World Inspired Landscapes: Malaysia

The country of Malaysia is located a the southern most tip of Asia, with about half located on the large island with Brunei and Indonesia. It is adjacent to a major shipping lane in the sea, hence the ship off on the horizon in the painting. The area was subject to a series of competing kingdoms until the British established colonial rule with the presence of the East India Trading company. Among other things, the British introduced their parliamentary system which mostly remains to this day, and palm oil trees which were initially meant to be decorative. In the painting, the short palm trees represent palm oil trees, which are now an enormous industry in Malaysia. Unfortunately these trees take up a lot of land, and have to displace the natural jungles that existed before. When planning out this painting, it was important to avoid a cliched beach painting, that is, sand and palm trees and the sea. So I took inspiration from the Batik fabric tradition of Malaysia, which is a process whereby craftspeople hand paint fabrics with elaborate floral designs, a kind of colourful blinged-out wallpaper. Batik has a lot of gold outlines and be-jeweled shapes contrasted against bright colours and black/white highlights. My landscape has elements of repeating design in the palm trees, and follows colour cues from examples of batik fabric I saw on the internet.

World Inspired Landscapes: Malaysia, watercolour 6 x 9" watercolour paper, February 2024 (No. 3846)

Park Path Frozen

As February closes out with a leap year, we got surprised with some fiercely cold weather. Due to unseasonably warm temperatures recently I had switched out the salt water for fresh water in my kit. As you can see in the painting, trying to do a watercolour in freezing conditions with fresh water leads to some interesting results. In some way the textures are appealing, and you definitely get a sense of blustering wind. The paint was forming chunks on the brush and freezing onto the palette. Carbon black (PBk6), yellow (PY97) and red ochre (PR101) activated well enough and I could get down the basic scene. Its quite a nice view, Trenholme park looking west with Sherbrooke on the right, and the long path lined with park benches and trees.
 

Park Path Frozen, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3703)

World Inspired Landscapes: Malawi

 

Painting Malawi was fun because I once had a colleague from Malawi and he told me all about the rolling blue mountains and fields of coffee they are famous for. His family were coffee farmers and he picked coffee as a boy until the Wellcome Trust gave him a scholarship to pursue academia in the UK. The coffee farmers in Malawi barely make 20 cents per kilogram of coffee which is outrageous when you consider the price of whole bean coffee in north America can be closer to 40 dollars for a kilogram, and if you try to calculate how much profit a chain like Tim Hortons makes off a kilo of coffee it must be in the hundreds of dollars. Trying to control the price is difficult because even if a wholesaler in Malawi is paid better by the purchasers, the savings are not passed along to the farmers. We had the idea to import the coffee, as it turns out there are no special regulations to import coffee, however, Malawi is landlocked and the closest shipping port would be across to the East coast of Africa. You can stuff as much coffee as you want into your luggage, it would just be an expensive flight! So in the end our coffee business idea never took off, and shortly after, terrible floods and climate change has made agriculture very challenging in Malawi. 

The painting of course shows coffee berries growing on the plant... the berries are about the size of an olive, I saw some in real life down in Brazil. After picking the berries, they are dried into raw coffee beans which are a pale greyish-green, and then roasted into the more familiar brown colours. There are three parts to the painting, the background has some typical rolling blue-grey hills, the middle ground is a wet-in-wet depiction of rows of coffee trees, and the foreground shows a close-up of the coffee trees and berries. The foreground colours were inspired by internet photos, I recognized a mix of white, yellow, chartreuse, green, dark green, and near black. The berries were alternatively red and green. Acacia trees scattered across the landscape are a reminder of what was once there before the coffee plantations.
 

