Dumpster depot blue

 

As an art connoisseur of dumpsters, I found this selection to be delectable. It was the mother lode of dumpsters. Usually I see one, maybe two side by side, but this lot had dozens of them, all blue, in all different shapes and sizes. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you are a dumpster connoisseur) they were all pretty rusty and looking worse for wear. I painted the blue first, then over-painted rust with rust... literally, red ochre pigment (PR101) is iron oxide, to which I mixed in yellow ochre (PY43) and pyrol orange (PO73) for good measure. In the background you see the trees lining the lachine canal, which I would normally paint from the other direction. It was neat today to find Turcot Place road and see what is beyond the tree line and down in the industrial area. Completing the scene, there was a pile of gravel, some old 2x4 planks, and some scattered bricks. I just added blue to the painting name in case I find another dumpster depot and they are in a different colour. Those neon-yellow ones have to be kept somewhere in Montreal....

Dumpster depot blue, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, April 2025

More paintings of the Turcot interchange

This prominent suspension bridge tower has been featured in many of my paintings over the years. In this scene, I am on the bike path that runs along the edge of the service roads, looking up the massive, landscaped ramparts. The bridges off to the left are highway 15 coming from Verdun and connecting with NDG. Today's goal was 'more is less', I mean, more detail, less paintings. Using smaller brushes and adding more brush strokes increased the paint time by about 50%, but I still knocked out seven paintings. I like the way this one turned out, I wanted it to have a monumental feel, like a modern day Roman coliseum in Montreal. 

Turcot tower, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025

 

You just go for paintings like this and hope for the best, its not possible to think about the finished product. In the end the whole scene gives me a woozy, tipsy feel like a bowl of spaghetti. The horizon line anchors the scene. A couple of train engines went by in the middle of the scene, one was towing the other. The Turcot is an appealing subject matter because its a modern, awe-inspiring, grotesque thing, with lots of places to stop and paint, and bike paths all throughout. Monet painted trains and train tracks, and train station, which were relatively new and exciting in his time. Anyways, I would rather be painting it than driving in it.

Turcot tipsy, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025

Industrial strength paintings

 

On the way back, I rode over the Rue Pullman bridge over the highways and found my way down Pl. Turcot, an industrial street that skirts between a bunch of warehouses and light industrial shops. Its just next to the Lachine Canal bike path, I could see the embankment where I painted the other weekend. In this painting you see one of the enormous piles of recycled paper waiting to go into the boilers and become cardboard once again. One day I will donate my entire painting collection, they are already in cardboard boxes and all my watercolour paper is high quality rag that would be easy to recycle. Just kidding sort of, but the paper in the stack was very colourful and I had a great time painting it, complete with the smell of wet cardboard.

Recycled paper, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025

Out front, the business is called Kruger, there is an enormously long warehouse painted in ochre and pale green. A row of cedar trees, and those trees with banana-shaped seed pods lined the front. I like industiral plots from this era because they still valued landscaping and tried to make the property look nice all around. There was garbage everywhere though, the bits of paper and cardboard were strewn about.

Cardboard warehouse, watercolour 10 x 7" cold press, April 2025

Luckily the rain held off today, it made for some interesting skies. I do the sky with a dilute wash of yellow ochre, surround with the sky blue, and drop in the purple-grey shadows. I wanted to include the truck, the parking lot, and some other structures but the paper was way too small for that. Could be a candidate for a larger painting one day. I struggled with the perspective on this one, must be a little rusty after only one location painting over the past week or so.

Kruger sign, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025

To practice perspective I took on this scene of a truck trailer in the parking lot. The back of the truck was the main focal point, you see all the interesting signs and textures, with the sun reflections creating a highlight here and there. Its a real feat to paint a scene like this and still have it filled with light and shadow. Incidentally, it was a great location to paint, I had a whole area to myself, of course, there was a fence between me and the scene which was omitted. I am pretty sure the bit of road I was standing on used to be an access road for the highway prior to the Turcot renovation, now its mostly covered in dirt and grass. If I go back here I will try paint that scene too. 

Kruger truck, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025

World Inspired Landscapes: Seychelles

Here is another exotic country that I have actually visited in person! Instead of researching this landscape, I went from the memories of sitting on a pure white sand beach surrounded by large smooth granite rocks and with pristine turquoise water lapping up to the shore. It was so darn hot I had to sit under a tree to make paintings. Its one of those snobby things Europeans like to do.. go to Seychelles and 'island hop', that is, take ferries to progressively smaller and smaller islands with progressively more and more expensive hotels. In the Seychelles I discovered what is at the end of the world, and it was a 20 Euro Martini with a sunset. Not bad. The proverbial speck in the ocean, it is actually a collection of hundreds of islands in the Indian Ocean. These islands were uninhabited prior to its discovery by Europeans (let the islands hopping begin). The sea is so hostile around these islands, it was unlikely that any ancient people could have made it there in one piece, although Arab traders has visited other island nations in the Indian Ocean. The other funny thing about this place is that you have no shadow at noon because the sun is directly above, being on the equator, when I looked straight up, there was the sun above me. Very odd feeling since it never happens in Canada. Usually I try to avoid the 'screen saver' style beach scene, but for Seychelles, its perfect. Now just imagine a 20 Euro martini and a sunset. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Seychelles watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, April 2025 (No. 4305b)

