Paint drops, new tubes of paint

Its starting to pale in comparison, making abstract with watercolour versus making abstract with digital sketchbook app. But the digital images are teaching me a lot and pushes me to make watercolour paintings more intense and saturated. In this watercolour, I tested out the new paints I just received from Kama Pigments, an excellent artisinal art supply store in Montreal. They have Daniel Smith and Holbein brand paints at great prices, and I use their synthetic squirrel brushes. In the painting you see bright yellow called imadazole yellow by Holbein (PY154),  and by Daniel Smith there are permanent orange (PO62), raw sienna (PBr7), raw umber (PBr7), quinacridone purple (PV55), and indothrone blue (PB60).

The only one I have never used before was the raw umber by Daniel Smith, although I had one by M. Graham which used honey in the formula. I liked the colour of the M. Graham one but the honey-based paint tend to melt in the summer. In the winter, the honey-based paints activate quite well though, so that is a plus since I paint outside throughout the winter no matter how cold it gets. Luckily, the Daniel Smith raw umber is the exact same colour profile, a dark-chocolate, rich neutral brown perfect for making tree bark, fresh earth, or black coffee hues. 

Paint drops, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 (No. 5241)

Spring palette, thoughts on Winnipeg

After rebuilding my entire colour palette during the pandemic year, its been pretty much stable for the past several years. In the paint-out above you can see the range I use on location. Top left are earth paints, top middle are cool shadow paints, top right are green range, bottom left are highlight colours, with a blob of black paint off to the right. I keep a few within the mixing areas, like raw sienna, pyrol orange, indo blue, and for the Spring I carry bismuth yellow for depicting new foliage. So there are a little over 20 paints here, with some duplicates. The scribbles are the pigment codes, which are usually marked on the tube somewhere. I go to Jane Blundell's website to look up pigment codes and paint names on her colour swatches.  Also Handprint.com by MacEvoy has a tome of knowldege in his guide to watercolours page. 

Winnipeg surprised me with its subtle colouration. To be fair, I was there in Spring about a week before the green started to come out, so things were rather dusty, or rather sandy. The earth around Winnipeg comes from the great plains, grassy lands, its a sandy colour the same as raw sienna. They use this sand to put on the snow in the winter, so streets and parking lots were still covered in it. Moreover, the bricks of many older buildings were sandstone... a yellow ochre tone that could be easily made with variations of earth paints. There are prominent trees... not too tall, fanning out like mops pointing up, and with scraggly branches. They were painted with raw umber a dark brown, and indo blue to create greyish brown. Its the first time I ran out of brown paint on one of my palettes. I bring two palettes when I travel now so as to not run out. In the painting above, I mixed various yellow and brown colours, and called the painting Winni-beige, a play on words. 

Winni-beige, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, May 2026 (No. 5400)
 

Synthetic Earth

Holbein company had a line of watercolour paint called Irodori Antique, but recently they discontinued and replaced it with a similar line of gauche-like paints. Avenue des arts put their Irodori stock in a bin and I picked up a tube of russet brown. Like most paint names, its an ill-defined concept, but you can think of russet brown like 'leather jacket' brown. Its almost exactly what you would expect when you think of brown as a colour. To understand it a bit better, I put some of the russet brown on the top right of this painting, and then completed the scene with a variety of other browns and on the bottom, synthetic red-orange, magenta, and red. Russet brown was closest to Caput Mortuum, which you see in the tree and roots structure on the right side of the painting. Caput Mortuum translates to 'dead head' because legend has it that they used to grind up Egyptian mummies into a brown powder to make brown paint! Its an unlikely tale, but makes for a good yarn none the less. In fact, virtually all paints now are synthetic, even the ones sold as earth or natural. Small companies may still use artisanal pigments, for example some of the paints from Stone Ground paints, a Canadian company, might have been authentic. You can see my example of their earth paints in the Armenia painting from the World Inspired Landscape series. 

Synthetic Earth, watercolour 9 x 6" watercolour paper, March 2026 (No. 5382b)

Brazil 2026 palette: earthy and warm

I painted a picture of my palette from the Brazil trip, actually I had two palettes with the identical set up. I also brought three extra tubes of paint, yellow (PY154), dark blue (PB60), and dark green (PBk31). There are 22 blobs of paint on the palette, although several of them are duplicates so there were 18 distinct paints. The duplicates were there because of different uses, for example in position 11 there is a yellow to mix greens with, and position 16 is the same yellow but used to mix oranges. Each day I rinsed the mixing areas lightly with water and a hogs hair brush to keep it clean, and washed my brushes with glycerine-based soap and water. This kept the colours fresh for each day of painting. 

