Painting Year in Review: 2025

With another big year of watercolour painting nearly over, its time for the 2025 year in review. I started a new page summarizing years in review with links. Its an annual showcase of my best artwork and progress as a part-time artist. Earlier in the year, I discovered an old shopping mall slated for demolition. As seen in the painting above, I went back to the location and painted the demo-mall east entrance in winter, it is one of my favorite paintings of the year. I returned many times, for instance, to paint the Dépanneur, and when it was finally demolished.  

 

 

Another location I discovered was a small clearing by the Turcot interchange overgrown with grass and trees, which I nicknamed the Twisty Groove, as seen above. I went back several times to paint flowers and butterflies, and a study of a ventilation duct and fallen tree embracing each other. You can see graffiti up on the highway structure, in fact, I spent quite some time visiting graffiti locations and painting watercolours (no actual graffiti though!). A few good graffiti paintings include the graffiti tunnel in Hochelaga, and an abandoned factory I nicknamed the Zen Factory. 

 

An unfortunate trend is wild fires, which devastate the heartland of Canada, and spread thick smoke across the country. I got this view of  a tangerine sun setting on a hazy horizon, framed by construction cranes. There were several intense paintings including a hazy day on the Decarie highway, and thick smoke enveloping Montreal. It was so profound that I made adjustments to my Summer palette to account for the amber and orange tints. 

 

I was very fortunate to make quite a few paintings this year, and even increased the average size from 5 x 7" to 6 x 7.5" which may not sound like a lot but its 50% bigger, plus I did more 8 x 10" formats. I even set a personal record with 21 paintings in one day, all location painting primarily on the south shore. You can see one of the Champlain bridge above, and a summary of the trip in the Green Spot Restaurant blog. 

 

The World Inspired Landscapes series was finally completed, it consists of original paintings inspired by countries of the world. You can see the entire series which began in 2020 on two pages for countries  Afghanistan - Liberia and Libya - Zimbabwe. The series concluded with Zimbabwe, designed with a mosaic of styles, as seen above. Other highlights were a painting of sea-grass in Solomon Islands, a currency-themed Trinidad and Tobago, a luminescent Ukraine, and a rainy Great Britain. 

 

My new Curio Folio series began with an honest depiction of a petrified pop-tart unearthed by archeologists. Many paintings would fill the Folio including a not-so-popular bubble chair, a tasty experimental pizza-tomato, and a scientifically accurate amoeba canis, as seen above. It was a true and real micro-organism that I observed in the research laboratory one day, it happened to look like our favorite dog Davidson! If you don't believe me, then you have to read the blogs for further evidence. 

 

 

Sunset views were aplenty this year, for example Belvédère Outremont sunset as seen above, yellow-orange light on the Lachine canal, a pastel sky on Maisonneuve bike path, a glowing red-orange sunset on the Turcot interchange, an intense sunset on Lachine canal, and many more. Speaking of sun, there were a few neat sunflower paintings such as sunflowers in Cabot square. 

 

 

Night scenes are some of my favorites, they are called 'nocturnes' to sound fancy. Seen above, is a cool view of downtown Montreal, that's Place Ville Marie with its spotlight creating night lights over the Lachine canal. Other good night scenes included a frosty three quarters moon over Campus, a tasty moon over Homer's donut store, and a Van Gogh-inspired night sky over autoroute 15.

 

 

As usual, there was plenty of construction in Montreal as seen above,  Dollard in Ville st Pierre, on Courcelle street in Ville st Pierre, downtown on Peel street, and along st Catherine's street with plenty of traffic lights in bright lights big city. Montreal even implemented the Vend-a-Pylon which can sell food and water to cars stuck in traffic. I developed a blend of paints for signs and pylons that I call 'Montreal Orange'. 

 

 

 

Winter is another harsh reality in Montreal. I take pride in foolishly painting on location no matter how cold and miserable the weather is. Here is an iconic scene of ice flows with a view of the Cartier bridge. More good winter scenes included snowfall on Chinatown, a tree near the Lachine canal, a dépanneur buried under snow, some fierce snow drifts in my favorite Coffee Park, and the train yard on a cold weekend.

  

   

There is a small field at the end of Harley street in Westhaven neighborhood. Locals set up chairs there, because there are no parks around to sit. A community group also banded together to protect this small field from developers, so its owned by the neighborhood now. This pleather chair with wild daisies made for a fantastic painting, it was reminiscent of my 2022 chair in a field of yellow buttercups.  I did an outrageous painting of Harley diamonds and truffles, more tasteful neighborhood scenes, a view of nearby Raffi's autoshop with snow covered tires, among others in Westhaven.