World Inspired Landscapes: Malawi, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, February 2024 (No. 3835a)

Scenes Over the Tracks

Standing on the Cavendish overpass there is a good view of the grocery store parking lot and some of the other buildings such as a hotel and a bowling alley. Why would I call a painting like this lakeside view? The trees in the background are at the very top of the escarpment that lines the south side of NDG. After some research into the pre-canal history of this area, I realized that this escarpment used to be part of a very large lake. Walking up to the tree line would have brought you to the edge of a lake, teeming with fish. Now if you walked up to that tree line you would see a lot of garbage, and a panorama view of the highway and industrial area through the trees. Too bad, the hotel could charge more if there was a lake there.

Lakeside View, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3700b)

The last of the sunlight was illuminating the train tracks with a coppery shine. The grey sets off the gold colours of the tracks, and the straight and narrow tracks are contrasted by the wild foliage all around. The background had trees covered in vines, while the foreground was sumac. I used a lot of yellow ochre (PY43) in this painting, even signing in it.

Sunlit Train Tracks, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3701b)

Shadows on Icy Canal

Getting down to the canal was an easy bike ride because all the snow and ice has melted. This scene is somewhere between the NDG entry point and Ville st Pierre, looking across to what must be Lasalle on the other side. A lot of this area has no specific affiliation, I once called a painting 'Nowhere Montreal' done along an industrial road near upper Lachine. The main idea here was to capture the brilliant, warm caramel tones of the wood bark set against an olive green strip of grass, and a translucent icy canal. The low sun was casting long shadows across the icy surface. While it was nice and sunny and well above zero, there was still a bitter wind to content with. The next few days call for very warm spring like weather and I suppose the ice will be all gone then. 

Shadows on Icy Canal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3702b)

Benny Cultural Thawing Snow

The Benny cultural center is a colourful building that houses a theater, books, videos, and a lot more. You can see it in the background of this painting, like a pile of lego blocks. In the foreground you see the pale yellowish grass emerging from the thawing snow, with long blue shadows cast from the trees. As I painted, I noticed that small dark red leaf buds were starting to appear which seemed early. Funny enough, just this morning I did the Madagascar painting and did an effect like this for the Balboa trees, so I knew the technique. Dab once for small dots, dab several times on the same spot for larger dots. From the looks of it, we are well into spring, but there is apparently still a little cold weather in store.

Benny Cultural Thaw, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3702a)

World Inspired Landscapes: Madagascar

Madagascar being one of the largest islands in the world and in the top fifty countries by size was in fact very late to be populated. The people are about equal parts of African, Indian, and Pacific islander descent, along with an assortments of Europeans from a brief time of colonial rule by France. It was a difficult location for the colonial powers to exert control over due to its remoteness, harsh environment, and the multitude of warring kingdoms that populated the island. After much tumult, Madagascar (spelling error in the painting), emerged as a democracy and now faces additional challenges from diseases, deforestation and climate change. One of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, it also has an incredibly diverse environment consisting of numerous endemic species, that is, only found there such as the lemur. In the painting, you can see a diverse biome of cactus, balboa tree species, dry shrubbery, all growing in the red-orange clay. The design idea was to offset the warm colours with pops of green and blue, and to give an overwhelming sense of growth, an almost alien looking landscape. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Madagascar, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, February 2024 (No. 2663b located near No. 3826 Luxembourg)

Chilly wind, Canal Bridge Top and Bottom

Gathering some courage I rode the bike out as far as possible which was the Lachine Canal train bridge that I have painted many times before. The sun was getting low, which created a washed out, subtle amber glow. Luckily the frozen ice effect dried enough for the metal fence overlay to be done on location. Somehow I managed to capture the highlight on the metal fence with an economy of brush strokes. Due to nasty cold wind this was a short painting trip today!

Canal Bridge Bottom, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3700a)

This is a study of the top part of the bridge, the bridge colour is red ochre PR101 with perylene green (PBk31) and a touch of indo blue (PB60). The rust overlay is iron oxides (PY43, PR101) and some benzi (PO62) and pyrol (PO73) to punch it up. With so much salt in the water everything dries a little dull. I look forward to painting this scene in full when the weather improves. 