Since its my third trip to Brazil I already had notes and experience. Raw sienna (PBr7) was important so I added a big blob of it in the upper left mixing area (position 13), and used it a lot. The yellow went fast too, which was fun because I never use much yellow in the Canadian winter, but in the Brazil landscape its the number 1 colour to use. Magenta got a real workout in Brazil, I carry a dark magenta (PV55, position 6) and a bright magenta (PR122 position 20), these mix well with the indo blue (PB60 position 7 and 15) to make purple. The colourful flowering trees used these mixtures. Since the soil in South America is a deep red earth colour, it permeates much of the landscape. So I used plenty of burnt sienna (PR101) which actually contains the same iron oxide pigment that is in the soil, and also in the beans!

Brazil 2026 palette: warmth

Here are some more details, I tried to number the position of each paint, but the first one was cut off in the scan, 

1.  yellow ochre (PY43, also PY42).... this is great in a dilute wash for creating the subtle yellow tint in the Brazilian sky. I applied it to most of the cloudy areas. Also mix with purple to get glowing warm greys.  

2. umber (PBr7),  good for sweaty concrete, also weathered Brazilian plaster that is common on some buildings. 

3. burnt umber (PBr7), shadow area of mangoes, some tree barks, center of some flowers.  

4. burnt sienna (PBr7), exposed south american earth, clay pots

5. maroon (PY179), dark red shadows on clay pots, fruit, red flowers

6. dark magenta (PV55), purple flowers, deep red mixtures

7. dark blue (PB60), dark purple, cool sky at top of painting, mix with earth for charcoal neutrals, cloud shadows, mix with yellow for distant mountain blue. 

8. phthalo green blue shade (PG7), car windshields, dilute wash for horizon cyan colour with phthalo blue

9. dark green (PBk31), pine trees, dark shadows of trees, shadow on grass

10. phthalo green yellow shade (PG36), greenery with yellow mixes, background of Brazil flag

11. yellow (PY154) greenery with yellow mixes, chatreuse, mix with black for shadow

12. orange-yellow (PY110), olive greens, warm tint on chartreuse

13. Raw sienna (PBr7), add to most mixtures, thin glaze for warmpth

14*. pyrol orange (PO73), night skies with dark blue, and for neutral purple shades.  

15. dark indo blue (PO60), night skies with pyrol orange, and for neutral purple shades.   

16.  yellow (PY154), same as other yellow, for mixing warm yellows like flowers, car headlights, bananas!

17. orange (PO62), use for orange objects like ... oranges! sun highlight on brown objects or exposed soil, and cats fur

18. pyrol orange (PO73), bright orange in some fruits, pylons 

19. pyrol red (PR254), tail lights of cars, some flowers, some fruit

20. magenta (PR122), magenta flowers, bright purples

21. blue sapphire (PB15), sky blue, mix with PG7 for horizon blue, some  blue objects like water-collectors in Brazil

22. black (PBk6), dark shadows like under cars some times, also for making dark yellow, dark green, dark red. use dilute for initial painting outline

 

 *pyrol orange and indo blue are both very high chroma pigments and mix a fantastic range of dark blue to smokey violets, however, if you mix them with other paints, they get dirty and the mix wont look nice. So I keep a secondary set of blobs just for mixing these two paints together. 

Toasty grass new bike bag

 

With the arid weather lately most of the grass around the city is a toasty yellow colour. I painted this scene down by the Lachine canal using raw sienna (PBr7) and yellow ochre (PY43) for the grass, with some daubs of green where weeds were still surviving. The pole is a dark neutral yellow with brown and black details. I liked how the dark blue water of the canal was so cool, the perfect contrast to the toasted appearance of the foreground. 

Toasty grass canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 (No. 4647)

Here is a picture of my new bike trunk bag to replace the old one which I had for well over 10 years and it had started to disintegrate.  The new one required a different rack system which took some fiddling to get the old one off and new one on. Its a great product from Topeak, over-engineered as they say with a mechanical track and lock system, and lots of neat features like handles on top and extendable pouches on the side. In all it can hold 20 L of stuff. There is a velcro divider which was perfect for keeping the water cup from spilling. I made a bunch more paintings today with the new setup. Best of all, the zippers opened and closed easily, the old one needed safety pins and the zippers were falling off. I also got a smaller version of this bag which also clips in. 