 

  

All year I was wondering what would become the best painting. Was it the winter painting of the demo mall, shown at the beginning of the blog? How about the technically sound Dépanneur NDG night neon? Surely, a wonderful painting of Lachine canal on a windy day would get a vote. A painting of delicate cosmos flowers in a gravel field seemed tops. Train over peel and Wellington? The Jacques Cartier bridge lit up? And then I went and painted cool tomato, a still life of a tomato wearing sunglasses, and one of my biggest supporters, my Mom, said it was the best painting I ever did. With that kind of vote, I have to admit she was probably right LOL. In summary, I wanted to thank everyone who viewed the blog or followed Instagram/Facebook this year, it meant a lot to me, and kept me motivated to keep painting. I was glad to provide some entertainment, advice, and maybe inspire a few artists along the way. Stay cool!

 

Still Life: group of plants

Here is a quick painting of a group of plants that we keep by the window in the winter. The one in the middle is a cactus we got a street sale in Verdun many years ago, it started off as one tiny little portion, which grew into this enormous cactus with hundreds of little portions. They fall off and start growing, or can be easily re-potted. Even though foliage looks green, most of the times its closer to yellow. Only succulents or some tropical plants will have truly green leaves. For the painting I used combinations of yellow (PY184), shadow green (PBk31) and green (PG36). The letters and numbers are pigment codes, different companies sell them under different brand names. For example, I have 'bamboo green' from Holbein (PG36), and phthalo green yellow shade (also PG36) from Daniel Smith. Identical pigments despite the differing brand names. 

Group of plants, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Molisana bakery font

Gloomy weather outside, at least it looked warm and cozy inside of the Molisana Bakery shop on Somereled in NDG. I went in there once but it was more like a social club where the customers and owners chat incessantly and try every type of deli meat before buying anything, so I didn't last long. The roof of the building has the most interesting shade of olive green, I mixed it with the useful perylene black (PBk31) and orange-yellow (PY110). Despite its name, perylene black is a dark green, in fact, Holbein sells it as shadow green. Its an indispensable paint for landscape and city painting. The sign on the other hand is mostly phthalo blue-green (PG7), and I tried to get the sign right after practicing fonts the other day. 

Molisana font, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

A puzzling planet (reprise)

Based on an older painting called a puzzling planet done in 2010, I created this version with emphasis on the sun effect and simplifying the overall design. To begin, I applied a yellow circle around the sun, then painted additional circles with warm colours while wet, so the paint blended together smoothly. I use the same technique on location, for example in Intense Sunset over Lachine canal. As that dried, I worked up the blocks of colours and shrubbery in the foreground, outlined the character, and adjusted the sun effect with a thin ring of yellow ochre (PY43) to make it pop. Once the painting had a chance to dry, I took the plunge and over-painted the puzzle pieces. The puzzle was warped to the contours of the scenery, and seemed to emanate from the sun. Leaving the buildings, character and shrubbery free of puzzle pieces gave the scene a really surrealistic appearance. 

A puzzling planet (reprise), watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, December 2025

X-mas tree and auto shop

Montreal is currently getting blasted by strong wind and rain, its nasty out there! Preferring to stay inside and paint, I turned my chair towards the Christmas tree we have set up in the corner, and noticed contrasts with the cold looking outside view. Its been awhile since I painted the auto shop across the street, so here it is once again. The painting also features our new curtains, Cilei wanted a sap-green, and I found these ones on Wayfair, they have little green pom poms and she seemed to like the idea. It definitely improved the look, and makes a good backdrop for the small artificial tree. By the way, I found that tree in the old condo when I moved to Montreal in 2004 and have used it ever since. 

X-mas tree auto shop, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, December 2025

Still Life: fun with fonts

With the weather continuing to deteriorate, its time for more still life paintings I can do indoors. Its actually not my favorite thing to do, I would rather be out on location, but the results have been decent, and maybe I can do something with it. Certainly it builds up skills, and provides different challenges. In these examples, I grabbed books off the shelf with interesting fonts. The first example is a cook book, it says L'Art de la Cuisine in full. Getting the flowing orange letters against a dark purple background was tricky. You can't over-paint bright orange on top of dark purple in watercolour. 

L'Art de, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here is part of the cover of an old aquarium fish book from the late 1950's perhaps. The cover said 32 pages in colour, which must have been a big selling point back then. You can see from the painting I did, they used yellow, cyan, black and magenta. The green is printed with small yellow and blue dots closely spaced. The book actually (surprisingly) mentioned that you can put LSD in the fish tank to enhance the colours of the guppies, but I have a feeling the LSD was meant for the aquarium owner to take so as to enhance the colour of the guppies. 

