflect on what they were good for...

Yellow ochre: moderate use: good for warm clouds, bright earth, shimmering greys. Not good for making greens.

Umber: used a lot: good as a dark warm shadow, tree bark, mud (like in the painting above), sand etc. Not good if used to thickly. 

Raw umber: used a lot:  excellent for neutral browns and slate-greys with indo blue. Can get muddy

iron oxide red: excellent for painting rust (it IS rust!), and neutralizing with blue to make flat browns, and for brick colours. 

caput mortum: moderate use: similar to iron oxide red but makes a lilac with indo blue, and subtle granulation. 

perylene maroon: not used much: good for dark red shadows, and for warming up any grey or shadow mixture. Not so useful on its own.

indo blue: used a lot: excellent for almost everything, mainly for water with a dab of carbon black or umber, darks, violets, neutral greys and browns, desaturated greens. not good for daytime sky (excellent for night sky)

perylene green: used a lot, as mentioned used in greens, also in dark turquoise

benzi yellow (PY154): usage depended: I had two blobs one for making warm colours which I used moderately, the other used for making greens, used it a lot. Also used benzi lemon yellow (PY175) a lot. Greens, highlighted browns, sun effects. 

benzi orange (PO62) moderate use: It makes olives and army green, but can also make the greens heavy, so I tried to not over use it in green mixes. 

isoindo yellow (PY110), moderate use: mainly for sun highlights, or special effects like tiger lilies. 

ferrari red (PR254, PR255), not much use, but important when needed, bright reds. Sometimes mixed with brown or grey for colour adjustments. 

cobalt blue (PB28): not much use, but essential when needed for example pond reflection, wildflowers by highway, water fountain. 

phthalo sapphire, moderate use: almost exclusively used for sky blue. Added touch of PG36 green for the horizon cyan. 

carbon black: moderate use: for creating de-saturated blue, green, reds, and for dark blacks. In the city this paint is used more. try to not use to much can get muddy. 

SO those were my thoughts on the paints I brought along. As for brushes I only brought 7... a variety of sizes and the big hogs hair for cleaning and texturing. It worked well, taking too many brushes is hard to manage from a 'saddle pack studio'. For paper, the 5x7 block continues to be amazing, handles paint so well, I bought most of the stock available in Montreal so sorry for other artists! I also had Winsor and Newton 22x30 inch cut to sizes, unfortunately some had lines of sizing on them which ruined a few paintings, but I could fix them up okay. 

For water, I had 2 x 540mL square plastic bottles and a waste container, with a small glass jar, and several rags. Also a bike water bottle for drinking.

That sums up the painting gear, I would not change much if I did this again. Just more cargo space for food and change of clothes, but that would require a front saddle (bad for style points!). 

Thanks for reading if you got this far! The notes were like a public diary of sorts, I go back and read these from time to time.One more painting, the one where I used 'everything' to do it, a personal favorite: 

"Parc du Bout-de-l'Île Everyone is Invited"