World Inspired Landscapes: Serbia

Serbia is a small country located between central and south eastern Europe. Evidence for human habitation goes all the way back to the early stone ages, and Serbia has remained a country in one way or another for a very long time. I was writing about how some countries seemed to resist regime change, however, Serbia has been conquered and re-conquered so many times, there are several Wikipedia pages dedicated to the historical twists and turns. It appears that 2006 is the year they finally claimed independence and self rule through democracy. Ancient mountains in the south east are covered in grassy meadows and old pine trees, as depicted in the painting. To paint the bright green grass, I first applied pure vanadium yellow (PY184), then surrounded it by chartreuse, which was a mix of the yellow with some green (PG36). Adding more green and neutralizing with some orange and blue gave depth to the scene. It all looked pretty bland until the dark pine trees went on, the foliage is perylene maroon (PR179) with blue-green (PG7). This series has challenged my creativity and compositional skills, and allowed me to explore landscapes that I never would have encountered in Canada. If I ever visit one of these countries, I am ready! It is also fun to learn more about geography, politics, and history of the world.

World Inspired Landscapes: Serbia, watercolour 8 x 10" hot press, April 2025 (No. 3880b)

World Inspired Landscapes: Senegal

 Located on the west coast of Africa, on the northern bulge of the continent, it is the western-most country of all Africa. It is a semi-arid climate with plenty of water, forest and jungle remaining, and desert in the north. Unfortunately Senegal is extremely sensitive to climate change, even a 2 degree change will have major effects on the wetlands. In antiquity, the land was part of a large coalition of territories spanning the whole horn of Africa, but that ended shortly before the landing of Portuguese colonists and long colonial rule that followed. In fact, Australia seems to have been in charge during war time, then France was influential until just last year when the withdrew their forces. It remains one of the poorest countries, its main exports are gold, and fishing is a major industry too. I saw a documentary where Senegalese fisherman could not fish anymore because huge Chinese vessels were in their waters scooping up all the fish. Like many African countries, a history of slavery, resource exploitation, and political instability has made life hard for the people. 

This painting reminded me a little of one of the first one I did for the series, Argentina, which featured a meandering river. For Senegal, I amped up the green, chartreuse and blue sky to create an image of the meadows, or wetlands. I threw in a small pointy mountain on the horizon and added some orange-earth tones to complete the African look. Those features are common to most of the countries I painted from this amazing continent.

World Inspired Landscapes: Senegal, watercolour 8 x 10" hot press, April 2025 (No. 3881b)

World Inspired Landscapes: Saudi Arabia

 Saudi Arabia formed as a country between the two world wars, just before vast oil reserves were tapped. Of course its the world's largest oil producer by quite a margin, even more than the neighboring countries in the middle east. Most of the geography is flat desert, with grass land and rivers more to the east. There is a also a mountainous region that gets the occasional snowfall. The painting shows some cliffs receding into the distance with a stretch of desert. When cliffs or steep mountains erode, rubble accumulates at the bottom creating the skirted shape. 

With yet more rain today I put together eight more world inspired landscape paintings trying to move the chain closer to the finish line on the series. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Saudi Arabia, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2025

Ernal Optimism and Catalogue update 2024

Finally I got caught up on the catalogue, there were a lot of paintings to number and record. I put a small number in pencil on the corner of each painting, and register in a giant spread sheet with information on size, year, type of paper, and who owns it. This abstract painting was in the pile but never get scanned, probably because Cilei liked it so much I left it on the kitchen table display for a long time. From the look of it, I was cleaning off some burnt sienna and vanadium yellow, along with some other neat colours. 

Ernal Optimism, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, 2025 (No. 4289b)

In the end, 2024 was the most productive painting year ever for me, by quite a margin (graph below) with 885 paintings. Most of those were small location landscapes, with additional abstract and World Inspired Landscapes. To date, I painted 179 in 2025, which is tracking slightly higher than last year since the summer is always more productive. But the number of paintings is not the important thing, its whether I have fun with it, and if people on the blog/Facebook/Instagram continue to check in. Perhaps I can spend more time per painting, it just gets tedious on location but well see how it goes. Here is a graph since 2018... it goes way back to 1989 but I just show the last 6 years.

Fabulous day, blue sky over Bakery

At lunch hour I got down to my favorite place to buy bread and a sandwich on Harley street, its the Snowdon Bakery. For what felt like forever we have had grey, cold and rainy weather until today it was a fabulous blue sky with warm sun. Even with the chilly wind I could paint without gloves or salt in the water. Although the bakery is long and single story, I composed the scene on the vertical to emphasize the amazing tree in the background that dominates the skyline. Its the same tree seen behind Rafi auto at the end of the street. Harley street in Westhaven neighborhood has been a treasure trove of art subjects including the famous diamonds and truffles I wrote about in that blog. It would have been nice to do more but there were several things going on in the office, and then I went out briefly after work with some colleagues to celebrate the grant successes.  

