Failure to Understand, Something to Learn

Fish can represent good luck or good fortune in some cultures. In the background is a depiction of my fish tank at the time, I can identify fancy tail guppies, a plecko algae eater and the old decorations I had in the tank. I still have the tank stand that was built to last by Dad. The rest of the scene shows living creatures fused to machines, and a herd of wild buffaloes. The foreground shows two buffaloes and an onlooker, or perhaps a dreamer.

The theme has something to do with interactions between humans and animals such as keeping pet fish, manipulating animals through breeding or genetics, or hunting animals to near extinction. Aside from the philosophy here, I am noting the contrasts between neutral, de-saturated hues with bright high chroma hues. The yellow sunset with the buffalo herd in twilight (bottom center) really stands out. My style at the time was dark, lyrical, and contemplative with splashes of light, form and colour. It would stay like this more or less until "The 2010 Solution" where I began a lighter more graphical style. 

22 x 30" cold press, watercolour, 2006

Inner Workings (with glimpse at 2006 palette)

Inside of a painter's mind, filled with ideas, lines, colours, windows to the outside world. An image of a landscape on the bottom right is connected to a computer wafer board in the center to a palette of paint. By now the doodle style and the abstract styles had fused and realistic elements were creeping in. One cool feature of this painting was a faithful replica of my palette in 2006. Nowadays (2020) I am keeping a sketchbook with information on which paints I am using and what my palette looks like but in the old days I was just painting away every day. At the time I would have been living in Montreal in the second year of my postdoctoral fellowship at McGill.

This is a rare glimpse at which paints I had at the time. Indulge me as I 'geek out' here and analyze young Darlington. In the top-left four spots I see burnt sienna (PR101), Hooker's green (PR83+PG7), ultramarine blue (PB29), and viridian hue (PG7). In the mixing area of the top left there are blobs of viridian (PG18), cerulean blue (PB35) and what appears to be raw umber (PBr7). I am a little surprised by this- I was using earth colours in 2006 to make greens!? The bottom left of the palette is just a mixing area it contains Payne's grey (PR83+PBk7+PB27+PB29), viridian (PG18 or PG7), and a colour I can't identify it might be antwerp blue (a form of phthalo blue). Across the right from top to bottom I see cerulean blue, french ultramarine (maybe cobalt?), a warm yellow twice (PY3?), crimson lake (PR83+PR48), alizarin crimson (PR83), rose madder genuine, winsor red (PR254), burnt sienna (PR101), aureolin yellow (PY40). In the area around the thumb hole is rose madder genuine, and cerulean blue. The palette is set up to mix greens on the top left, darks on bottom left, sky blue on top right, warms center right, and clean greys on bottom right. I even copied the kinds of mixes that were on my palette at the time, I see warm neutral greens, darks made with alizarin, viridian and blues, light blues with cerulean, a variety of pinks and oranges, and the neutral greys from the delicate rose madder genuine. The rest of the painting contains examples of all the mixes possible.

What to make of this? I had my favorite combinations of colours and gave them each space on the palette. The mixing areas were based on their use- the blue of sky, the greens and darks for foliage and buildings, the greys for sidewalks and concrete. I had a full range of neutral pastel tones from some interesting pigments. One thing I notice is how awesome the french ultramarine and burnt sienna looked, wish I remembered where they came from, probably Winsor and Newton.

One more note, I hit 100 blogs for the year which equals my highest output in the whole year of 2008 which was the first year of the blog. 

 22 x 24" cold press, watercolour, 2006

Public Highway Drivers (PHD)

Planning out a painting was never my thing- in this case I used a wide 1.5 inch brush and painted out the twisting and turning path in one continuous stroke. Then I set about turning it into a spaghetti bowl of highways, cars and lamp posts. The truck on the top center has the name of the painting (PHD) stenciled on the side. The idea here was that once the journey was over, you would land at the beach and retire in peace. At the time I was nearing the end of completing the PhD degree- the story goes that I was at a family gathering and an Uncle said "I have a PhD too, I am a Public Highway Driver!" indeed he was a truck driver. Thus was born the title to this painting.

Stained glass was a common motif in this phase, the jewel-like colours were fun to paint, and really stood out against the muted browns a greys. Here, I attempted to construct a sunset sky with small tiles of colour. As a whole this paintings worked out pretty well which was a relief after the previous two large works from 2003 were incomplete. PHD is one of those paintings that I could see myself redoing on an even larger format with even better technique in the future. It occurred to me that some of these paintings evolve from doodles, to small paintings, to large paintings, to even larger paintings. Gonna need a bigger portfolio I guess.

