Westhaven summer flowers

At the end of Harley street in Westhaven neighborhood, the community planted flowers around the concrete blocks. They really brightened up the neighborhood, and I drop by frequently to paint scenery. I did a series of chair paintings around here like here and here. In this scene, I stood in the shade of a large tree, looking towards Raffi auto shop. Starting with yellow, cream, and violet washes, I worked up the green foliage, red hydrant, and dark earth contrast elements. The background is in shadow, which provides some nice cool colours to set up the warm flower colours. 

Westhaven summer flowers, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

Looking back: London Ontario ducks, campus, The Bay

Going back 20 odd years, and they were odd indeed, here is a scene of some ducks on grass in front of what I suspect is the Thames river in London Ontario. I was there at University of Western doing a bachelor's of science followed by a doctorate, making paintings along the way. These paintings are done sometime between 2000 - 2004. The signature is in cerulean blue so its probably 2002. 

Ducks near Thames, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 200x 

I know this scene very well, I walked past it hundreds of times on my way to the research laboratory in Robart's Research Institute. For some reason there is what appears to be a Hungarian flag in the background. 

Walkway overpass, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 200x

Perhaps too honest of a depiction, here is an empty parking lot and the Bay in the background. I actually remember doing this one, towards the end of my stay in London, its probably 2003 or 2004. The clouds are neat.  

The Bay empty parking lot, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press,  200x

 

Happy Canada day, stormy day

Down in st Pierre the city has nearly finished the massive road work project, most of the road is paved and sidewalks fresh concrete. Near the old disused train tracks, a group of tents were set up, one had a faded Canada flag, the other a Mohawk flag which I recognized. Cars were all around, do people wonder what I am painting?

Tents Canada and Mohawk flags, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

 

Somehow evoking the Group of Seven, this painting shows a concrete factory under a stormy sky. I had to paint the underlayers first, do another painting, and finish it when dry. 

Concrete facotry stormy day, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

 

A looping gravel path connects the bridge to the bike path next to the canal. You have to be careful zooming down this path with oncoming bikes in both directions. A large tree grows here, its a great tree to paint, large chunks of bark and subtle orange-olive colouring. 

Path to path tree canal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

 

This old bridge is still really active, at one point in history it could raise and lower, hence the large counter-balance. Now its fixed in place because only small recreational watercraft are allowed on the canal. 

Bridge green reflections, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

 

Waiting for the concrete factory painting to dry, I turned and did this one quickly, just trying to see if I could get the car right and capture its rare olive-orange colour. I still have some work to do, of course, cars only sit there for a few seconds, and I am not working from photographs.  

Lemon lime car, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026 

Jazz Festival dancing shapes night lights

Getting down to the Jazz Festival at Place des Arts and the rain held off thankfully. I found a good spot to paint from, using my bike, with a good white light overhead. People were walking past and looking, taking pictures, making positive comments as I painted to the music. 

Yellow spotlights, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

A tree in the midst of all the music and action seemed to be dancing. Stage lights shifted to blue and magenta. 

Dancing tree, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

Billows of stage-smoke were released into a pale blue spotlight, creating this eerie, magical effect. Creating a silhouette line accentuated the musicality of the crowd shape. Let jazz course through your veins when painting at a festival. 

Blue stage smoke, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

The question mark signifies an information kiosk. Stage lights cast angular shadows on the pavement. An array of street lights and festival decorations provided interesting shapes. 

Cross shadows question mark, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026

Finally, a scene of a bar stand, accentuating yellow with a purple contrast in the background. It started raining a little and I packed up happy with these results. The rain held off on the way home too.  A good time was had by all. 

Jazz Bar, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2026 

Jazz fest: red umbrella, stage, quartet and more

I managed to walk my bike around the Jazz Fest today, the early day crowd was sparse enough to allow for a few paintings. Remarkably, this lady was hanging around the main stage, and she had a beach towel and umbrella placed front and center as she waited in the shade. As people milled about, she hopped up, went over and set up a small chair and popped open her red umbrella and sat expectantly. A crew walked by and called her a warrior for waiting so early, the show was not set to start for several hours and no other people were there yet except for me!  

Prepared for concert, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

The crew was running light tests on the main stage, getting all the strobes and bulbs working in multi-colour. It was partly cloudy, so the artificial lights stood out enough for me to see their colours. There is 1000 times less ambient light when overcast as compared to a sunny day. That's another factoid from Handprint.com. 