Canal Bridge Top, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3701a)

Bagel Alley Denizens

What would you expect to see in an alley next to a bagel store other than boisterous pigeons? On the right of the alley is Fairmount Bagel on Fairmont street, you can see the corner of the store with a stack of orange palettes they use to deliver bagels to various shops. The pigeons were going frantic perhaps some seeds or bread had made its way into the alley. I painted the general shape of the alley and the pigeons first before they took off, then filled in the rest of the painting. With warmer weather the ground was a mix of snow ice and water. I quite enjoy painting Mile End from time to time, today I just made a little detour to get there by bike. 

Bagel Alley Denizens, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3698b)

Moon over Train Tracks

On occasion the moon is visible when the sun is still shining and the sky is blue. In actual fact the moon was a lot higher in the sky than depicted in the painting, but for the sake of composition I compressed its location to nearer the tree line. The main attraction to this scene, other than my favorite train tracks, was the interesting sky colours. At the top, the sky was a true blue, while the horizon was a pale cyan, almost greenish colour. Making a smooth transition from a medium blue to a pale cyan requires an adjustment of both hue and value. Now that I am seeing it, the two colours in the sky are similar to what I saw in yesterday's sunset, which had the additional tangerine orange at the horizon line. Today it was still about an hour to sunset so the orange colour had yet to develop. I walked home with this painting in hand, minus the trees, so that it could dry fully. After drying at home, I overlaid the trees with umber (PBr7) and hints of dark blue (PB60) from memory. The teal-coloured top of the Reno Depot be seen in the distance on the other side of the tracks.

Moon over Train Tracks, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3699)

Winter Sunset Loyola Park

There was a time when this kind of painting seemed impossible. At the end of the day, usually heading home from painting in London Ontario, the sun would set creating spectacular colours in the sky and landscape. Try as I might it never quite came out right. After studying the actual colour of sunsets and considerable practice, it became possible to paint sunsets to great effect even in the winter. There is not much room for error, in this example I lost the moisture control a little bit in the sky but it hardly shows. With powerful gusts of freezing winds blasting me, it was all I could do to hold onto the brush, paper and palette. Most people walking by probably wondered what the guy with all the winter gear on was doing painting on a day like today. When people do walk by I usually tilt the paper a little so they can see if just by a casual glance.

Winter Sunset Loyola Park, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3698a)

Snowy Night Autoshop

Hoping to catch what might be the last of the winter snow, I popped out front for a quick painting of the autoshop on a snowy night. I had to touch it up indoors especially the detailing which was blurred by the falling snow. At least it gives a good illusion of snow. I could have stood in the condo and made the same painting but it would not have had as much character, when you are standing outside in the elements it adds a certain something to the work. 

Snowy Night Autoshop, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3697)

Table Ideas

As I painted this one it started to look like a table so I went with the theme albeit in an abstract surrealistic manner. There is an old fashioned TV and flower pots on top, but not really. The colour scheme ended up being a lot like a Klimpt, he liked to go mostly warm and juxtapose dark neutrals against light high chroma colours thereby creating a jewel-like effect. For the most part these are palette cleansers where I literally clean off the muck from my palette, but its kind of fun to apply some bright colours in free form which is quite the opposite to painting cold and dreary landscapes in the winter.

Table Ideas, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, February 2024 (No. 3835b)

Downtown Cold Sunday

Sunday's are supposed to be cold but that is a sundae not a Sunday. At any rate, it was cold and blustering with steady snowfall in Montreal which did not stop me from making a few paintings downtown. This one is looking south on Union, a view that anyone who has been downtown Montreal would recognize, on the left is the Bay, and in the distance are some of the old and new buildings mixed in. I painted the colours a lot brighter than they seemed knowing that it would dry a bit duller.

Union Cold Sunday, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3694b)

Here I was standing in front of Simons department store trying to shelter from the snow. The snow flakes were large and wet making it difficult to paint anything. The whole background turned into a mushy mess, and I tried to keep the foreground more of a drybrush with black and white contrast. It is a compelling effect though, you can really sense the blowing snow and undaunted shoppers. 

