Scenes from Old Montreal, Late Fall

With the cold and damp weather it was a challenge to paint today, I actually did four simultaneous paintings standing on the same spot. The spot was a giant open concrete platform, about an acre, where the Circus sets up their tents in the summer. Looking back towards the city, I got a good view of the skyline. The iconic dome of the Bonsecours market is off to the right, while a row of orange-yellow trees adorn the foreground. The sun was just about down, which created a peachy glow through the colouds. Step one was to do the background, then I let it sit on the ground drying while I worked on the other ones. Step two was to drop in the details, and use lifting techniques to pull the highlights on the dome and metal roof of the market. Despite the challenging conditions, I quickly adapted and used the moist surface to my advantage.

Montreal Skyline late Fall, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3538b)

 

I applied a warm peachy background, let dry as I worked on another painting, then applied the blue and dark purple of the sky, leaving the tower as peach. Then I let dry again, and painted over the bridge, which thankfully held this time around. It was my second try of this scene, the first time the bridge just melted into the background! The rest of the painting was dabbed on with earthy orange, green and brown. It was bitterly cold out here but I held up okay, and the paint only froze over slightly. The last painting was of the ferris wheel, but it was too moist and the image disintegrated. I will try it again if I get the chance and the conditions are better. When painting in the winter there is a limit on what you can do on location. I like these two painting a lot, they really capture the mood and have a vibrant style to them. You can see I forgot to initial this one, I was pretty happy to be done and back on my bike, but I will go initial it before I forget.

Clock Tower and Bridge v2, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3526b)

Views from Parc Gédéon-De Catalogne

 

On my way downtown I stopped at Parc Gédéon-De Catalogne in st Henri, right next to the canal. I recognized this style of sculpture immediately, it looks to be identical to a sculpture up in the Mile End that I painted a few weeks ago. The rest of the scene was very earthy and pale. Tall wispy grass with fuzzy white tops filled a trench that cuts across the park. To paint this I had to do the background and then put the painting down for awhile to let it dry. Then I applied the sculpture using mostly burnt ochre (PR102). The salt in the water and cool overcast sky made for difficult painting today.

Familiar Iron Sculpture, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3659)

 

As I waited for the background of the other painting to dry, I turned 180° and painted this scene of the rusty turquoise water tower that defined the horizon in this hipster neighborhood. Underneath the water tower is a craft beer restaurant, which I painted earlier in the year. In the foreground is the Lachine canal, at a spot where they took down the wall of it and added some earthy slopes and planted rows of reeds. People use that point to sit in the summer, and to go down and fish or let their dog in the water, neither of which are really allowed due to the heavy metal pollution in the canal.

View of Hipster Tower, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3544b)

Sports Field Sundown

What started out as an easy paint quickly turned to a cold rain. Luckily I had nearly finished when the bad weather hit, but in the rush I failed to sign the painting with the usual PJD23. I started with the blue background using a dark neutral blue made from PB60 (indo blue) PB15 (phthalo blue sapphire) and dropped in the clouds which were a mixture of indo blue, red ochre (PR102) and a touch of deep scarlet (PR175). Walking away from the scene the clouds became a distinct orange hue from the sun setting amidst the gloom so I was glad to have captured the effect in the painting as it began. The clouds went from deep purple to a kind of glowing orange which was cool. The rest of the scene was a light illusion, the field lights have a glow around them, and the field has a distinct yellowish highlight on the otherwise greenish astro turf. You can see in the right where I was painting the tree branch details, that is when the rain hit and I had to bail on the scene. Glad I did it though, its a neat looking painting. 