Making the cuts, catalogue update

 

Just past the midpoint of the year, hard to believe that time flies! I completed a catalogue update and could tabulate the total number for 2025 to be at least 512 paintings with a few unaccounted for. Keeping up that rate, it would be over 1000 on the year but I usually paint more during the summer and typically slow down in the fall due to teaching and committees. However, those of you who know me, also know that I am on a one year sabbatical from July to July, so I will be travelling a bit more and concentrating on research exclusively. The main thing is to learn more about cancer immunology... that is empowering the immune system to eliminate cancer. With all the painting, I finally decided to give a second life to some of my old paintings... in other words, I selected about two dozen of the weaker paintings that had blank backs and cut them up mostly into 6 x 7.5" and 8 x 10" which are the most efficient sizes. Unfortunately, that meant loosing a few paintings, but I had to ask myself, would I hang these paintings on my wall? Would I want them hanging on my parent's wall? The problem was that I used a lot of alizarin crimson and aureolin yellow both of which fade, and my technique at the time resulted in very bland and greyish paintings that were overloaded with details. I am glad to have cut the paintings up, it freed up some space, and I examined each one to see what could be done better in future paintings. Most cut up paintings were in the doodleism style, which kept me busy and I had fun painting them. In recent years, I refined that style and got better results than the works from about 2005 - 2020. The abstract painting above was recently done on one of the cut-offs, I used the 'earth max palette' which has like 15 different earthy paints and a few synthetic colours. 

Making the cuts, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4866)

Here is what is on the back of the previous painting... a piece of 'Attempted Evolution'. There were things I really liked about the painting such as this character and the eyeball in the ground, but overall it would need a re-work, and a re-paint with better contrast and higher quality finish. When I was painting these large doodleism paintings, I knew the backs of the paintings could be used one day if I ever ran out of money. It wasn't money I ran out of, but space! 

Attempted evolution crop cut, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025

Here is another crop cut of a painting called 'Apple eye Shrimp in the sky' which was a remake of an earlier painting called 'Apple Eye Violet Sky'. It was my 'Magical Mystery Tour' phase of being an artist, like the Beatles Psychedelic period.  If the time, opportunity, and mood presents itself I would pick through these paintings and see if I can make finished pieces. Before you go thinking I cut up all my paintings, I currently have nearly 6000 paintings in my collection, most of them postcard sized, so loosing a few dozen to gain a few hundred in return was great, and the work from the past few months seems to be top notch. There is still a good pile of cuts to paint on, and I have new Arches paper I bought last week. I notice a big difference, in the old days I soaked the paper to remove the sizing, that was based on the advice of a famous painter John Joy. However, the sizing is there to prevent the paint from diffusing into the paper pulp. Quite a few of the old cut pieces were pretty hard to paint on especially in humidity, and there were some strange textures not to mention staple holes. There was one painting where the texturing really helped, it was the elevated train in Griffintown, it was on the back of Tourist Destiny. When I painted tourist destiny I also noticed the weird texture and I believe it was a manufacturer defect. The texturing defect-effect is so cool I wish I knew how to reproduce it for certain paintings. Like in the gravel field yellow flowers I used the grainy cut offs from Tourist destiny and it was perfect for the subject matter.  

Apple eye crop cut, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

Summer Smoke Palette 2025

 

Its been an odd summer with dry and rain spells, and a yellowish haze over everything due to the wild fires in Central and Western Canada. Earlier in June I made a series of paintings featuring the hazy sky, and since then noticed a orange-yellow haze that is prominent on the horizon, but also tints everything with a subtle amber hue. I recall the pandemic when there were  no cars in Montreal, after a week or two the sky became a crystal clear 'true blue'. Now, I can see the subtle variations in atmospheric colour changes from a painters perspective. About a month ago I instinctively added a blob of raw sienna (PBr7), cadmium red hue (PR254/PY53) and bismuth yellow (PY184) to my palette, as seen above in the painted sketch. The other day, it occurred to me that those three colours provide the amber tint caused by smokey skies. Its an unfortunate adjustment for the sake of realism. The rest of the palette is pretty much the same as before, pigment codes are scribbled on the sketch. My paints are made by various companies: Holbein (Japan), Daniel Smith (US), Schminke (Germany), Da Vinci (US), Shin Han (South Korea), and Winsor and Newton (UK/US). I buy them from Avenue Des Arts, Kama Pigments, and DeSerres. 