Downtown Shoppers Cold Sunday, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3696b)

World Inspired Landscapes: Lithuania

Lithuania is geographically a fairly small country but its population is quite large for its size. Looking at the landscape of Lithuania revealed vast wetlands and a web of rivers. For the most part it looked a lot like Canada. The last painting I made of Luxembourg showing a river and snowy trees could have easily been a scene from Lithuania. Nearby Estonia was also a flat somewhat swampy country. The history of Lithuania is similar to other European countries in the region, it has evidence of settlements from thousands of years ago, it changed hands many times and was profoundly affected by the World Wars ending up as part of the Soviet Union. One year before formal dissolution of USSR, Lithuania separated and has remained sovereign ever since. The painting depicts the sunrise on a swamp, complete with the tangerine sun and misty atmosphere. I used pyrol orange (PO73) and Benzi orange (PO62) along with an array of darker paints to create the contrast.

World Inspired Landscapes: Lithuania, watercolour 4 x 10" watercolour paper, February 2024 (No. 3845)

Cavendish Cold

What else could the painting be called but Cavendish cold? The street of course is Cavendish looking southwards, and it was very very cold today especially with the windchill. In the background is the large apartment block, it has 17 floors but I only show about half in the painting. I chose this scene because it had all the right components, the trees and white snow on the left were a good contrast to the rest of the scene that was grey blue and brown. The fingers were a little numb after this one despite the triple covering on my hands so I stopped at one painting for the day. Hopefully tomorrow is a little more amenable and I can make it down to the Canal or downtown area.

Cavendish Cold, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3696a)

World Inspired Landscapes: Luxembourg

 Luxembourg is another small country nestled in the mountains of Europe. Historically Luxembourg was the seat of power of the Roman Empire in Europe, with the Hapsburg duchy ruling in some way for hundreds of years up until the early 19th century. Eventually the family ceased to be and Europe broke up into the countries we know of today and Luxembourg became independent. When researching the country, every scene on the internet showed a large castle on the side of a forested hill, or a waterfall with three streams coming out of it. Were there only two scenes in Luxembourg? Its topography was very mountainous with valleys and dense forests filling out the areas where there were no houses or castles. To do the painting, I went with a low chroma winter scene showing a river and snow-covered trees. More inspired by Japanese prints, this painting resembles the many winter scenes that Hiroshige deigned in the 19th century. Just Lithuania to go and countries starting with the letter L are complete.

World Inspired Landscapes: Luxembourg, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, February 2024 (No. 3826a)

3 blocks with snow

 

At the end of Harley street in the Westhaven neighborhood there is an auto shop, and a dead end road that would normally connect to West Broadway street if it weren't for the train tracks cutting through town. I've done plenty of paintings from this vantage point looking in various directions, this time I was looking northwards, you can see the dead end street on the left, and three concrete blocks in the lower middle part of the painting covered in snow. I often sit on these blocks and eat some lunch in the summer. To the right is the field of grass where I painted chairs, tables, and sunflowers over the years. With some pretty extreme windchill bearing down on me, this painting was a true test of my ability to do winter painting. Luckily the gear held up, and the amount of salt in the water kept it from freezing mostly. I had to do some touch ups back home to restore the details and textures that were lost upon thawing.

3 blocks with snow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3695b)

Last Lights on Campus

With the budget cuts this may be the last lights on campus, at least they can't block the sun. In the foreground you can see the melting snow, it was a twisted pile of black and blue surrounded by greenish grass in the middle of February. For the rest of the painting I painted it fast, with a rough and ready style. Instead of outlining it first with paint, I just went straight for the colour blocks, let it dry a bit and overlaid the trees. The peachy orange highlight set against the blue sky was the main focal point, and the undulating snow piles provides a bit of visual interest. Perhaps some day with better weather I can capture the architectural details of the facade although its not something I normally focus on, rather, I try to explore the interactions between nature as it were, and the city.
 

