New Paint

Recently I removed some of the more toxic paints from my collection of tubes in order to be better for the environment. To replace the blue I got  version of phthalo blue (yellow shade) and quinacridone scarlet (cherry red). They are very transparent and easy to mix together to produce a range of lilacs and purples. With lemon yellow I was able to make various tints and blends. The painting here is a trial of the various colours in washes and layers, along with some ultramarine blue for comparison.

5x 7" cold press, April 2017

The Funeral of Sky Blue

After doing some reading I realized that there were several pigments that contained somewhat toxic ingredients. A few I knew of already, such as cobalt blue and aureolin yellow, and I had stopped using the a long time ago, but there were a few others that I was not aware of including cerulean blue. This version of blue is ideal for painting the sky because it is the exact hue of a sunny-day blue sky. Look in the middle of the painting for a good example. Virtually every outdoor painting I have done has contained cerulean blue, so it was a difficult decision to give it up.  To replace it, I got phthalo blue which it pretty close if you mix with some ultramarine and keep it a thin wash. So I had this tiny bit of cerulean blue left on my palette and decided to memorialize it in this painting called The Funeral of Sky Blue, although it could have been called the retirement of sky blue since other people are probably still using it (some pigments have been outright banned, and more may follow especially in Europe the cadmium colours are under scrutiny). If you are a painter and concerned, search 'the color of art pigment database' and there is an excellent source that tells you the names and alternate names of all pigments. It is easier to use the colour code, for cerulean blue it was PB35 (which I put on the head of the tombstone!). I also learned that one of my other favorite colours alizarin crimson has a suspect lightfastness, that is, the quality of the paint that makes is last in direct sunlight. Alizarin will almost dissapear if kept in direct sunlight for 3 years I read somewhere. I inspected my old paintings and they look fine although they have been in portfolios all this time so kept out of light. Luckily replacing alizarin was easier, I am now using the quinacridones (e.g. PR209) which are low toxic and high lightfast.  Notice the sky does not have any blue in it, which provides another meaning for this painting (global warming). There is another detail, a portrait of Sky Blue when alive is seen in the flower arrangement, it is a square of sky blue. By the way, my other pigment tubes are attending the funeral in the painting.

11 x 15 ' cold press watercolour. 2017

End Products...

There were four paintings all in the same style and in the same location in my collection, and this one was labelled 2014, so I think all four were done around the same time. More recently I started to put the date on each painting so that I could remember when they were done. After over 25 years of painting there is quite a pile of them, and the doodle style, I've been doing that style now since around 2004 or a bit earlier. Time really flies, it feels like yesterday I was sitting in London Ontario painting the vast 'Construction at Site 22" in fact I can almost remember every brush stroke of that painting. The painting in this post, well, I honestly do not remember painting it, which is odd because for 99% of the work I have done there is a clear memory, but then again I was going through an issue at this time that may have affected me. It's a neat painting though, and recently I have been trying to redo it on a larger scale with a bit more... planning!

15x 22" cold press, watercolour. 2014

Winter Scene London Ontario, Canada (post #400!)

Winter is a difficult time to paint watercolours outdoors. When on location at -10 Celsius (that is 14 F!) the paint freezes, the palette freezes, and you butt freezes. Alcohol helps a bit, at least with your butt, but the main solution is to add salt to the water. Even so, the paint will dry with ice crystals leaving a frozen effect in the finished work which you can see if you click on the picture to zoom in. The paint handles more like a crayon than watercolour, and it is nearly impossible to make more than one layer or control the edges properly. Having said all that I love the way these paintings turn out, you really FEEL the cold when you look at this work. I even abbreviated my usual signature here as  P.D probably because I was cold as **** having sat in my little camping chair for 20 minutes in freezing temperature. One little secret, most of the entire bottom half of this painting is just blank paper which produces the brilliant snow effect, and saves a bit of time.

Also cool, this is post number 400 for my blog!

5 x 7" watercolour, really cold press, (No. 455) 1996-1997

Ile de la Réunion wish we were there now.

Here is another painting from the Ile de la Réunion in the Indian Ocean, done atop the old volcanic mountain on the North side of the island. This seemed to be a cafe or restaurant, I was just walking around that day looking for a place to paint and came across the scene.What grabbed my attention was the contrast in yellows and greens, and of course the spectacular ocean view.

Painting water is tricky using watercolours, which is a constant source of irony to me. At Réunion I really worked on getting the brilliant colours of the water right- towards the horizon the colour is more purplish, and then near the coast it seems more emerald green or deep blue. The middle tends to be a deep ultramarine. The sparkling waves are down by quickly dragging the brush across sideways. The other feature of this work is the sun-drenched appearance. The sun is like lemon drops rained down on everything. The umbrella in the foreground is four layers of paint to create the prismatic effect of yellow and shadowed yellow. While you would not know this by looking at the painting, I knew when it was completed that the colours were nearly exactly correct compared to the actual scene. Especially the amazing coral-peach tone of the building.

6 x8 " cold press water colour. 2011

Art Gallery Underground

Art galleries are tucked away in alleys, hidden on corners behind a cul du sac, and in the Montreal underground! In this imaginary landscape there is an art gallery under the highways and roads and ever-present no parking sign that one finds in the city. In the background a futuristic dream condo where only purple cartoon characters can live. And no, I wasn't smoking or drinking anything while painting this. Well I may have been sipping some of that Brazilian tea we got from friends down south, what is in that stuff anyways?

Speaking of inspiration, these paintings are mostly based on doodles done while at work or away at conferences. The composition is put together when I sit down and start painting, same with the colour scheme. This year (2017) I decided to pause for awhile with the doodle approach and go with totally original designs and compositions. The difference is that I draw inspiration from my thought and feeling of the moment, rather than from thoughts and feelings from whenever doodles are made, which can often be 1 year or more in the past. I posted one result (Sympathetic Fire) and a new one is about half done now, it is not completed yet; it goes slower when waiting for inspiration to hit. I also pulled out my suitcase full of old paintings and will take a few scans of those to do blogs.

15 x 11" cold press Watercolour. 2016 (November?)

Ile de la Réunion, interior valley

A while ago I visited this small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean called Ile de la Réunion off the coast of Madagascar located near Mauritious island. After a long and winding narrow road that snaked through the old volcanic mountains, you come upon a hidden valley only known to local farmers and informed residents of the island. The specialties of the region include breathtaking scenery, flavored rum, and a certain kind of smoke-able green leaf with spiky leaves that grows well in the tropical climate. Needless to say all of these things made for quite the experience which hopefully gets conveyed in the painting. The actual scene was a little less exciting than I wanted, so in the painting I used artistic license to amp up the colour scheme and play with the cloud cover a bit to make it look like a storm was brewing. The point of these adjustments was to infuse the painting with what I was feeling, not necessarily what I was seeing. Artists sometimes forget this aspect of landscape painting especially when painting from a source photograph rather than on location. I chose to emphasize the purple-yellow complements, and created scale using a small house in the foreground.

8 x 10" cold press, 2011