Main stage light test, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, June 2026

A little farther into the venue, and there was a small stage with a Jazz quartet playing to a crowd of mostly families with children. It was a very energetic and tactile sort of performance, as much a physical performance as an auditory one. I let jazz rhythm flow into the painting, not worrying to much about details. By now, I had been exposed to quite a bit of 'wacky tabacci' if you know what I mean, its aroma was wafting strongly in the air. 

Jazz quartet, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

With my blood pressure pills, its not a good thing to eat large amounts of sodium, which precludes one of my favorite things, the Jazz Fest sausage. Standing near the food stand, I made a painting from the rear, where I could stand in shade.  To show the wieners, I had to use artistic license and turn around the barbecue grill, you can see the staff inside a booth, with customers waiting out in front. My blood pressure probably went up a few points just smelling this! But it was totally worth it. 

Jazz Sausages, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Upon arrival it was full sun and steamy hot, I had to find shade to paint under having forgotten my sun hat. This view was the first painting, you see a variety of colours, they like to combine lime green with red, and put blue next to red and orange. The white spheres actually have a question mark on them, I believe they have a QR code with a map printed on their pedestals for people to get information. The signage contained the main sponsor TD bank and other slogans, which I changed all to PJD to put my stamp on the artwork. 

Jazz fest entrance daytime, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Tour around canal, Sud Ouest, Verdun

Down by the Renaissance donation center where I started my bike ride by dropping off some items for donation, there is a data center surrounded by small hills and an assortment of trees. I have painted here quite a few times in the past, not knowing what exactly this thing is, although Google maps had view points within the structure and there are racks of computer servers. 

Data center hill trees, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

This old metal tun has a draining funnel and pipes running in and out, it may have been used once for brewing, or some chemical process who knows. It looks rusty, and it covered in spray paint so I doubt its still functional. Next to the Lachine canal path, there is also a good view of the hazy downtown skyline in the background. I stayed away from downtown today with all the construction blockage and extra traffic from Jazz fest. 

Elevated rusty tun city view, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

There is also a massive cardboard and paper recycling facility nearby, here is a side view of the huge piles out back. I am standing in a grassy area next to the canal bike path, looking east. Not many artists get the chance to paint paper recycling on location, I feel lucky sometimes. 

Paper recycling stacks, Rewatercolour 8 x 10" cold press, June 2026

 

Same location different view, this one shows the chimneys letting out steam from paper recycling. If you are downwind it smells like wet cardboard. If I go back to the gravel fields in between the highways, I can smell it there. I am waiting until it gets really hot to go out to the gravel fields, because I like the feeling of being in a sun-baked desert. You have to spend some time here in the winter to understand this. I actually like the winter, at least there are less people around when I am painting. 

Recycling paper chimneys, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

  

Along the canal there is a long drainage ditch, once a lake. The water's surface, seen on the bottom of the painting, was a pea-soup green. The embankment was all sumacs. I'd like to get a better painting of this, to see the shape of the ditch a bit better. 

Green swamp, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

 

In 2020 I painted down at Jolicoeur station, it was under construction then and remained so for many years, even last year I went by and it was still surrounded by fences. Today I came upon the station, and found it to be complete! Not a single pylon in view. Large garden planters will filled with yellow flowers and decorative grass, while tall brown glass walls gleamed in the sunlight. Its actually in Cote st Paul neighborhood.

Jolicoeur station complete, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

 

The last two paintings were kind of neat, in Verdun near the aqueduct, they bulldozed a large square of factory warehouses, and dug an enormous foundation pit, about the size of two football fields. With all the rain and the low land here, it completely flooded the foundations leaving a nice lake. I call it lake Verdun! 

Lake Verdun horizontal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

 

Looking down into the lake from up on the sidewalk, here you see reflections in the murky water, with ripples. They should have built a pond here, wetlands, it would have been a huge success. The plan seems to be community housing and some shops. There was a huge fence here by the way, I left that out to create a sense of danger. I'm a dangerous guy. 

 I scanned the backs of several of these paintings, they have scenes from London Ontario I painted 20 years ago, will post those later. Looks like tomorrow will be nice too and maybe I can get to the Jazz Fest at night with my paints soon. 