Summer Smoke Palette 2025, sketch book paper

Thoughts on night painting, revisions

As scientists, we are constantly having to revise documents, starting in graduate school with the supervisor making edits, then as we submit manuscripts to journals and get long lists of changes to make. On occasion a manuscript is completely rejected and we go back to the drawing board or find another journal to send it to. I only sent my paintings to one art competition, about twenty years ago, and never hear back from them! So with my art, I seldom make revisions unless its the winter and I can not finish the scene on location or its dried strangely. For these night paintings, which I completed last night, I was thinking about how to improve them and tried a few things. This one was the easiest to fix, I used a combination of green umber (PBr7) with orange (PO62) to apply a dilute wash around the moon and blend into the sky a bit. Now the moon has almost the correct glow around it. Next time I will use that combination. In the original version, the scan is still on the previous blog, I used yellow ochre but it dried too pale.  

Circus tent with moon b, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

 

In this one, the central building was a little too black so in this version I lifted some of the paint from that section to give a better sense of shape and moon-glow effect. In reality, the sky was lighter than the building, but the trees were darker than the building. Its a neat painting, and the success of the small sign in the bottom right gives me hope I can do a bigger and better version one day. 

 Moon and Farine Five Roses b, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

  

This was one of my favorites and Cilei liked it too. I just lifted some of the green-black from the trees to make the glow better, and made sure to keep the river water in the scan which got cut off in the scan from yesterday. Revising these paintings was a useful exercise, it was mostly a way to trouble-shoot the paintings and see if I can bring my night paintings to the next level. After thousands of paintings over 35 years my day paintings and sunsets have really improved, and so have my night paintings, however, painting at night is a magnitude harder then anything else. Especially when its snowing! One successful night painting, and it was surely a cold and snowy night was Skating Rink Cyan.  

 Expo 67 dome and moon b, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 

Made me buy it

At Deserres art store, like I needed any more paint, they made me buy it with deep discounts. Actually, there were some 'liquidation' prices but still kind of pricey compared to Kama Pigments. I picked up 15 mL tubes of bismuth vanadate yellow (PY184), burnt red ochre (PR102) both from Daniel Smith, and some umber (PBr7) and yellow ochre (PY42) from Shin Han. I had a bit of birthday money to spend so it was fine at any price. I also noticed that all of the iridescent and duo-chrome paints from Daniel Smith were on liquidation... they probably were not too popular from the looks of it. I got one once, iridescent moonstone (the name was cool), but it was of limited usefulness, and the main attraction, the sparkle effect, did not scan or show well on the computer screen. 

In the painting above, I used the four 'new' paints... in fact I have identical or similar versions before. The yellow ochre from Shin Han was very similar, just a half shade lighter perhaps, than the yellow ochre I have from DaVinci (I got a jumbo 37mL tube of that a few years ago). Bismuth vanadate yellow is the bright yellow, the rusty colour is burnt yellow ochre, the muddy brown is the umber, and the toasty yellow is the yellow ochre. These paints will really turn up the warmth on the palette.

Made me buy it,  watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2025 (No. 4385)

Sundown end of street

 

The street in question is Avenue Rosedale, looking north of Cote st Luc road, I was standing outside of the excellent Mazzeh takeout restaurant waiting for the Kebabs when I made the painting. If it looks a little rushed its because I was hungry, not to mention, there was a chilly wet wind barreling in from the west. Painting a scene like this is quite a challenge because the paint dries slowly, and the entire foreground is extremely dark... green becomes black and orange gets a yellowish tinge. I started with the sky, using a similar technique as the dépanneur Yo Yo painting from 2022, and the Quebec City sundown from 2023, which is to paint peach on the horizon, make a light green to cyan transition, the darker blue at the top. I will list the colours in more detail. When semi-dry I added the deep purple clouds, then started daubing in the near-black trees, and brownish houses and street. Keeping the small areas open for the street lamps completed the effect. I omitted all the parked cars. 

