The Crushing Delicate

Inspired by a single, simple thought, yet presented in an abstract, obtuse manner. While you are thinking about what that means, I'll confess that I have been writing a lot of grants these days, those are the things scientists have to write to beg for what little $ the government (especially this one) has set aside for research. A grant is a little like an abstract painting in that sense, simple, yet obtuse...? The difference is that a grant is intended for money, and art is, well, ok, intended for money. Fortunately I've been able to pursue art without pressure for profits, probably how I was able to develop this off-the wall style of doodleism, a kind of surrealism-cubist hybrid style.

I want to talk about taking chances, with your art... in this painting I was convinced that I wanted the background to be a calm, blue sky with fluffy white clouds, but then I decided halfway through to go for a blazing orange sunset.... it looked awful, and I tried to cover it with this dark brown, meanwhile putting in the tangled octopus-like tendrils in the foreground... and it looked even worse. It was a mess... so I pulled out my hogs-hair... a big, thick round brush good for removing rust off a pipe... and proceeded to scrub the entire area... to my amazement it worked... the area I am talking about is the top right area just above the horizon, it ended up looking like a kind of misty twilight. The moral of the story is sometimes you just go for it and make damage control as you go.

The painting is about something very powerful that is never-the-less delicate. The theme reminds me of 'The Juggler', an old painting I did of a clown with a porcelain head juggling hammers (or was it 'The juggling act'?) I struggled with the name of this one, it was either going to be "Crushing Delicate" or "The Crushing Delicate", I decided midway that if it was spectacular enough then I would go with latter. In a lot of ways this painting is a turning point, it's a great combination of the variations of doodleism developed in the last few years, and it balances careful execution with wild- nearly uncontained technique.

22x30" cold press  2012

View from Mont Royal, St. Lawrence River, Montreal

Surely this painting was inspired by the Island of Paradise... Ile de la Reunion. Volatile and passionate, the island served up some of the best landscapes I've ever seen. But alas, this is a much different island, Montreal. I was sitting up at one of the tourist stop-offs up on Mont Royal. Indeed, buses of tourists were stopping to take pictures. In the distance you see St. Lawrence River, with trees and buildings of downtown Montreal filling the middle-ground.

The river was highly reflective on this day, with the sun very bright. To capture this effect, I started by laying down the sky, almost all the way down the painting. Because it was so hot, I was able to let this wash get completely dry (don't try to do this when it's cloudy because the wash will take like half an hour to dry and you can't put anything on top). When dry, I put in the distant mountains using a combination of purple and blue and light green. The rest of the painting is hard to describe... just tried not to force too much detail... and tried to channel the energy of the island..both of them.

6.5x9" cold press, 2012  

"A Little Tacky" Place Jacques Cartier, Montreal

Summer is always a fun time to paint, the sun makes the paint dry fast, and illuminates the scenes with light and colour. This scene is down at Place Jacques Cartier in the old port, old Montreal. It is a touristy area to say the least, the main gathering area being this little stretch of cobblestone road depicted in the painting. Restaurants and colourful awnings line the street, artists and musicians set up shop in the middle. I was drawn to the complementary colour scheme made from the minty green copper roof juxtaposed with the fire-engine red awnings. I almost didn't paint this scene because it was a little tacky, but hey, that's old Montreal.

As the tourists looked on, they must have wondered what I had been smoking, because here was this all-blue version of a landscape. I began the shapes with blue... straight french ultramarine in some cases, in other places a paler grey/blue made from a dab of ultramarine mixed with cerulean (a thick sky blue) and a bit of rose madder. If they had come back in 20 minutes they would have seen the magic of watercolour; once the blue layers were dry I overlayed transparent warm washes... thin browns, reds, and yellow-orange. The combination of the blue wash and the warm wash gives that heavy, warm feeling of the sunlit brick and roof. I had never tried this before to make that emerald green on the central roof (the focal point)... Learn something new every day. I adapted this technique from an article by Steve Hanks, he described a method to paint human skin by layering warm washes on top of cold blue/purple.

7.5 x 11" cold press. July 2012

Alhambra, Granada, Spain

It was a long time ago, in a land far, far away. Granada Spain to be more precise, a major tourist destination in southern Spain that I visited in 1998. I stayed in Granada a few days, painting mostly monuments and interesting architecture, and drinking their aptly named beer, the Alhambra. As you can guess by the architecture the Alhambra was built by moors a long time ago when they controlled most of the south. The pointy/circle arch, and the pastel colours were quite unique.

Painting shadows, I've written about it so many times in my blog but it is just so important when doing landscapes. In reality shadows are filled with colour and light, both the colours from the object itself, and the colours reflected from nearby objects, and from the sky, all combine. Focusing on the shadow below the eave of the main building, you see that the pinkish colour of the wall is represented, as is the faint blue of the sky. The shadow below that, the one that slices across the front of the building has additional peach colouration that comes from the structure on the right. There are a number of ways to capture this effect... it was so long ago so it is difficult to say how I did it, but it looks like I established the colour of the entire wall first, let it dry, and then put a blue/brown wash on top. That's definately the easiest way to do it. I also used the technique of overlaying dark highlights on the shadow, look at the brick pattern above the main door, it provides a dark contrast that makes the shadow look very light and airy.