Lake Verdun vertical, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026  

Benches summer Montréal, Sud Ouest

I got around for a nice bike ride today along the canal and aqueduct paths through Sud Ouest and Verdun. The sun was really cooking and I went through all my water, filling up at a local park. This scene shows some recreational canoe paddlers on the Lachine canal with a suspension bridge in the background. In the foreground is a picnic bench I was sitting on to eat some lunch. 

Red canoe on canal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Somehow I wandered around and found Campbell's park, a sports park in the middle of Sud Ouest neighborhood. It was an old park, worth doing a painting of this field and soccer goals. Fitting considering the world cup is playing. Canada goes tomorrow for knockout game. 

Campbell park Sud Ouest, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

I had turned down Briand street to start this adventure, and found this small park that connects to Monk boulevard, its called Passage Albert-Millaire. There was lots of shade, a permanent table with a checkerboard on it, and a few pigeons milling about. A cool dépanneur was across the street but it was in shadow and I passed on it this time. 

Passage Albert-Millaire, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

 

Along Bd de la Vérendrye there was a small park called  Park Springland with pine trees, shade and sturdy concrete-topped benches. I started to run out of yellow today. You see how bright the grass was under the sun. I did a lot more today, will post later. 

Park Springland bright grass, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Digital Thursday: kinetic energy

I've got a folder full of digital sketches I can share from time to time. Its fun to make these because as a painter, its very difficult to produce neon-effects on a dark background. After stamping a group of neon-green rectangles onto a black background I was stumped for awhile, then came about the textural grid. Surprisingly, the grid took on a glow of its own, and I finished with reflective elements. 

Neon interior structure, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

After making a group of purple pastel brush strokes I left this one for awhile. Trying a few things, I drew lines over top using the 'multiply' function where colours turn "tye-dye" hippy when they overlap. The shapes were drawn not stamped. By draw, I mean with my finger on a cell-phone screen.  

Scintillation exposure, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

The idea here was to stamp every textural feature in the app! Varying from white to black gave a volume feeling, and I spray painted areas for a complete explosion/smoke image. It would be cool to animate this one, but I am not sure how. 

Snap explosion, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

Watching the 'Great Baking Show' and we see them making mirror glazes and dragging a toothpick across to create that rippled-effect on cakes. I went for that in the background using smear tools, then overlapped squiggly lines with an eye-pleasing yellow red and green combo. 

Mirror glaze, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

Whatever was in the background I didn't like, so I smeared it out, then drew my initials with a highlighter pen, actually the neon tool. Some brushes do not completely cover the background, so they look transparent. Most tools have that as a feature you can adjust, its called 'opacity'. 

Highlighter smear PJD, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000 

Looking back: London Ontario

As I am painting on the backs of old paintings for awhile, some of the art is neat to 'look back' onto from my perspective after ~25 years has passed. This scene was done on a hiking trip around Fanshawe lake, London Ontario, you see a sail boat out there on the small lake, with rolling hills in the background. It was overcast that day, and I did a good job getting the correct shade of purple-grey on the water surface. I even see some cloud reflections in the water. 

Fanshawe lake sailboat, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

Even back then, I had an eye for graffiti, here is a scribble on a structure in the middle of a parking lot that I changed to my initials PD. It was probably done some time between 2000 - 2002, I can only guess based on how I painted the sky and how much cerulean blue is in the mixtures. 

Graffiti parking lot, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

Here is a tricky back-lit scene of the Thames river and its concrete embankments. Even today I could not do much better than this, although I would have cleaned up the edges, and got some more detail on the tree. For the blog, I cropped the paintings to make them look neater, I had a bad habit of painting the edges crooked. 

Thames river embankment, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

I seem to remember this as being one of the last paintings I did in London Ontario, which puts it at 2004, and I can tell from the lack of cerulean blue in the shadows. I realized the cerulean blue was making a muddy mess of my shadows mixes and stopped using it altogether. In retrospect, shadows do not really contain any blue reflectance unless the surface is white or near-white, and the sky is blue.  I wrote a blog called the myth of blue shadows in 2020 when I realized this useful fact. 

Red and yellow tulips, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

Old factory graffiti corner

This massive old factory downtown must have made some serious stuff back in the day but I could not find any information on it on the internet. Now its a collection of warehousing and maybe living space. Looking way up, there was a door and window, suggesting a conveyor system was once there. I would guess steel industry perhaps. 