22 x 30" cold press, watercolour, 2003-2004

Superencrypted, Floating Cathedral Statues, unfinished

Rarely would I leave a painting unfinished, if it isn't working I tend to paint on the back or cut it up and use for landscape painting. In this case I held on to it, and even worked a bit on it after the initial efforts in 2003. The concept was to create a code using art... a painting with a secret message that could be decoded with some effort. So the patterns were meant to be a one-time cypher pad that looked like a colourful mosaic. I hope to finish it one day. The colours are interesting, in 2003 I had emerald green a discontinued paint from winsor and newton that is actually a convenience mix of white paint, phthalo green, and a nickel yellow. The brown was burnt sienna, and I recall running out and using another brand only to find the hue was slightly different. The red is the impermanent alizarin crimson, and the orange a glaze of aureolin yellow and the crimson. 22 x 30" cold press, watercolour, 2003

Here is another ambitious attempt at abstract work- I combined the themes of doodleism with stained glass and a Gothic theme. The alcoves were to have some profound statues but my limited figure drawing skills made it impossible to complete. Could be worth another try now that my drawing skills have improved. 22 x 30" cold press, watercolour, 2003

St. Lawrence River, view from Park in Lachine

All things come to end, so hopefully this pandemic will too come to an end. The lock-down restrictions have been eased in Quebec although social distancing and personal protective equipment is still recommended. This is the last painting I did on my week off, it happened to be the last day of May. As I sat on the peninsula painting in the strong cold wind, I was getting pelted by hundreds of May Flies, little yellowish flies that hatch into adults for a few days in May or June. There were so many of them that they got into my palette, water, brushes, clothes, and I might have accidentally swallowed one! To remember the moment, I included a few of the little bugs crawling on my bike in the foreground. I also wanted to immortalize my bike, it has taken me many kilometers for the sake of art.

Knowledge and experience go hand in hand, you cant have one without the other. I have been studying handprint.com extensively, it is the greatest art resource for watercolour painters ever created on the internet. One point was that certain pigments dry a lot lighter than they first appear. I always knew this, but handprint had actual numbers. For example prussian blue looses almost 70% of its value and 30% of colour intensity! Putting this to the test, I created what appeared to be a dark blue wash for the water, it really looked bad... then as it dried over the next 10 minutes, is turned into the light sky-blue with a slight green tinge, perfect. After that I used raw umber natural (straw coloured brown) for the greens and the muddy water wave effects. The blogger and instructor Jane Blundell's writings on her website helped convince me on the use of earth colours. The last influence I can list is the group of seven. The day I wrote the blog on Group of 7 homage, I was inspired by Lawren Harris' Montreal River to actually go and paint the St. Lawrence river, complete with wind-swept trees (and May Flies).

As I rode home, cold miserable, and with a slight taste of May Fly (tastes like chicken?), it occurred to me that the 'pandemic blues series' of paintings was finished. It is time to hit the reset button on the art journey. It seemed fitting, last day of May, six months into the year, the pandemic abating, and the poor May flies briefly coming to life. The pandemic blues series began with my first foray into the outside world after the pandemic was announced, a small study on Somerled, NDG where I sat nervously away from the sidewalk, a study of the social consequences at the grocery store lineup, a trip to Nowhere Montreal, and many more.

Of course, I will never stop painting!

7 x 10" rough press, watercolour, May 31st 2020

Renaissance, NDG, Montreal

Bring on a brand new renaissance, 'cause I think I'm ready. Sung by the late Gordon Downy of the Tragically Hip. This is probably not what he was thinking of, but who knows. Renaissance in Montreal is a donation/thrift store where second hand goods a resold at low prices. I have donated a lot of stuff to them over the years and bought a few things too, including a Tragically Hip CD. The parking lot was mostly empty except for a Bell telephone service truck in which the driver was napping, no wonder it takes them so long to do anything. Done as part of the pandemic blues series of paintings, it includes a blue donation bin and a bright blue sky.

Usually I compose art to welcome the viewer's eye into the scene, but the pandemic series mostly have a gap, or a blocker between foreground and middle-ground which says 'stay back!' In this case, the parking lines in perspective provide the distance and spacing. Another cool feature was the roof of the building which see in profile here, appeared to be painted with iron oxide red. Good thing I have iron oxide red (venetian red) in my palette now, it made it easy to get the colour exact!

5 x 7 cold press, watercolour, May 2020

Not out of the woods yet. NDG, Montreal

Tarzan is probably doing okay in the pandemic being naturally isolated and up in the trees. I went to this spot down by the train station in NDG to find some shade and stay away from the sidewalk. The view here is not too interesting but there is a bus stand where the bus waits for a few minutes before commencing their route. When painting busses, cars, animals, things that can move, you have to finish it first. I got the outline down and most of the key colours in time, then the bus took off. My view was partially obscured by several parked cars that I omitted from the scene.

The new brown paints I have were put to good use here. Raw umber natural, a straw-syrup coloured tan, was used to neutralize the greens, and to create the cut tree stump. Raw umber dark shade, a dark chocolate colour, was used for the trees along with some other tints. Venetian red was used for the brick colour with various tints, and burnt sienna for the neutral greys. This year I started using earth colours more starting with the Meldrum painting. The back lights on the bus are pure hues, ferrari red and isoindo yellow, which really pop against the neutral surroundings.

7 x 10" rough press, May 2020