Sports Field Sundown, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3586b)

Wild flowers next to Path, Bolton

I don't know why this painting never made it on the blog, probably because I liked it so much I left it on the kitchen table display for a month after getting home. Cilei gave me a wire frame display rack, meant for propping up books, but I use it to display the latest favorite paintings. Speaking of which it is almost time to start preparing the 'year in review post' which is pretty fun to do. I already know the painting of the year, although there is still some time left to make something better. Its been a great year for painting and the blog got the most views ever largely due to the Brazil, Bolton, and Quebec City trips. In this painting, I stood on a walking path next to the Humber River (which is just to my right but not seen in the painting) and looked back towards the direction of highway 50 which would be just past the end of the path in the background. To paint the wild flowers I had to leave the flower areas blank and then fill them in with colour, followed by some shape adjustment. There were magenta cone flowers from clover, brown eyed Susans, daisies, Queen Anne's lace, and miscellaneous small yellow and white flowers. The idea was to pack the area with as many flowers as possible to give a sense of an overflowing, summery abundance. Actually, the mowed lawn in the top left was perhaps the most impressive lawn I've painted, and it only took a few brush strokes. Although it was just filler it is actually pretty neat. This painting reminds me of Bolton and the summer. 

Wild flowers next to Path Bolton , watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2023 (No. 3622)

First snow on the auto shop

Today we got the first real snow of the season, it accumulated on the ground and on top of cars and trees. By now it has melted with steady rain, and it seems like warmer weather is ahead. Being the first wintery painting of the season I had to make some adjustments to the setup. The clean water has salt in it, and I put the brush directly into the container as I paint. This is to avoid having to pour water into the small glass container that I usually use. Trying to do that with giant mitts on is not feasible. I have a second container for dirty water, so I try to judge when I need clean and when I can use the dirty water. Its a bit technical, but water management is crucial to getting clean colours when painting more than one on a trip. The other consideration is the subject matter. I have to pick a scene that I know I can paint in one layer more or less. That precludes overlapping one object on another, which requires that the first layer dries. If you study this painting, you can see than most of the objects are cleverly surrounded in a layer of snow, which is just the paper showing through. In doing so, it prevents the colour areas from running together. Its been so many years now that I developed an entirely different approach to painting in the summer versus the winter. In the past it took a long adjustment time to adapt to seasonal changes, so I was happy that this one turned out all right. The one thing that I need to get used to is the cold, even at barely -1 Celsius I was feeling it. I painted at -26 Celsius earlier in the year, although its not a record that I want to break!

First snow on the auto shop, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (3483_1b)

So Why Not Try?

 

Here is another painting found in the file, probably from February of this year as it was on the back of another painting done that month. When I saw the title of the painting I thought, isn't that interesting, I wonder what it means. Then I realized there is no blog for this painting so I have to admit I forgot the context. But hey, its a universal message, 'So Why Not Try?". It has the look of a palette cleanser, you can see pretty much all the colours represented, and a strong earth outline using umbers. The colours really shine in real life, the brown is rich and the interior colours are radiant. At some point I plan on picking some of the best of these abstracts and doing larger versions. It would be a good winter time project when the out door painting starts to get difficult.

So Why Not Try? watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, 2023 (No. 3600b)

World Inspired Landscapes: Iran versions 1 and 2

 The World Inspired Landscapes is a series I started just before the pandemic, the idea is to do one painting of each country in the world. Some countries are more problematic than others due to the complex nature of their politics and geography, not to mention human rights issues. The series is meant to depict the landscape in a meaningful way based on imagery and concepts. For Iran, there are a lot of mountains in the region, and going back as far as the Persian Empire the area was a hub of art and culture. The painting depicts a  range of brightly coloured mountains arranged in a repetitive pattern. I actually did these awhile ago and posted version 3. As I work on updating the catalogue I found version 1 and version 2 which seemed worth posting. I am starting up the series again moving on the letter J.

World Inspired Landscapes: Iran version 1, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper 2023

In the second version I kept with the same theme but reduced the repetitiveness of the shapes. I rather prefer version 1 though. This one needed to be on the horizontal format which I did in version 3, and added patterns. After all that, I still prefer version 1! I just realized I already did a blog on these two, but the scans look better with the new scanner so I will just leave this blog up.

World Inspired Landscapes: Iran version 2