Old factory looking up, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Down at street level, the walls are covered in large street art, as seen behind three bins, blue and green. In the background, lights are on inside, so it must be in use for something. 

Blue green bins PJD, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

A tour bus was parked back here, likely related to the Jazz fest which started today. I rode by but there were throngs of people and I was not prepared for walking and painting. Need my shoulder bag for that, and then park the bike. On the right you see the elaborately painted wall of the factory. As little as 3 or 4 years ago these walls were all clean brick. Now they are painted black and plastered with art.

Tour bus graff walls, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

Old factory district, China town storefronts

Near the Canadian Maltage factory which is still operational, its the business with 'Farine Five Roses' sign on top, there are a few closed warehouses. The one in this painting used to deal in something related to boats, maybe anchors or parts. Up in the background is part of the lengthy grain elevator that transports malt around for making beer ingredients. Beer starts here!

Closed warerhouse grain elevator, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, June 2026

The wall towards the right of this painting is stone covered in plaster. The plaster is falling away in big chunks revelaing old stacked-stones underneath. A large gear sits on the other side, and some other gear-decorations are attached to a door, although the structure has no roof or anything inside of it. I imagine it used to make giant iron gears for boats or factories. 

Old gear wall, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

An old warehouse with iron siding is buckling and rusting. To create the effect required at least five layers. First a moist wash with the shadows from a nearby tree, then contour lines for buckling siding, followed by a rusty orange glaze leaving space for graffiti. Then graffiti, with additional detailing over top to complete the effect. It was an immensely complicated procedure to pull off on location, but it worked out all right. As usual I replaced the graffiti with my own initials. 

Buckling graff wall, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Switching over to China town, here is a small shop on the corner of Clarke street, its a Chinese tea house called Specialtea. Several signs adorn the front, listing off products for sale. If I didn't already have so much tea I might have gone in to see what they have. 

Chinese tea house, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Over on st Laurent  street there is a small clothing store called Nice & Mode although all the signs were in Chinese writing. I found out the name in English on google maps. Racks of clothes for sale were out on the narrow sidewalk. I changed the Chinese symbols into patterns that resembled my initials and 26. Since about 2018 I marked my paintings with the year so as to help organize them.  Its been close to 5000 paintings completed just since 2020, a few thousand before that. I will update my catalogue soon as we reach halfway through the year. 

Nice & Mode clothing, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Walking my bike down st Laurent brought me past small shops and restaurants including this interesting looking noodle shop. Its called Nouilles de Lan Zhou. People were waiting to get in, I just set up my bike on the sidewalk and started painting. Inside, there is a staircase going down to a take-out counter, you see the bright yellow and blue of a TV screen showing a menu. Upstairs was a sit-down restaurant, presumably where Lan Zhou was serving their noodles were. I could have used a bigger piece of paper to do this one, maybe I will try it again, and get some famous noodles next time!

Nouilles de Lan Zhou interior, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

Setting up Festival International de Jazz de Montréal

With Jazz fest set to kick off tomorrow (June 25th) it was pretty quiet down there today and I could make a few paintings of the setup. Here is a tent, with the main buildings in the background. On the right edge of the painting is part of a stage. 

Plsce des arts tent setup, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

The bins are colourful this year, yellow, green, and blue, along with bright red planter pots. There was an orange pylon visible that I left out of the composition. A painting like this needs a decent outline, its more of an illustration, followed by paint-by-numbers. 

Yellow green blue top bins, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

You only had one job to do... paint a perfect circle! Its harder than it seems especially with beat up old brushes. The sphere and purple pedestal are part of Jazz fest decoration, while the cop cars are always parked around here because there is a station down the street. I tried really hard to make the cop car look accurate.  

Sphere cruiser, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

 

On Benny avenue there is a small park called Parc Herbert-Outerbridge where the old library used to be located, you can see part of it in the background of this painting, a beige building with arched doorways. I liked the shape of the paths. This one was done yesterday but I forgot to scan in, it was in the pile. I also liked the garbage can in the foreground, its an old metal basket one with a black garbage bag.  Orange pine needles were on the ground, in fact, I was standing under pine trees on a soft bed of pine needles. 

Parc Herbert-Outerbridge path, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026