Another point to make is that this painting is maybe not technically the best, parts are crooked, the washes and edges are messy.... but who cares? When I look at this painting I distinctly remember the FEEL I had that day (even if I can't remember how I painted the shadows), and I hope the viewer gets the same sense. 

5x7" cold press. 1998

Habitat 67

Down in Parc Jean-Drapeau you can see back on to the main island of Montreal. In this scene the Pont de la Concorde can be seen on the right with downtown Montreal in the background, and on the left is Habitat 67, the bizarre condo complex they built back in 1967, now they sell them for like 10 million each. The building is full of gaps and layered condos, so the white square in the middle is just sky. In the foreground the St. Lawrence river rolls by, rapids reflect the brilliant sun.

The scene here was backlit by a strong sun, that means the sun is behind the scene (as opposed to beside it). This presents a few problems, mostly the sun is in your face and on your skin, so you had better have some sun protection. I seldom sit in the sun to do a painting, usually I try to find shade, but this scene was only open at a small point where they had installed a park bench and cleared some of the shrub in front. I like painting backlit scenes, the challenge is to capture the colours in the shadows.. the bridge has this rich minty green, the buildings are deep grape and mocha, the trees a mixture of kiwi, melon, melon, and zucchini.... ok I feel hungry now. Another pointer... to get the shimmering light-effect on the water.... fill your brush with some dark blue, not too wet, and drag the brush sideways (makes a scraping sound), practice this and you can build texture on water... brick, trees you name it.

7.5 x 11" cold press, 2012

More Realistic Growth?

Another day another doodleism painting. Actually it took more than a day to finish it, that is probably the most common question I get... how long does it take? I always wondered what that question meant, how long does it take to do the painting, or how long does it take to learn to do the painting? I suppose the answers to those questions are, a) about 3 hours of painting time, and b) 23 years, and counting (!). I'll post a few more from 1989 when I started with the watercolour. Anyways, back to this painting, I am using doodles that span into my new position at Concordia, yes, even though I teach now I still find time to doodle, just not during class. The landscape element in the middle is a scene out the window of the room where I paint. The title refers to the element on the right, a cubism-like hand growing like a plant until it looks more like a real hand. Originally this was two doodles, one a geometric pattern that morphed into fire, and the other, a blob-hand that became a hyper realistic hand. These two doodles were fused in the painting.

Stylistically this painting builds on "The Paper Chase (No more outlines)" a doodleism painting I finished recently, the main concept is that there are no outlines used to establish the shapes. The other technical element was the quality of the finish... I went over all the edges and blemishes to produce the highest quality image I could.... mainly because, yes I admit it, I have been posting my own paintings as the background to my cell phone, and now I see the work magnified... I noticed that "Addictive Puzzle" has a puzzle piece that is not painted, it is just an outline- incidentally Addictive Puzzle turns out to be one of the "Fan Favorites"based on times viewed. My point is, that now I have to make art that stands up to the scrutiny of a highly magnified cell phone image. Oh, the technology! The technology!

22x 15" cold press 2012

PS you may wonder about the dimensions of the paintings... the full sheet is 22x30 inch, so when you cut it half it is 22x15"... when you cut that in half it is 11 x 15", and then 11x7.5", which explains most of my dimensions used. You can also cut it all into twelve  5x7" with six 5x8" which I use for landscapes often when travelling.

Avenue du Parc- Avenue d'orange?

What defines a landscape, a building, a mountain, a lake, how about construction? Usually I try to find defining scenes...  when in Paris, I painted the Eiffel Tower, ok maybe that example is a little cliche, but you get the point. As I walked around my neighbourhood, it became obvious that the defining feature of Montreal was the construction, in this case on ave du Parc which they have been digging up and repaving for over a year now. The added attraction was the challenge of capturing the fluorescent orange....

That's my cue to explain how to paint fluorescent orange with watercolours. You may be tempted to go out and buy orange paint and then put it on straight, but this has two problems, one there is really no orange paint in most watercolour brands, and two, it would turn out looking flat and brown. Instead, try a glazing technique. I've talked about this in past blogs, mostly in the abstract paintings, in this landscape I used glazing to make the bright orange. To do it, I start by putting down a layer of bright yellow (permanent lemon) in the shape of the signs and other orange elements. Once completely dry I then overlay with a layer of a transparent red like a thin wash of vermillion lake. When I got home, the orange wasn't orange enough, so I put on a third layer of thin vermillion lake, and voila!

Avenue du Parc- Avenue d'orange? 11 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, 2012 (No. 1918)