Sparkle flowers

 

This painting was at my Parents' place for a long time, now its been up on our fridge for awhile. Cilei really likes it, so I thought to put a scan up on the blog. The sparkle was done by tossing salt crystals in while the paint was semi-moist, which sucks up the water leaving a starburst effect. I made a series of such paintings but with dark black outlines, this one was a bit softer. It was done around 1999 to my recollection, my idea was to bring these to an art show in a park and sell some, but I never did make any sales that way. I sold several abstract paintings through the art gallery, and the art commune shop in London Ontario. 

Sparkle flowers, watercolour 4 x 6" cold press, 1999

Bananas mango apple

The fruit looks a little bit different here in Canada especially when painting indoors in the the evening with artificial lights. By comparison, in Brazil I got to paint fresh fruit of great variety out in the South American sun when it was shining. Keep in mind its freezing cold outside with a meter of snow, so we are lucky to have any fresh fruit at all, and to be fair, the bananas at the other grocery store looked a lot better than these ones. That mango incidentally, is probably from Brazil anyways! Painting fruit can be difficult, although the shapes are simple enough, there are colour variations and textures to pay attention to, and different light and shadow effects. Its good practice anyways, and I kind of enjoy it more and more. Cezanne was famous for painting still life of fruit, he would set up a whole table full and paint the whole scene. 

Bananas mango apple, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, February 2026 

Magenta dragon fruit

Here is a magenta dragon fruit, actually part of the cactus family. Despite its brilliant  magenta interior, its flavour is rather mild, like a pear or melon. Tiny black seeds have a crunchy consistency like chia. Magenta has had quite a workout on this trip, flowers, trees and fruit like this feature variations that I made primarily with quin magenta (PR122) and purple magenta (PV55). Even though paints are called magenta they are only about half way between red and true magenta. Only one paint falls on magenta, its called carbazol violet (PV23) and its very dark, like purple grape juice concentrate. Next time I come to Brazil in summer (Canadian winter) I will have to remember to bring along some carbazol violet. 

Magenta dragon fruit, 6 x 7.5 " watercolour, February 2026 (No. 5024b)

Alll the fruit

 

All the fruit on a tray minus the mango we ate! There are two varieties of bananas, limes I picked, a green-skinned orange, red plums, peaches and grapes. In the background, anchoring the whole composition, is a yellow honeydew melon set against a cobalt blue-painted wall. People take for granted just how good the fruit is here, and painting it in bright Brazilian sunlight really made the image pop off the page. 

All the fruit, 8 x 10" watercolour, January 2026 

Grapes peaches limes

Here are some of the other fruit items we bought at the market on the weekend including peaches and grapes. They has plenty of limes there too, but the ones in the painting were the ones I picked from the tree on Cile's land. In the background is the tiled patio that sits atop the garage. The full sun overhead was blasting heat downwards...wish I could send some to Montreal they need it! 

Grapes peaches limes, watercolour, January 2026 

Fresh fruit fresh fresh very fresh

With the chaos back home, power out and thirty below, luckily Cilene was checking and saved the big fish. Guppies and loaches may have made it too despite the cold temperature without heat for a few days. Cilei and I are staying in the warm part of Montreal, its called São Paulo, where the fruit is very fresh. There are several types of bananas here which I painted, they are on a decorative metal tray with the house cat in the background. 

Three types of bannas,  8 x 10" watercolour, January 2026

 

These lychees, or dragon fruit, were picked fresh with a deep maroon colour I made with perylene maroon (PR179), pyrol red (PR254), dark magenta (PV55) and some black (PBk6). The leaves are yellow orange (PY110) with a green tint (PG36). They tasted as good as they looked. 