Sundown end of street, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2025 (No. 4206a)

 Notes on colour transition in sky... it is painted like assembling cake layers from the bottom up, with blending between these layers.

1. start at horizon: pyrol orange (PO73) medium dilution, keep clean

2. orange (PO62) medium dilution

3. neutral grey/blue dilute

4. green (PO36) keep very dilute

4. switch to blue (PB15 sapphire) medium dilution  

5. same blue stronger dilution

6. end at top, daubs of dark blue (PB60 at top). 

7. finish with clouds: when semi dry, overlay clouds wet-in-wet (PB60 and PV55 for hue, with some PR179 and PBr7 to adjust chroma to half-neutral) move brush quickly for feathering effect. 

If you are an artist and try this, the skills needed include accurate judgement of moisture on brush, and knowledge of the paint mixtures to produce the correct hue, chroma and value on the first try. Fiddling with it will collapse the washes, so it must be done clean, one pass for it to come out like in this example. At least I got a great kebab dish for a reward!

 

Palette update 2025

 

Here is a photo of the brand new palette, its from Holbein and holds up to 18 colours plus a few extra here and there. The small size is more manageable on location when there is wind, and it fits into my bike pack or shoulder bag. The thumb hole is useful in warm weather but in the winter my glove wont fit so I just hold the palette kind of like you see in the photo (but with the oven-mitt sized gauntlets on). Since a few years ago, the palette arrangement has stayed mostly the same with a few substitutions here and there. You can see a photo of the old one here, before it cracked, and here, the old one after it cracked:

 

good old palette ... not made for winter painting!

 The paints I am using now (with pigment code and companies), in some cases I have two or more versions that are almost identical. They are all single pigment paints. You can see how crazy the paint names really are and how hard it is to get the right one. Just Daniel Smith company sells over 300 varieties! From top left to bottom right the paints are, 

1. yellow ochre (PY43 Da Vinci)

2. umber (PBr7 Shin Han) 

3. burnt umber (PBr7 Schmincke), or burnt umber (PBr7 M Graham)

4. red ochre (PR101, Daniel Smith, Sennelier, Holbien, Da Vinci)

5. perylene maroon (PR179 Holbein), or deep scarlet (PR175, Daniel Smith) 

6. quinacridone purple (PV55 Schmincke or Daniel Smith)

7. indothrone blue (PB60 Daniel Smith), or royal blue (PB60 Holbien)

8. phthalo green blue shade/viridian hue (PG7 Holbein)

9. perylene green (PBk31 Daniel Smith), or shadow green (PBk31 Holbein)

10. phthalo green blue shade/bamboo green (PG36 Holbein)

11. yellow (PY154 Holbein) ... for mixing greens

12. isoindo yellow, permanent yellow deep (PY110 Daniel Smith)

13. yellow (PY154 Holbein) ... for mixing oranges

14. chromate orange hue (PO62 Schmincke)

15. pyrol orange/winsor red-orange (PO73 Winsor and Newton)

16. pyrol red (PR254 Holbein)

17. quinacridone magenta (PR122 Schmincke) 

18. phthalo blue sapphire (PB15 Holbein)

19. lamp black (PBk6 Holbein)

 

Notes: 

The yellow ochre is a dijon mustard shade, not leaning orange like other brands.

The umber is a greenish shade, similar to a green umber, like tea with milk. 

The red ochre ran out, I'm using burnt sienna deep with a little blob of pyrol red underneath, I will try to make it brick red by mixing on location. Hope to use up all the excess paint I bought on the pandemic year. 

Holbein is a great product, low price, high quality and many single pigments. 

Winsor and Newton is good quality but over priced. They have the best pyrol orange (PO73), its an expensive pigment but worth it.

Spill Thrill

With spring and summer just around the next snowy corner, I got a new palette ready to go, as seen below. In this abstract painting I was using some of the old paint and making good progress when I spilled the water cup. Embracing the embarrassing mistake, I took the painting to the sink and ran it under the faucet for good measure. The effect was to create blurry edges here and there, and it smoothed out the textures. Not that I would run all my painting under the water but for this one its seemed to work out. 