Last Lights on Campus, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3695a)

Chilly Ride to Atwater Market

Hoping to paint on a nice sunny day, I was a little disappointed to find a partially melted bike path and a bitterly cold wind. This scene is near the footbridge, looking towards downtown. The building is actually a factory converted into condos, they conserved the old smoke stack and facade of the structure. Despite it being mid February, the ice was thawing out on the canal.

Canal and Stack, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3693a)

This scene shows a sliver of the Atwater Market, with a scene of the tree line and parking lot on the left. I tried to play up the contrast between the pale yellow ochre bricks with a purplish sky. Mount Royal is in the background with a prominent apartment building.

Tree Line and Atwater Market, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3694a)

The last painting was moist and I had to let it dry to get the trees and windows detailing on. While I waited, I made this quick painting of a colourful scene looking east. A Rubik's cube like art display sat in among a puzzle of shapes created by the condos in the background and the public building in the foreground that sells ice cream in the summer. Two people were sitting at a table, down in the bottom right.

Colourful Scene near Atwater Market, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3693b)

Greene Avenue

Greene Avenue goes from Westmount down the hill to the highway eventually. It provides a good view of the distant horizon and the suburban areas around downtown Montreal. Painting distant horizons requires a good amount of blue paint, keeping in mind that the blue you see when painting will be significantly less intense once it dries. The crumbly texture in the sky is due to the salt crystalizing. If you could see this paining in real life, the sky actually sparkles. Now that the weather is above zero, I may not need to add salt to the water anymore. 

Greene Avenue, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3692)

Icy Hill Backlit, Trenholme Park

When the sun is directly in front of you, the scenery is said to be backlit. You can tell from the shadows of the two trees that the sun is directly up and roughly in between the two trees, shining in my face. To paint a backlit scene it is important to find some strong value contrasts and composition to emphasize. In this case I found a small icy hillside where kids had been sledding in the recent past, which created some lines and footprints up and down the hill. In the background, a row of triplexes and cars was almost entirely in shadow. Colours become darker but still have their intensity when backlit. The dark brick in the backgrond was a mix of dark red (PY179), red ochre (PR101) and carbon black (PBk7). Adding black makes a colour darker but will not diminish the colour purity (intensity). Black paint essentially lowers the amount of colour but does not alter the hue angle. A common alternative is to add a blue-green like PG7 phthalo, but that shifts the hue towards yellowish or greyish depending on which paints specifically are being used. I had to figure all this out by practice and knowledge from Handprint.com (MacEvoy), since conventional art literature seems to omit any such information. 

Icy Hill Backlit, Trenholme Park, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3689b)

World Inspired Landscapes: Liechtenstein

It took a few tries to memorize the spelling of this country, called Liechtenstein. I like to memorize the spelling so when I paint it out there is no room for error. Liechtenstein is one of the smallest countries in the world, it is nestled in the Alps between Austria and Germany, with a culture mostly resembling German but very unique in itself. A lot of the smaller countries are inaccessible and therefor resisted being absorbed into larger states over history, kind of like Andorra or most of the tiny island nations. Essentially the country consists of steep mountain ranges with a large central valley. So the painting basically covers the entire country. I was going to paint in a cow with a black spot, but Liechtenstein is better known for its tan or roan spotted cows. The idea behind this composition was to feature a lush valley surrounded by towering mountains. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Liechtenstein, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3687b)

Snow Tree Gas Station

 Not far from campus there is a gas station that I occasionally walk past. Its a scene that I always thought about painting but never did get the chance. Now that the snow is hanging around and the temperature is okay, it is time to strike the iron while it is hot, or cold as it were. I painted the foreground first, then outlined the house and gas station. As it dried, I dropped in the tree, and worked on the textural details. Having a zig-zag composition is usually strong, here you see how the sidewalk goes horizontal, then diagonal, leading to horizontal again. It gives a sense of depth and plays well against the gnarly tree.