Lychee on branch, 6 x 7.5" watercolour, January 2026 (No. 5010a)

Of course, next up is a sliced mango. The locals take for granted that mangoes grow all over the place, in Canada we only get them shipped. Here they can pick fresh off the mango tree. Cilei has a mango tree on her land but it has not made fruit yet. I used A Van Gogh style for this one, and really played the cobalt blue wall against the juicy yellow-orange of the mango, with its tri-coloured skin. Cobalt blue was made with phthalo blue (PB15 red shade) and my favorite indo blue (PB60). This painting looks like you can eat it. ...and yes I did it was great.

Sliced mango, 6 x 7.5 watercolour, January 2026 (No. 5011)

 

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 (No. 4981)

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 (No. 3892b)

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 (No. 4975b)

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 (No. 4975b)

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 (No. 4975b)

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 font, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4980)

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 (No. 4976)

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 (No. 4977) 

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. 

Pile of keys, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4978)   

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 (No. 4973)

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 (No. 4974) 

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 (No. 4975a)  

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 (No. 4968)

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 through zip lock bag, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4969)

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 though beer mug, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4970)

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 (No. 4965)

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 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4965)

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. 4965)

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  

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 (No. 4960)

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 (No. 4961) 

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 (No. 4962) 

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 (No. 4957)

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  (No. 4958)

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  

Still life food items, fruit themed

The theme of these still life paintings was food items, in this case, bananas sitting on a Xmas paper plate. Yellow can vary from warm to cool, its done by adjusting the tint with a dab of orange (PY110 or PO62), or a dab of green (PG36). The corresponding shadows are made with a dab of brown (PBr7) or a dab of dark green (PBk31). The paper plate turned our really well here. 

Bananas xmas paper plate, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4952b)

Here are three fruits you may or may not recognize. The top left is called quince (from Turkiye), its a pear-like lumpy yellow fruit used for juice or other cooking applications. In the front, the orange thing that looks like a tomato is actually a persimmon (known as a kaki), it is very sweet and tastes like a mix of apple and banana flavours. On the right is an avocado. I included one of the porcelain plates with a plant print, and some of my location painting supplies in the top right. 

Three fruits, watercolour  6.5 x 10" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4951b)

Finally, this scene is looking down into our morning ground coffee tin, with the scoop upside-down. The tin itself has a fruit themed design on it, a still life painting. I did the coffee with three steps, first, brown colour washes, varying from orange brown to purplish brown, then applying a lot of dots, both dark and light, and finally, a thin wash of clear water to blur it slightly. The inside of the tin was reflecting different colours, ranging from neutral olive, grey and some yellowish tints.  

Coffee grinds tin, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4947b)

Still life, tech theme, fish tank, speaker, mouse

Painting the fish tank is always fun, this one shows a side view with the tank on a wooden stand that my Dad and I built several decades ago. Its still standing strong, holding up the tank no problem. The giant algae eater is sitting on the bottom, camouflaged, and a few guppies still swim around looking for food. Getting the interior light effect and exterior glow was a matter of controlling the grey tints and varying colour temperatures from cool blue to warm orange. 

Fish tank with stand side view, watercolour 6.5 x 10" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4951a)

The right speaker is so much more interesting than the left speaker, it has a volume control knob, headphone jack, and a green light-emitting diode. To paint the diode I first applied a green circle with open interior. As I filled in the black surface of the speaker, I painted over the green circle to give the impression of green light reflecting off a black surface. Finally, I daubed in some high chroma green (PG36 + PY184) leaving a thin rim of white. Its the same technique I used on the night neon scene of Dépanneur NDG. 

Right speaker green diode, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025  (No. 4949)

Its been awhile since I sat down and did still life scenes. When in a sitting position with paper lying flat on a table, your perspective is highly skewed... its something I have to remember since I usually paint standing up when on location. You can see in this painting the top right of the scene seems to pull away... that's the perspective effect. Next time I have to hold up the paper when establishing the outline. On the front edge of the mouse, you can see a reflected scene of our living room and my silhouette. I replaced the brand name of the mouse with my initials (its a Logitech of course, as are the speakers). 