In colour, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

I got a nice book on Hiroshige's series of famous places, it is printed on a very long piece of paper folded up like an accordion and bound in a hardcover, so you kind of unfold it as you read. Its an old-fashioned concept, but done in modern times. The cover has a shimmering blue weave with a silvery decal printed and Japanese symbols which I did my best to copy accurately. I took a Chinese art and calligraphy course as a young(er) man, so that came in handy here even though its Japanese. 

Hiroshige, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally, this is taken from a cardboard packaging for Lindt chocolate, and I copied a few other interesting fonts, ISBN, and q code in the background. After we eat the chocolate which doesn't take long, I use the package to hold my brushes upright in my painting kit, this prevents the brushes from falling down to the bottom which can be very difficult to recover in the winter on location. Plus it gives us an excuse to buy more chocolate.  

Lindt, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Downtown looking up

The holiday shopping season is in full swing. I got downtown as soon as I could from campus, the weather was unseasonably warm for a change. Painting with just thin gloves and fresh water (salt) was possible today with above freezing conditions. This scene is along st Catherine's street at the heart of the shopping district, on the left you see the Cinema star and red ribbon lit up in neon, while the background shows some of the old buildings looming over the city. The year in review blog is nearly complete, it should be out before we go travelling for the holiday week. And yes, I finished my Christmas shopping!

Cinema star, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Still Life: complex things

With atrocious weather, mix of snow and rain, it was more opportunity for doing still life inside the condo. Here are mixed nuts in a tupperware, there were cashews, almonds, spicy peanuts, pistachios, and hazelnuts, all salted. I made most of the outlines first with a paintbrush, then filled in the shapes and surrounding areas, followed by texturing. Its tempting to start with pen or pencil for complex things, but it ruins the edge effects. If pen and pencil are visible in a watercolour, then technically speaking, its called 'mixed media'. 

Mixed nuts, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

This old Chinese food container is filled with bag ties and elastics intermingled. I first painted the outlines of most of the bag ties, leaving gaps for overlaps, then worked in the coloured elastics. Adding pale shadows and dark spots, along with additional detailing helped create the effect. To get a bag tie out of this pile requires chop sticks. 

Bag ties elastics, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally, here is a handful of old defunct keys, although one of them opens my parents front door. I wont say which ones in case somebody tries to copy it off my painting. Like, my painting is so hyper realistic you could make a copy of the key! Just looking at it now, and some of the keys actually look hyper realistic, like the bottom left around the key ring, I really got the metallic glare and reflections. I suppose all the still life practice is paying off. I did a set on 'shiny things' awhile back, and the famous 'tomato with sunglasses' more recently. 

Keys, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Still life: Christmas decorations ornaments

Going back some time, my Grandmother on Dad's side once had made I believe, these types of decorations you see in the painting, the house in the middle. Its made of cardboard, transparencies, and plenty of sparkles. Actually, this version was made by my mom based on the original design, I have two of them here for Christmas decorations. On the right is a small wooden soldier, probably a dollar store thing, although I could make up a story about Grandpa making these in the old days! He certainly could have, he was a mechanical engineer for trains, and had plenty of woodworking tools. 

Xmas house soldier, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here are some tree ornaments with contrasting textures... on the front left the bulb is a metallic-green finish, on the right is a matte green finish, and the star in the background is knitted with yarn. I used several layers on the left bulb using shades of yellow-green, while the right one was done with wet-in-wet technique and darker blue-greens.

Grey and green ornaments, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally a few more of the wooden toy ornaments, the left is a colourful train with a bear sitting on top, the right is a Santa on a sailboat, with sunglasses that I added to the painting! 

Wood toy ornaments, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Blue sky Sunday, neighborhood scenes

Since the train was going by, I stopped my bike at the old clothing factory that is now a restaurant and condo complex. The structures are seen around the edges of the painting, with the bright sun, blue sky and prominent tree featured as the center of interest. I had to do another painting while this one dried, so that the tree could be painted over top of the sky. 

Sun tree industrial condos, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

In fact, I did several paintings on this location in st Henri, since the sun was beaming down and I had full light to paint with, which is a rarity these days. Much of Montreal is hidden beneath shadows from tall buildings, but this clearing provides good sight lines and open sky. The train was crossing Courcelle street creating a line-up of cars and a few bikes. 

Cars waiting train crossing, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

This painting shows an electric charging station and the sound-wall that runs parallel with the train tracks in the background. Enormous piles of snow were piled up here, and a tree leaned out over the pastel sky. 