Spill Thrill, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, March 2025 (No. 3899b)

 

Orbital debris

 

The other day I was reading about how many satellites are in orbit around earth, it went from a dozen in the 1950's to now like hundred's of thousands. There are so many satellites that the milky way is not visible in parts of the world, and astronomers see lines criss-crossing space when they try to observe. To think that the one thing that all people have looked up to and thought about from the beginning, is now cluttered up with piles of satellites and space debris. The painting was just an abstract painting, partly done to clean off the palette for the weekend, and to test out the various earth paints I have in stock. The burnt yellow ochre and red/brown is almost run out, so I will try one of the other ones or maybe make a mix. It is very subtle but the 'rusty' paints can vary from orange-leaning to red-leaning. Venetian red is the reddest of them all, while a classic 'burnt sienna' tends to be orangest. If you go any further towards yellow you get raw sienna, then yellow ochre.

Orbital debris, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, October  2024 (No. 3889a)

More Code

 

Once again the palette was pretty gloopy especially after doing some night paintings the other evening. I did the outline with heavy, dark blue (PB60) brush strokes, then filled in the colours around the spectrum. I've been trying to finish off a few tubes of paint including Deep Scarlet by Daniel Smith (PR175), it is essentially maroon or dark red. Although it looks a bit brighter, it appears to be nearly identical to perylene maroon (PR179) in mixes, so for some reason I prefer perylene maroon. Both paints have excellent lightfastness ratings, meaning they wont fade in the sun, and they are somewhat similar to the discontinued alizarin crimson (PR83) which faded a lot in the light. I mostly use the colour (PR175 or PR179) to make neutral blue/violet grey when mixed with yellow ochre (PY43) and indo blue (PB60). Its also good for red shadows by mixing with pyrol red (PR254), and it can neutralize green (PG7 or PG36) to create dark green or caramel brown colours. Its been awhile since I did a blog with a bunch of letters and numbers in parenthesis...kind of looks like a scientific manuscript!

More Code, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024 (No. 3887)

August 2024 palette with colour notes on PEI trip

This blog is mostly artists notes and other thoughts on the trip. If we go back, its a good review of what I learned, and for anyone wanting to paint there maybe it would help too!

Here is a scan of one of the palettes I brought on our PEI trip, the other one was identical but without the crack and wire holding it together. The picture is blurred a bit since I used the flatbed scanner. This is normally the one I use in winter, which is why it cracks up like that, but in the summer I bring it as a second palette. If you run out of paint, you need to squeeze out fresh paint and let it dry for about a day, so the second palette allows for continual painting. However, I only used one of the palettes on the PEI trip to do 35 paintings, the only colour that ran out on the last day was yellow. 

When we went to Brazil last year I regretted not bringing raw sienna, so this time I had a blob of it on the mixing area in the top left. It came in handy, but caput mortuum would have been more useful, its a neutral dark red (PR101) that would have been great to make the shadows of the red cliffs. I came up with an alternative, which was red ochre (fourth from left, top row), with purple (PV55) and dark blue (PB60) which are 6th and 7th on the top row. When dried, the paint blobs tend to look dark, and almost black in some cases. Actually, sometimes I forget which green is which they look so similar when they are dried on the palette. Not much has changed in my palette setup since the last update where I detailed the pigment names and codes.

In PEI, the colours were very soft and neutral, almost pastel-like. Getting those half chroma hues required careful colour mixing, and cutting some of the mixes with yellow ochre (PY43, 1st on top row) helped a lot. Most scenes had a warm glow, while the water brought in a wide range of colours. Bright turquoise was also present on doors of houses, shanties, and in the water sometimes. There is a cobalt turquoise that would have been perfect, but I stopped carrying cobalt pigments awhile ago. To make turquoise I relied on phthalo green (PG7) with phthalo blue (PB15) mixed with just the right amount of water. Perylene green (PG31) was very useful, the pine trees had almost the exact same dark green. Magenta (PR122) and the oranges (PO62, PO73) were useful for pink skies. If you looked carefully, PEI had a wide range of colours, and I think the people who live there also really enjoy having colours in their lives. Hopefully the paintings I did capture the colours and vibes of PEI to some extent.
 