Snow Tree Gas Station, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3691b)

Campus Snow Covered Steps

As the sun was going down I made a quick painting on campus of the snow covered steps with one of the old buildings in the background. Some of those windows on the middle floors are the classroom where I am set to teach in a few weeks from now. To get the rich warm brick colour I mixed yellow ochre (PY43) with orange (PO62), while the roof was mostly green with some yellow and orange (PO36, PY97, PO62). I knew that the composition would rely on the strong diagonal of the snow covered steps, and the contrast between warm background colours with the cool foreground colours. There is an old adage about cool in the distance and warmth in the foreground, but that is just an old myth. As you can see from the painting, the overlapping elements and contrasting colours create a sense of depth even through cool colours are in the foreground and warm colours are in the distance.  

Campus Snow Covered Steps, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3690b)

Coffee Park Snow Shadows

 

Making the most of a sunny afternoon I popped over to Coffee Park and painted the snow shadows. The park was a solid sheet of ice from end to end, with wind blown piles of snow. Across the train tracks it was much the same. As I painted the sunlit tree bark I had one of those moments where I thought, this is what I am supposed to be doing. It was sunny, quiet and the scene was quite pleasant. Time almost slowed down as I carefully daubed wet paint onto the paper and saw the scene emerge before my eyes. Its a feeling I get from time to time, albeit not so much in the winter.

Coffee Park Snow Shadows, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3688b)

Mostly Frozen Canal, Always Fresh

 

This is the same location where I painted Canal on a Snowy Night last year, but the composition rests mostly upon the S shape of the canal, and the weather was much better. The canal surface was mostly frozen, with thin patches showing the dark blue-green water underneath. The dark blue-green was perylene green (PBk31) and dark blue (PB60). The sky transitioned from pale turquoise on the horizon (dilute PG7) to a rich blue towards the top (PB15 sapphire). The bridge was also dark turquoise, made with some combination of the paints listed above. It may look like a dark greyish painting, but it takes a good working knowledge of the blue-green part of the colour wheel to pull it off.

Mostly Frozen Canal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3689)

 

With all the University budget cuts and things I better practice my painting skills extra hard, just kidding nobody with tenure at least has to worry about their jobs, but I may have to start raising funds for research! The best way to make money from art is to paint pictures of cats and the like, it certainly is not going to be very profitable painting mountains of dirty snow. I couldn't resist the soft texture of beige and neutral blue, representing sand and dirty snow that the plows are constantly removing from the streets and highways. In the Spring and Summer this pile will shift to beige and charcoal black/brownish. Now if a cat could just walk by and I would paint it...

Mountain of Dirty Snow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024

 

Against this backdrop, "always fresh" seemed like wishful thinking. Surrounded by highways, overpasses, and light industrial traffic, this donut store is in a horrible place. Its literally on one of the most dangerous corners in Montreal. To capture the dystopian scene, I used plenty of carbon black and a variety of greys. Considering the difficult conditions and salty water, there was far too much detail to attempt, so I had to touch up some of the fuzzy edges at home afterwards. You get the idea though, just imagine the haze, the road dust, the noise and the smell of diesel. Most Canadians will recognize the sign instantly even though I kept it vague out of necessity.

Always Fresh, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3691a)

Trenholme Rink Frontal View

On Saturday it was gloomy and cold, I walked down to Trenholme park and made this painting of the rink from a frontal view. Nobody was using the rink, but there were swirling skate marks that created an interesting pattern on the ice, and the ice was reflecting some of the background elements. Unfortunately these details were not preserved in the painting, due to the moist nature of the surface when lots of salt is added to the water. In the winter, I am always pushing for more detail and better effects but the conditions are a limiting factor at times. The key is to choose scenes that are feasible. I also noticed that the roads were clear enough to contemplate a Sunday bike ride.