Mouse my reflection, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, December 2025 (No. 4950) 

Bolton scenes exterior and interior

Bolton is a small community north of Toronto where I spent a good part of my childhood and my parents still live there in the family home. Backing onto a ravine, there are some good scenes of the valley and a storm pond like you see in the painting. I could not believe that geese were still trying to hang out in the last of the water, with the frozen surface slowly encroaching on them. There even appeared to be smaller ones swimming about with the adults. Hope they made it out before it froze completely. 

Last water pond, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, November 2025 (No. 4938a)

Using some Van Gogh techniques, I created swirling, textural effects in the grasses growing down in the valley. There were also willow trees and other trees in the background without any leaves. With all the brown and beige, it was important to create energy with the directional brush strokes. In the foreground, tall grass had been matted down with sparse snow. 

Grassy valley, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, November 2025 (No. 4939a)

The surface of the creek was partially frozen, creating translucent reflections. To paint the reflections, I applied a thin wash of dilute blue-grey, let it dry a bit while I worked on other parts of the painting, and then painted in the reflections and transparencies. For the rest of the painting, I made sure to leave enough white showing to indicate snowfall, and to break up the blocks of brown and grey. 

Partially frozen creek, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, November 2025 (No. 4940a)

Turning to the interior of the house, here is a painting of a spider plant in a turquoise pot sitting on the kitchen table. Van Gogh also made still life paintings, and I tried to emulate the style, complete with trippy background. With extreme cold in the forecast, I might do a few still life paintings here in the condo. 

Spider plant turquoise pot, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, November 2025 (No. 4939b)

The other day I noticed that you can see the dark side of the moon if you look closely, its the exact same value as the background sky, but with an orange tint instead of a blue tint. I got the colour about right but the value was too dark. In the rest of the painting you see stars, the houses in the background and some trees from the valley in the foreground. I was sitting at the kitchen table looking out for this one. 

Two toned half moon, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, November 2025  (No. 4937b)

 

Polymerase chain reaction thermal cycler, clinical analysis laboratory

That is quite a blog title, let me explain each word. Polymerase is the name of an enzyme, that is a protein that transforms one thing into another, more specifically this enzyme can replicate ribonucleic acid (RNA). RNA are the messages the body uses as instructions to make other things. Chain reaction is the name of the chemical steps that cause RNA to be replicated, just a few RNA molecules can turn into millions and billions. The thermal cycler is the machine you see in the foreground of the painting, it will automatically change the temperature of the reaction over the course of several hours, which makes the chain reaction keep going. Finally, clinical analysis is the name of the laboratory area where the device is located. In the background you see a cell culture area, where immune cells can be grown in incubators with carbon dioxide tanks, and the box with the chair is a sterile area where the cells can be handled. This painting is actually going to be a gift for one of the masters students who recently graduated. Its been a tradition for the last few years that graduates get a painting, although not always a lab painting but in this case it was requested after the last one, western blot apparatus, was a big hit with the lab members.

Thermal cycler, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, October 2024

Western Blot Apparatus

Here is a rare painting of a western blot apparatus, used in the research laboratory to measure proteins. The device on the right in red and green is the chamber, it pulls proteins through a gelatinous rectangle floating in a buffered saline solution. On the left is the power pack that supplies electricity. A bottle of ponceau sits in the middle, it is a pink dye used to stain the proteins after the test completes to check for quality. Other accoutrements like graduate cyclinder, basin, blue sharpie, gel comb, pipette with loading tip, and a Styrofoam box adorn the picture. Like all labs, a jumble of shelves, doors and eerie fluorescent lamps complete the scene. Unlike the TV shows, real labs tend to be well it but rather bland, so I had to arrange these objects and select some colourful items to create a good still life arrangement. Van Gogh did a painting called Still Life with Coffee Pot, which inspired some of the composition and idea for this one.

Western Blot Apparatus, watercolour 8 x 10" 80lb, May 2024 (No. 3882)