Emergency Donuts

 

I was down on Sherbrooke on the weekend painting the new donut store when a fire truck stopped and the fire people hopped out to wait in line and get donuts. No there was no fire or anything, but it must have been an emergency donut, or perhaps a donut emergency? In the painting I depicted the firetruck from memory using pyrol red (PR254) which is a very thick and very red paint good for fire hydrants, stop signs and other bright red objects like donuts. Pyrol red is a weird one, it doesn't mix well with anything, and it will quickly muddy up on the palette creating a much duller brownish red. Recently I picked up some quinacridone red (PR209) and might try that on the palette for awhile, it has a higher tinting strength with more blue reflectance. Red is actually not very common when landscape painting, its probably the least used paint on my palette. Its more useful in abstract paintings, like this surrealistic take on donuts and a fire truck.

Emergency Donuts, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, June 2024 (No. 3834b)

Palette Puzzle

Part palette update, part palette cleanser, this abstract painting is a real palette puzzle. An artist's choice of paint is very personal, it reflects their style and approach to the craft. Sometimes it just reflects which paints you happen to buy. In the old days I would use whatever paints I could get on sale, for example I had the privilege of visiting the original Sennelier paint shop on left bank Paris in '08 and they had a bin full of discount paints. To this day I still have one, its the rusty brown colour up in the top right (Red Brown PBr7). Since 2018 onwards I started a more systematic approach to choosing paints and settled on a so called 'colourists palette' covering a wide range of high chroma (intense) colours, dark variations, and a selection of earth paints. You can see each one in the puzzle pieces, although its not a puzzle you could actually solve. 

Palette Puzzle, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, May 2024 (No. 3838)

Ancestral Colours

I was walking to work the other day and noticed a shimmering oil slick on top of a freshly paved road that had been rained upon. At the right angle there was a rainbow's worth of colours visible on the black asphalt. Its not an accident or anything, just the tar leaching out of the road...asphalt is derived from petro chemicals after all. It makes you wonder what we inhale and get from these toxic roadways? There is an interesting connection between the colours on the wet road and the history of art pigments. As far back as the 19th century the pigment makers knew about coal-tar pigments, the first one was a dark red magenta, similar to the colour you see in the upper left of the abstract painting. The initial pigments were unstable and unpleasant, but after enough time the chemistry was optimized and by 1960's onwards the coal tar pigments would basically replace most other pigments in the yellow to magenta range. 

For the painting I was trying to use up some tubes that I don't use for anything else. The charcoal colour is a grey mix (PV19 + PG7 + PBk6), the yellow is vanadium yellow (PY184), the magenta is PV19, the red and orange are from pyrol red (PR254). I splashed in some green (PG36) to complete the charcoal rainbow effect.
 

Ancestral Colours, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, April 2024 (No. 3831b)

March 2024 Palette

 

Since the massive paint exploration of 2020 and 2021, the palette has mostly settled into a comfortable routine by now. Some of the paints have a couple options that I use, mostly because I over-bought paints and need to try and use them all! The frequently used ones like yellow, I buy a fresh tube every year or so. Here are some details on the paints.

1. Yellow Ochre (PY43) by Da Vinci. It was not until this paint that I realized the full power of yellow ochre. Importantly, it is a very yellowish, almost with a green cast, which differs from most other yellow ochres that have an orange cast. 

2. Umber (PBr7) by ShinHan. There are dozens of paints called umber, this one is the colour of tea with milk. It appears to be similar to green umber. For location painting in Montreal this colour is essential because half of the city it dull beige, the colour of worn out concrete!

3. Burnt Umber (PBr7) by Schmincke. 'Burning' a pigment is a chemical process where it is heated in a giant furnace. When this is done to umber it gets darker and redder, like roasted coffee. In truth, the pigment is probably a blend but the manufacturer only has to list PBr7. 

4. Red Ochre (PY43, PBr7 and/or PR101). This one is the colour of rust, quite literally brick red since the same pigment is used in bricks. I have many tubes of this, and either use the Burnt Yellow Ochre from Daniel Smith, or a blend of Red Brown from Sennelier with Antique Red Ochre from Holbein. They all look exactly the same. 

5. Perylene Maroon (PR179) by Holbein or Deep Scarlet (PR175) by Daniel Smith. When wet they look just like blood, but dry with a brownish cast. The two paints look identical, but the Holbein formula activates better and the colour is a bit darker red. 

6. Quinacridone Violet (PV19) by Schmincke or Quinacridone purple (PV55) from Daniel Smith. The former is like red wine, the latter like grape juice. They are both dark red-magenta colours that can be used interchangeably, although I prefer the purple variant. 