Trenholme Rink Frontal View, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3688a)

Mirama at Night

Its not that I set out to make series of Somerled storefronts at night, but here is another one. Its more borne of necessity since the sun goes down by about 5pm at this time of year, and if I want to make a painting after work its going to be a night painting. Add to that how tired I am sometimes and it leaves a short walk down Somerled and scenes of a rather pedestrian street. I was looking across the street at the Mirama Chinese food restaurant that has been there for over 60 years. Behind me was the Churos store that has alternating magenta, cyan and green lights which made the painting rather difficult to do, I was not entirely sure how the colours would turn out. The idea here was to focus more on the delivery person who was standing in the store waiting along with a couple chefs and the cashier. To play up the colour contrasts I put the bright yellow sign against a dark yellow brick background, and a purplish sky. Speaking of Chinese food, I read an article about monosodium glutamate (MSG) and learned that it is derived by distilling a sea algae, which makes it a natural product, and some of the bad publicity that it got back in the old days had an element of discrimination attached to it due its prevalent use in Chinese food. Modern research has not found a link between MSG and significant health problems according to the Mayo Clinic which is a reputable and unbiased source of information.

Mirama at Night, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3687a)

World Inspired Landscapes: Libya

 

When I was researching Kuwait it was pretty clear that most of the country was a flat desert, in fact, Kuwait is the flattest and most desert like of all the countries in the world, and it has the highest water-stress index. That is an index that indicates the amount of fresh water available for drinking and agriculture. It turns out the Libya is in the top four most water-stressed countries due to its arid nature and massive deserts. Here and there the Libyan landscape has an oasis, as you can see in the painting it is a clear lake of water surrounded by lush foliage. The history of Libya is long and complex, it was populated by Berber indigenous people thousands of years ago and to this day, meanwhile Christian crusaders were in charge followed by Muslim conquest and conversion to Islam which remains the majority religion. In modern history Libya is known for violent militant actions, and incessant civil war leading to deep divides across this oil rich country. Speaking of water consumption I just read that Quebec companies suck up billions of liters of water every year, for industrial activities like mining. It may seem that Quebec is water rich, but south of Montreal in the Sutton region they are reporting water shortages. Salt water creeping up the st Lawrence river is another threat to our fresh water, and a reduction in the hinterland snowfall. In the near future water will be more valuable than gold.   

To do the painting I painted the top part and the bottom part in parallel, trying to make them as identical as possible to give the illusion of a crystal clear oasis. I started a new compilation page called World Inspired Landscapes Part Two, which will close out the series at Zimbabwe.

World Inspired Landscapes: Libya, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, January 2024 (No. 2889b located near No. 3834 Namibia)

Pharmacy on a wet night

 

What else was there to paint other than the Pharmacy on a wet night? I stood under the Metro grocery store overhang looking across the street and was most inspired by the colours reflecting in the wet road. I had painted this scene before on a clear full moon night, so I knew how the architecture and the sign lighting worked. I wasn't sure how strong the reflection and interior lighting would come across, it was only when I filled in the sky with the classic PO73 plus PB60 combo that it all came together. I was surprised to learn from Handprint.com (Macevoy) that dark colours still have high chroma. Its a misunderstanding that I think a lot of artists make. Conventionally, you would mix indo blue with burnt sienna to make it dark, but that has the effect of lowering the chroma. Dark colours can in fact be high in chroma, that is, colour saturation otherwise called colour purity. The red brick in the upper left was done with benzi scarlet (PR175) and carbon black (PBk6) to get that rich deep dark maroon. It seems wrong that black and red gives a rich colour, but the conventional wisdom of mixing red and a green (like PG7) will actually neutralize the chroma giving a dull red. Its something I learned on Macevoy's page, and have now learned to maximize with extensive practice painting at night. At the end of the day it wont matter, only the art remains, so if any technique can yield an enjoyable outcome that it is worth exploring.

Pharmacy on a wet night, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2024 (No. 3686)