Blue sky over Bakery, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025

painting notes to on tree:

the light branches are yellow ochre (PY43) with orange (PO62). 

the medium value branches are the previous mix, with burnt umber (PBr7) added to it

the dark branches (shadow) are the previous mix with indo blue (PB60) and violet (PV55) added to it

To paint, start the light branches with the number 6 round brush, add the darker and shadow branches. Switch to rigger brush, repeat with smaller brush strokes towards the outer edges of the tree. Follow observed patterns of branches. Make sure the sky-blue, which is applied before painting the tree, is middle value (has to be between the value of the light and medium values of the branches). The yellow ochre is thick enough to sit on the blue wash. Blue wash needs to be dry.

 

 

The Last Sequel, news about howling at the moon

Going through the pile I noticed a few paintings that never made it to the blog for one reason or another. This abstract was titled the Last Sequal, which is a spelling error as I was thinking of the word sequel, like a movie sequel. It was made with some leftover paints, including the sparkly MICA paint (PW20), and the very bright vanadium yellow (PY184). Who knows what I was thinking about for the title, but the colour scheme is really neat, the greenish greys work well with the purple, yellow and oranges. In other news, last fall I worked extra hours to write a number of grant applications for research, one painting that says it all is Moon over Bus, in the aptly titled blog Somebody let the Scientist out of the office to howl at the moon. That blog actually got almost 60 views which is pretty high, in fact, many of the older blogs are climbing in view count. Back to the other news, out of nine grant applications, we got three already, which is great news, and the rest of the results are still pending. Actually we just needed one, so with more than one awarded, I guess there will be some more howling at the moon down the road from time to time. The reward for doing good work is always more work.

The Last Sequel, watercolour 8 x 10" hot press, 2025 (No. 3897b)

Bolton winter other scenes

I have painted many scenes along Colombia way, it is the main access road to the suburb where my parents live, the same house I spent most of my teenage years. This view has been protected by the city for decades to prevent urban sprawl, so you still get good views of the horizon.

Colombia way horizon view, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2024

Going to Bolton I thought I would not see pylons... at least they were different than the Montreal ones, orange and black instead of orange and white, or pink. A stand of pine trees in the background had snow on their boughs.

Bolton winter pylons, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2024 (No. 4236a)

Appreciating some colour on an otherwise grey day, I painted this pink store downtown using magenta paint (PR122). It was so dim and overcast on this afternoon, that the lights were illuminating the front of the building. I found the scans of these Bolton paintings recently as I have been updating the catalogue and organizing the pile of paintings. I have a few more to number and file, but so far, there were 875 paintings done in 2024. It will top out a little higher than that, its nearing double the number from 2023. But who's counting? 

Bolton pink shop, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2024 (No. 4237b)

Bolton forest winter

Over the holidays I visited my parents in Bolton for a short while, there was plenty of fresh snow all around. This scene was in Bolton forest, many trees had fallen, actually, they seemed to have been cut down and had evidence of worms. There was a lot to do in this painting, as always the forest scenes are deceptively tough.

Bolton felled trees, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2024 (No. 4236b)

Here is a scene I probably painted in the summer from the exact spot, but there was a lot more green and many flowers then, not to mention mosquitos. In the forest, everything is grey and brown, with a little green and white in the winter. Keeping the brush strokes fast, and mostly dry helps, and avoid making big washes that stay moist.

Bolton winter path vertical, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2024 (No. 4235a)

 

I had this named as a path, but it may well have been the Humber river. Either way, it looks neat with the blurry distant elements and all the yellow ochre and umber reeds. A few licks of red here and there really pop.

Bolton winter path horizontal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2024 (No. 4235b)

 

If you venture far enough down the walking path it comes to the old, derelict Bolton Camp. It was purchased by a Toronto youth group but never renovated, so all these buildings stand empty. I liked how they were arranged up the side of this steep embankment. Everything was overgrown, I bet in the summer they are hardly visible.

Bolton camp winter, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2024 (No. 4238a)

World Inspired Landscapes: São Tomé and Príncipe

São Tomé and Príncipe is a rare country that was uninhabited when the Portuguese colonists arrived to make a base. The islands' climate was so hostile and miserable that it was more of a trading post or stopover, sadly a stopover for the slave trade. Small slave ships  would arrive from the west coast of Africa, load onto larger boats and sail west across the Atlantic ocean to Brazil. With its volcanic earth, the country was good for growing sugar cane, and agriculture is a major part of the industry. The painting shows an interpretation of an old 17th century map of the main island,  São Tomé, while Principe is further to the north, and the coast of Gabon is way off to the east. I added some typical sea creatures that were drawn on maps back then, it was more of a Danish thing, they had superstitions about sea creatures. To yellow the map, I applied a mix of yellow ochre and orange (PY43, PO62), with some burnt umber (PBr7) around the edges to give it a worn look. Usually yellowing of the paper is a bad thing, but here it was meant to simulate age. Maps were probably on hide parchment back then anyways, better with all the sea water splashing around, so maybe this is the colour of tanned hide.
 

World Inspired Landscapes: São Tomé and Príncipe watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, April 2025