De l'Eglise Metro Station, green line, Southwest borough , Verdun

Last weekend I got up early Saturday and Sunday to complete my tour of the Southwest borough's metro stations in Lasalle and Verdun. Considering how early it was there was a surprising amount of noise, starting with a sidewalk cleaning truck that had the decibel level of a helicopter, then a street washing truck, then a construction project. I brought earplugs as usual when I'm out in the city but it still created a lot of anxiety. The station is very narrow due to problems they had during construction from the unstable ground underneath, so the architect stacked up the elements like stools under a table. This view gives the appearance of a castle, my notes said 'concrete castle'. The shadow from the sign really grabbed my attention, and the morning shadows on the sidewalk. 8 x10" cold press (block) watercolour, June 2020

The next paining was a frontal view, in fact, the seating options were limited on this dense corner on Wellington Street so I settled for a more conventional angle here. Superimposing the tree and the cylinder (which had the name of the station and some adverts or COVID-19 information) was a challenge against the jigsaw puzzle of a background. The concrete colour was tricky too, in the changing light its tone was getting warmer, so I did a thin wash of isoindolone yellow, as seen in the recent palette clean #2 blog where that colour was used at near full strength.8 x10" cold press (block) watercolour, June 2020

Hoping to find a interesting angle, I investigated the back of the station which was a wide laneway, and found this interesting scene of the backlit walls and a metal structure meant to keep people from climbing onto the roof. The morning sun was striking the background tree and building. At the last moment a pigeon showed up, if you look carefully you will find it! By the now the sun was almost completely up and I was sitting in full frontal sunlight. It was time to go home! Maybe I can call this one 'pigeon's concrete castle' 5 x7" cold press, watercolour, June 2020

After the first painting I also did a pencil sketch of the main architectural elements. There are about 5 pieces as seen from the side view. I liked how the two metro signs (with the down arrow in a circle) were visible at different angles. I just noticed the sketch says Charlevoix in the title, but it was definitely de l'Eglise. Guess my brain was not working so well at 6 AM! 8 x 10" pencil, sketchbook.

These works are part of
'The 27 stations of the green line metro, Montreal' series. I completed Lasalle and Charlevoix stations on Sunday and will post about them this week.

Palette Cleanser #2

Cleaning the palette keeps things fresh for the next painting. Since I have been painting a lot of landscapes lately the palette has been in need of it, but I didn't want to waste the paint so I use it on the cheap (acid free) watercolour paper pad. The point is to just let the creativity flow. If the next colour doesn't match I start a new sheet, and finish it next time. The main colour here in the background is isoindolone yellow, PY110, a yellow-orange pigment I got from Schmincke company that is very useful as a mixer and a glaze. It tends to et very dirty though, and has a slightly tacky consistency in the heat. It is the higher chroma and value version of the umbers or siennas.
9 x 12" acid free paper, watercolour, 2020

Bolton and London Ontario

Going through the old painting collection I found this Bolton scene of the small valley behind my Parents house on the north hill. The painting was done from a photograph as opposed to on location, which was more common for me to do in the mid nineties. I remember doing this painting because I had been reading Zoltan Szabo's book called 'Watercolour Techniques' and he recommended a few colour combinations. I asked Mom to pick up some of them at the art store and sure enough they had the colours which included burnt sienna, antwerp blue, sepia, and a rose coloured paint. It felt remarkable to use these colours, so bright and powerful. Zoltan Szabo's advice on using french ultramarine with burnt sienna would be something I used for the next 20 years of painting. Antwerp blue, a version of PB27 with poor lightfastness, and sepia a mix of raw umber and carbon black, were not to my liking, very dark and staining so I made less use of them. The rose paint was also very useful, I continued to have rose paints in my palette. 

Bolton Valley  8 x 10" 300lb cold press, watercolour 1993 (No. 0038)

As I was going back and forth to London Ontario for my undergraduate degree at Western University, and making lots of paintings there. This scene was done on location, out in the cold, during the thaw. I made good use of the burnt sienna, along with neutralizing complement french ultramarine. It is a very monochrome painting but still full of light and energy. It was always one of my favorites from that era.The data was written on the back, along with a title 'The break up'. Other paintings of the Thames river include Fall Colours, and a view of University College.

The Breakup, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour 1997

Azerbaijan, World Inspired Landscapes

Soon people will start travelling more as the Province relaxes the advisories related to the COVID-19 lockdown. We all hope it is gone for good but this type of virus has been around since the beginning of time, and it will be around forever in some capacity hopefully not as bad as this one. I expect that some public behaviours, and the way the health care system responds to infectious diseases will be changed. Infectious diseases used to be the number one cause of death until heart disease, stroke, and cancer overtook it, at least in developed countries. In fact, more people have died of those other causes than COVID-19 infection in the past six months, but we don't talk at all about reducing heart disease, stroke and cancer. It is odd that way, even HIV/AIDS kills far more people, around 20 million per year, and malaria, but they are seldom discussed or worried about in society

Oh yeah, this blog was supposed to be about the latest 'World Inspired Landscape', featuring Azerbaijan a small country in Eurasia on the Caspian sea and surrounded by several countries including Armenia which was recently featured in Armenia, World Inspired Landscape featuring The Stoneground Paint Co. There was a lot of imagery on Azerbaijan available on the internet, I used many sources and finally created this design from memory and impressions, it is totally original. When the library reopens for borrowing, I want to add book sources but for now I had to rely on internet for my research. Azerbaijan is famous for 'mud volcanoes' which are small to large eruptions of mud that create swirls and textures across the flat lands, they dry and crack in the sun. The painting shows a kind of Mars or Moon-scape using a variety of iron oxide paints and some bloodstone genuine. For contrast, I included a lush temparate scene with cool water and rolling hills in the distance which signifies the abrupt transitions in landscape that I observed in the imagery of Azerbaijan.