Electric charging station, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

It didn't take long for the graffiti people to cover this wall in 'artwork'. As usual, I replaced the actual graffiti names with my own crew, including PJD, D-DAWG, CILS, JD CD, DYER, and FITZ. Being backlit, the shadow from the wall had a prominent blue-violet tint that I made with indo blue (PB60) and magenta (PR122) and a touch of blue saphhire (PB15). 

Train wall graff, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Why do I bother painting on location when that painting of the tomato wearing sunglasses will probably end up being the most popular painting? At any rate, this burned out condo in st Henri had some interesting contrasts, with plenty of snow piled on top. I am not familiar with the story on this particular fire, a quick google search shows a number of major fires have happened in the neighborhood in recent times. Half of the roof had caved in and windows looked pretty scorched. 

Burned out house, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press,December 2025  

Still life: tomato transparencies

Here is a cool tomato, wearing my favorite shades. Today's still life theme was transparency, using a tomato with various forms of transparent materials. The lenses of the shades are a charcoal grey which created darker tints on the tomato skin, and dulled the intensity of surface reflections. The lenses reflected overhead lights. A reflection along the bottom of the tomato ended up looking like a smile. 

Tomato shades, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here is the tomato as seen through a zip lock bag, the bag is being held up by a framing rack but I omitted it from the painting so the bag seems to be standing up by itself. To show the transparency effect, I placed my 2 inch hog's hair brush partly behind the plastic so it goes from being sharp and high contrast to blurry and low contrast behind the plastic. The plastic was wrinkled and crinkled which created a layer of light and shadow, while blurring the overall form of the tomato. 

Tomato seen through zip lock bag, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally the most challenging of all, is the tomato as seen though a beer mug. Its one of those glass beer mugs with the oval depressions, this one has a Concordia University logo badge on the front. The University really wants us to help with student recruitment, so what better way to say 'Bachelor's Degree' than a beer mug reflecting a tomato? In fact, the glass bent light sufficiently so as to create a large image of the tomato on the concave, with smaller versions of the same tomato on the convex oval sections. Red and green light intermixed on the front and side angles, creating a neat holiday colour scheme. 

Tomato seen though beer mug, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Still life: bathroom scenes, colour splashes

Now its time for a journey into the inner sanctum, the bathroom of all places. Everyone has one, or maybe more and spends a lot of time there, so why not make a few paintings? Here is our towel rack with an old faded blue hand towel, and part of the counter top and mirror visible. At the top there is a light switch on the left and the bottom part of 'Great Wave' a print by Hokusai. This painting tested many of my still life skills such as shiny things, fabric, and reflections. 

Towel rack, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

This porcelain cat is hollowed out in the back making way for the toilette brush. It sits dutifully all the time, keeping the implement handy for when its needed. In the background corner, there is a new water detection unit that can shut off our main water valve if flooding is detected. There are little detector pucks around the condo now, to protect against water damage. 

Porcelain cat, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

If you made it this far into today's blog, then what were you expecting? Here is a painting of incense burning on top of the toilette. In the upper left is an aqua-painting we obtained in Ottawa, the artist made it by putting paint on top of a bin of water, then placing the paper on top, and skillfully pulling it off, leaving interesting patterns and an image of a red tulip. A black lighter is visible on the counter. Catching the gloomy amber lighting was key, I used a head lamp (white diode light) to judge the colours correctly. 

Incense, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

No, this is not a painting of what was in the toilette, although it could be... this is what was on the backs of these paintings, well, front. In 2005 I did a series of colour-splash paintings, where the paint is applied in great big puddles then allowed to dry over the course of days, then repeated a few times. When cut up into smaller sections, the results are sometimes fantastic like this one. 

Colour splash 1, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, 2005 

Here is another image of the back of the painting, it was part of a large piece. In elementary school I did a project where I created fabric dyes from household ingredients like beet root or turmeric for example. When complete, I dumped all the various materials from which I had extracted dyes into the toilette and flushed... that looked like the painting indeed. I am afraid to search the internet, but surely, toilette bowl art is a thing. 

Colour splash 2 ,watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, 2005  

Nice Autumn day, a little bit windy

It was a nice Autumn day, just a little bit windy and a tad bit of snow. Painting was a challenge, in this scene you see snow blowing across the basketball court down in Coffee park. I applied a moist wash to the area of the blowing snow, then painted details around it, using the trees and post as a device to create an illusion of floating clouds of snow. 

