Rainbow Tie, Year End Tally

 

This painting has a kind of festive feel to it, perfect for when you have to sit at home on new year's eve due to quarantine restrictions. At least I caught up on my catalogue of paintings. Each piece of paper I paint on gets a number, and in some cases I painted on the back of the painting, so the number has an 'a' and 'b'. For example, this painting is on the back of the World Inspired Landscapes: Cambodia painting, which is numbered 2963a.

Rainbow Tie, 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, December 2021 (No. 2963b) 

The final tally for 2021 was 567 paintings! Of course most of those were small 5 x 7 inches, I only did a few large paintings this year such as Saturation Costs. It is more than last year, even though I blogged more last year. This year I was aiming for about one blog a day, so about 30 per month. There was a time when I only painted and blogged occasionally, now since the pandemic it is a regular thing with me. Here is a chart with the number of paintings done from 2015 to 2021.

 

Sand in Sand, Happy New Year!

 

A play on the phrase 'hand in hand' this painting shows a pair of abstract hands in solidarity. The surroundings appear to be an arid desert with a few yurts. I used the Van Gogh paint set to do this painting, they are very bright and intense. 

As the year wound down I reflected on the year's paintings. Next year I would like to continue the landscape painting on locations, and work on the World Inspired Landscape series. I will probably revisit some of the metro stations that were under construction or where the paintings left a little something to be desired. Hopefully we can all travel a bit more freely next year, it would be good to visit some friends and family. Who knows, maybe I will g to Paris, they have over 300 metro stations there. I hope you all enjoyed the blog this year. It certainly helped me to feel more connected and to consolidate the new knowledge. I will keep it up next year, which literally starts tomorrow. Happy new year!

Sand in Sand, 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, December  2021 (No. 2964)

World Inspired Landscapes: Canada!

The World Inspired Landscapes series has been almost entirely based on research and observations from the internet, with the exceptions of Barbados and Brazil which I had visited before. Doing a painting of Canada was funny because I practically do one every day! To set the challenge I decided to focus on Saskatchewan, a province which I have never visited before. With google maps I looked north, really north, to the famous Athabaska Sand Dunes provincial park, next to lake Athabaska and near the border of the Northwest Territories. At first glance you may think that this painting is of Egypt or somewhere else with a desert, then you notice pine trees and a cold looking environment. The location is approximately in the center of Canada, so it represents a good variety of familiar landscape elements.  

World Inspired Landscapes: Canada!,  watercolour 8 x 10" rough press, December 2021 (No. 2960b)

 

This was version 1, I used more yellow ochre and emphasized the sand dunes. The colour register and style just didn't seem rugged and Canadian enough, which I fixed in the final version. To paint the sand dunes correctly, I made many sketches of sand dunes from pictures of real deserts. There are still a lot of countries starting with the letter C.

World Inspired Landscapes: Canada, version 1,  watercolour 8 x 10" rough press, December 2021 (No. 2960a)

Winter Sundown on the St. Lawrence

This scene is of the St. Lawrence with Kahnawake on the opposite shore. The sky was a powerful grey with peach pastels coming through. The white snow contrasted nicely against the shimmering, almost metallic colours of the river. A few bergs were drifting silently, traveling from right to left. There was a large tree tilting over on a diagonal, I painted it a few time before, but decided to leave it out when I saw how beautiful this painting was just with the river and snow. To complete the story, I just added a few brushstrokes on the left of the scene to suggest a tree, and to anchor the composition. 

St. Lawrence River, a Few Bergs, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2021 (No. 2954b)

 

As the sun descended the sky became a salmon-grey blend, with hints of blue. The water created a sumptuous reflection. A few chunks of snowy-white ice floated past. Just one sapling cut the horizontal, barely touching the sky. To capture the neutral pastels I relied on yellow ochre (PY43), with blends of iso blue (PB60) and burnt ochre (PR102). Some pyrol orange (PO73) and benzi yellow (PY154) provided some high chroma punch. A pair of mallard ducks floated by on the current, I wondered where they were headed to.

St. Lawrence River, Snowy Sundown (with a pair of ducks) watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2021 (No. 2956)

Palette Parts

 

After a big year of painting I have been thinking about colour mixing and what I learned. In a previous blog I wrote about my old methods that I used for over twenty years of painting. The pandemic years have really given me time to think and work on the art hobby, one of the few silver linings in the whole thing, and I feel like my understanding of colour mixing has improved a lot. The website Handprint.com was also a big help in deciphering the mysteries of colour vision, theory, and watercolour paint attributes. In this palette cleanser the main goal was to clean my palette which was a salty, muddy mess after doing a bunch of location paintings recently. Perhaps soon I can write an update to my thoughts on colour mixing, because I don't want to keep any secrets.

Palette Parts, 9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, December  2021 (No. 2893b)

Frozen Canal Sunset

 

Winter time brings cold temperatures, snow, and very subtle colour variations. Pastel tones make up the majority of this painting. The cold overcast sky was producing blue shades on the snow while the setting sun produced yellow-orange shades. The sun itself was casting a reflection on the snow, akin to what you may see when the sun sets over a lake. It is a detail I never appreciated before, the snow reflecting the setting sun.

Frozen Canal Sunset, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2021 (No. 2953b)

 

The capture the complex and subtle effects of the sunset on the frozen canal, I had to apply an under painting and let it dry. There was a stiff cold wind to help it dry, but I needed some time to spare. While waiting, I started another painting standing in the exact same spot but looking just off to my right, which is looking north west towards NDG. In between is the rail depot yard, it had many colourful train cars stacked up. After applying the under painting to this one, I worked on the other painting, and did two rounds like that to allow the effects to dry. This painting strategy allowed for more details to be applied on location, like the tree branches, and even my initials hiding on one of the train cars.

Train Cars Sunset, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, December 2021 (No. 2955b)

World Inspired Landscapes: Cameroon

 

Let's talk about the elephant in the room, or how about that giraffe? Cameroon is one of the largest and wealthiest countries in Africa, it has a varied landscape and lots of natural resources. It was formed by the colonial powers after many successive changes. Portugal, Germany, France and England all had an influence on forming what is now Cameroon. France in particular remained the ruling power until Cameroon's relative independence in the mid 20^th century. The country remains divided along cultural lines, with English in the north and French in the south. One neat thing about Cameroon is that they have a lot of animals that live in protected areas. In the painting, you can obviously see the elephant hiding in the bushes. Just kidding. The jagged mountains in the background are called volcanic plugs, they are very prominent in the country, they form when the lava from a volcano cools off and then the surrounding portion erodes, just leaving the solidified magma. 

From reading a book and looking through the internet including wikipedia, google maps, and images, I noticed that Cameroon has a lot of iron-oxide earth colours like burnt sienna and umbers. The greenery was olive tones, with turquoise mountains in the distance. It all seemed interesting but I have painted many scenes of trees and mountains. To make the painting stand out, no pun intended, the actual landscape is seen through the legs of a giraffe. My initial idea was to show the rear-end of the giraffe, which was a composition that Hiroshige once used with a horse. The side view I chose was majestic and played well against the rugged landscape of Cameroon. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Cameroon, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, December 2021 (No. 2959)