8 x 10" cold press (cut from Arches 22x30), watercolour, 2020

Benny Sports Complex, NDG, Montreal

As the heat wave continues I am waking up earlier and earlier to take advantage of the slightly cooler weather in the morning. This scene was done yesterday very early morning at the Benny Sports Complex, which is set to open partially on this coming Monday. The brick is a most interesting shade, a dark neutral magenta which can be captured with venetian red, some pink paint (PR122), and a touch of grey (dilute carbon black). The value was so low but I had to keep it looking bright since it was in direct sun. To complete the illusion, the shadows were painted over top which were even darker and gave the main bricks a luminous glow.

This month I have been rethinking how to paint shadows. Some shadows work fine the way I used to do it, like concrete which takes a blue-violet shadow. But the trees, I am using a dark lime yellow, or neutral grey-green which makes it look a lot more authentic and luminous, like here with the tree notice how intense the shadows are. The grass shadow is actually closer to an olive green or brown. The brick shadow is a blackened version of the brick colour. It will take some more practice to learn how to see the correct colour, and then capture the correct colour which are two different things. In the past, I didn't know what colour I was seeing, although I could capture shadows pretty well using instinct. The paintings have reached a whole new level of light and shadow, I really feel the intensity of the landscape in these small studies.

5 x 7" cold press (cut pieces from 22 x 30" arches),  watercolour, June 2020

Cultural Center, NDG, Montreal

I had a long day working from the home office/kitchen today trying to solve a lot of problems related to getting the research laboratory restarted, and potential new graduate students. With the sun setting, I found a spot to sit behind the NDG cultural center, it is almost the same scene as Spring Leaf Buds, or the more centered view of Cultural Center, but I'm sitting on the opposite side. The sun was coming in on a sharp angle, causing yellow light to reflect off the alternating white and red panels. On the shadow side colours were muted and more dark or bluish. The greens of the garden had golden green highlights.

When I looked at this scene before painting it, I was not confident that I could do it because the building is not a simple square, the sidewalk slopes downwards from the road, and the majority of the colours here were complex tones and tints. It was a challenging perspective. I had to paint more so with 'my mind' than 'my heart', that is, I thought a lot about what the colours were supposed to be, not what I though they were. It is hard to describe, but when lighting conditions are strange, your visual system plays tricks on you. I really wanted to get the sparkling highlight, a strong glare that you could hardly look at directly, which was located on the top right of the structure. The last thing I did was a yellow-orange glaze to give the sunset-feel on the side of the building and sidewalk.

7 x 10" rough press (last piece from the block), watercolour, June 2020

Verdun Metro Station, green line, southwest borough, Verdun

Verdun was a working class neighborhood that had a big expansion in the post war era. Since then it has slowly gentrified, that is, more condos, restaurants, new developments. To my eye it seems to be always under construction. At least the metro station was not surrounded by barriers like the previous station Jolicoeur that I painted. The first view was looking eastward along Rue de Verdun with the station framing the left part of the painting, and a depanneur in the background. If you didn't know better you would assume the depanneur was the station! As usual bike racks are tough to paint, but I had confidence from Amsterdam bike racks, a painting done of hundreds of bikes. I did the Verdun set last weekend when I had more time for painting. 7 x 10" cold press, watercolour, June 2020

The next view was looking at the back of the building at a sealed off door that was badly marked up and dirty. I studied the scaffolding design in more detail here, it is a double layered nest of tetrahedrons. Sitting up on a grass embankment, I could see my own reflection in the left window and captured it in the painting, but it wasn't as detailed as this self portrait. Next to me there was a large air vent and I could here the metro cars underneath stopping, starting, and whizzing by. 5 x 6.5" cold press, watercolour, June 2020

Time for one more painting, I wanted something natural, and showing off more of the large park behind the station. The big curved interlocking brick walkway made for interesting shapes and curves in the foreground. An empty fountain provided a splash of blue from its tile-work. I really like the colour register of these three paintings, they are black, blue, green, dusty rose, with splashes of brown. It was neat to compare these three to the previous three paintings from Jolicoeur station which have a totally different vibe- more bright, black purple orange green and contrast. 7 x 10" cold press, watercolour, June 2020

I made two sketches, the first one is looking across Verdun street at the secondary entrance to the station  (most stations have 2, or even up to 4 or more entrances). There were interesting reflections in the dark glass, and great contrasts with the tree and neighboring brick buildings. 8 x 10" pencil, sketch book, June 2020

And this one, which was a preliminary sketch done for the painting. The composition was inspired by a painting I did at Beaver Lake awhile ago. Hiroshige and Vincent Van Gogh used this kind of composition, where the walkway occupies half or more of the design, making the viewer feel like they are walking down the path. It is a very immersive element, you always want the viewer to feel like they belong in the landscape and the visual information will make them feel that way. In pandemic blues series I cut off the visual spaces to create tension of being locked up, in this series, it is important for the viewer to feel like they are walking up to the station enjoying a nice day.

 8 x 10" pencil, sketch book, June 2020