Basketball net blowing snow, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Cars at Raffi's auto shop on Harley street were buried in piles of fresh snow and the strong wind was whipping it up even more. Quebec issued a travel advisory for cars, to basically stay home if possible, but the travel advisory did not say anything about riding bicycles today!

Raffi auto cars under snow, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Riding east along the Maisonneuve bike path brought me to a group of trees that offered some respite from the blizzard-like conditions. On cue, the commuter train rolled by and I could paint its outline real quick, then integrate it with the foreground trees. To begin, I painted out a faint outline where the snow highlights had to be, then filled in the little bits of tree trunk and branches that were visible. So most of the snow is just paper showing through since there is no white paint in watercolour. 

Train through trees, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Still life, shiny things

Finding a few shiny things around the condo I made these paintings starting with our cheese grater. After examining the small holes with a magnifying glass, I came up with a strategy and kept with the plan. The dark holes were not evenly round, they had been made with some sort of mechanical hole punch. Light was catching their jagged protruding edges, creating small local shadows. The aluminum background was mirror-like, my blurry reflection, and my cup of tea could be seen. Mixing grey tones is best done with a purple mix (PB60 + PV19) and some yellow ochre (PY43) or raw sienna (PBr7) dabbed in. 

Cheese grater, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Looking like a metallic owl from Clash of the Titans, an old 1980's sci-fi movie, this is our electric kettle, with one of my water bottles in the background. My face and hand, with paintbrush, were reflecting on the right side of the container. Using a full set of values wisely, from darkest dark to lightest light, it key to creating this illusion of a shiny object. There are wide ranging hues to depict, some cool purples, others warm caramel tones. I had two light sources on the subject matter for all the still life paintings.  

Electric kettle, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Finally the big challenge, our disco pumpkin... its a pumpkin candle with a mosaic of tiny mirrors fixed on with grouting. The mirrors were much smaller and fit tighter than you see in the painting, but you get the idea. Colours ranged from cream to dark green, purple, and variations of grey. The stem was made of glass. 

Disco pumpkin, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Still life, fabric theme

Continuing with still life studies, here are some paintings of various types of fabric from around the condo. The first one is an afghan blanket made by my late Nana using crochet, its brown with yellow and cyan patterns. Since yarn uses similar types of dyes, I could match the colours using pigments such as burnt umber (PBr7), orange-yellow (PY110) and cyan (PBr7). Painting fabric feels inherently chaotic due to all the undulations and textures, but the final results seem to be rather peaceful. In the background, I showed a stack of recent paintings, with the intense sunset over Lachine canal on top of the pile. 

Crochet afghan brown yellow cyan, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Here is a tea towel folded up, it is cream-coloured with magenta detailing stitched in to the material. It looks to be machine made, although the magenta parts may have been hand stitched or done with a sewing machine. Being mass produced, it had tight texturing and clean lines. To do this, I painted out an outline of the undulations, applied the body washes including shadows, then over-painted the magenta and cream fabric textures. In the background is a kitchen table chair and some water containers I use for location painting. 

Tea towel cream magenta, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 

Trying a different type of fabric, here is my neon vest with reflecting strips running down the back. In reality, it is spattered with mud, but I liked the clean aesthetic of this painting, it looks like the day Cilei gave it to me as a gift, new and clean. If you try to paint things like this at home, it may feel like a huge technical challenge. Its been some time since I did fiddly studio paintings, but with all the location painting lately, I felt like my brush work improved tremendously and I had no trouble identifying hues and values. It was fun to try and figure out ways to depict various types of fabrics, perhaps I will do more in the future, although, I have a different idea for my next set of still life paintings, wont spoil the surprise. 

Reflecting vest neon grey, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  

Intense sunset Lachine canal

It was intense in more ways than one... intense colours, intense brightness, intense wind, intense cold...intense painting! When I completed this on location, standing at the Atwater footbridge looking west, the entire painting was still moist and shimmering in the sunlight, like a mirror-glaze on a cake. I waited around an extra 5 or 10 minutes to make sure it would dry enough, and with the wooden drying rack, it dried just about right. Every now and then a painting comes together to be more than just a sum of its parts, there is something about the bright colours contrasted against the earthy brown and black of the old factory-turned-condo buildings, the rail bridge that crosses here, and the snowy, frozen canal shimmering in tri-coulour like Neapolitan ice cream. The windchill was so severe here I had to pull up the wool scarf to above my nose and tighten up the parka hood, just peering through a small crack, fighting off the tears and sniffles as my face got blasted with winter cheer. Glad I hung in there and could ride my bike home in one piece to tell the tale.  

Intense sunset Lachine canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025