7. Indothrone blue (PB60) from Daniel Smith. After dropping Ultramarine Blue due to its instability in acids, I found the perfect replacement with indo blue. Its a real workhorse, I use it in many mixtures. 

8. Phthalo green blue shade (PG7) by Holbien. Its one of the original paints I had many years (decades) ago when I started painting. A vital paint to have, I was sad when it ran out and got a big tube to replace it. Its almost identical to the old viridian pigment but much stronger. 

9. Perylene green (PBk31) by Daniel Smith. One of the biggest finds of my paint exploration, I use this all the time for foliage and tree shadows among other things. 

10. Phthalo green yellow shade (PG36) by Daniel Smith. The phthalo green paints have chemical differences, in this case it is lighter and slightly more greenish than the blue shade variation. The company almost doesn't matter, all brands have these and they are quite similar. 

11. Yellow (PY154, PY97). I had so many yellows over the years I lost track, currently its PY154 by Da Vinci and Holbein, and PY97 by Daniel smith. They are all the same really, too bad I could not get the 37mL size from Da Vinci. 

12. indo yellow (PY110) by Daniel Smith. This one is the colour of a school bus or lines on the road. I use it to make olive greens or tanned darkish yellows. 

13. Yellow, the same as position 11, but I use it for making warms. You need two blobs of yellow one for mixing greens, and one for mixing warms. If you have just one blob of yellow it gets mucky, and yellow mixes are finicky. 

14. benzi orange (PO62) by Schmincke. Its a bright pleasant orange, great for warm highlights and orange objects.... like pylons. 

15. Pyrol orange (PO73) by Winsor and Newton. One of the few Winsor and Newton paints I have, they are too expensive, but this pigment is superb from them. I use it for night skies, or for painting traffic pylons which is another essential Montreal colour. I want to call this Montreal orange. 

16. Pyrol red (PR254) by Holbein. Occasionally I use the slightly warmer pyrol vermillion (PR255). Pretty much just for red highlights. It mixes poorly with other colours, and the paint needs to be clean to have an effect. Its my only middle red on the palette. 

17. quinacridone magenta (PR122) by Schmincke. Its the hot pink you see on a flamingo. When you need this colour you gotta have it on your palette. I try not to mix with it much to keep it clean. 

18. phthalo blue red shade (PB15) by Holbein. The phthalo names are odd, this one sounds like it should be purple but its a true blue. Since I abandoned cobalt blues a long time ago, this is my main blue, I only use it for the sky, and for some blue highlights. From other companies, this paint is a putrid mess due to dispersants in the formula, so I only go with Holbein- their formula is a lot tamer than the other companies.

19. Carbon (lamp) black (PBk6). Also had this from various companies, Daniel Smith and Da Vinci. Not for beginners, you need to understand the power of this pigment before unleashing it on you palette. Its good to paint monochrome with it for a bit to see how it dries. For locations this is great for shadows and detail. It makes a good moody sky on a grey day. In mixes it can reduce value without affecting hue angle of a coloured paint.

Palette Update November

 

Its been awhile since the last palette update, where I paint out the current palette setup and muse over my colour choices. I actually have two palettes now, identical in most ways, which helps to always have a clean one ready to go especially after doing a night painting which really messes it up! As usual I have a range of earth colours, yellow ochre, green umber, burnt umber and red ochre. The darks include deep scarlet, dark magenta, indo blue, phthalo green blue shade, and perylene green. To mix greens I also include phthalo green yellow shade, yellow, and orange-yellow on the top row. The bottom row has 5 warms: yellow, orange, red-orange, red, magenta, and the blue which is used just for skies and making violet when needed. Black rounds out the palette choices. I tried using PO36 for awhile as the red-orange but I found that it mixes a brownish colour when combined with indo blue. Now I have a large sized tube of Winsor and Newton's red orange which is PO73 (pyrol orange), which mixes a dark neutral violet with indo blue that is perfect for night skies. The PO73 is a more versatile mixer than PO36, and it has one of the highest chromas of any paint. The slight downside is that PO73 is  little less stable in light compared to PO36 which is rated as indestructible by MacEvoy on Handprint.com. Having said that, PO73 is still pretty stable and MacEvoy had high regard for the pigment, so its good enough for me. On the top of the scan you see a portion of a test painting I did for a World Inspired Landscape painting, which is now complete. Try and guess the country just by looking at the segment!

Palette Update November 2023, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour pad November 2023