A matter of perspective

Today was supposed to be very hot but it seemed cool and breezy, maybe due to overcast conditions. When the sun popped out it did indeed get toasty out there. I stopped at Beesborough street, an unremarkable suburban street in NDG, that happens to have a good place to stand and paint just beside the Dormez-Vous which you see as the building on the left. The trees were an interesting variety of yellow-greens and chartreuse. 

Perspective is tricky in landscape painting, the scale of things and the shape of linear objects is all affected by distance. The simplest and most widely taught approach is to use a vanishing point, and make all objects scaled or aligned with lines that emanate from the vanishing point. In the painting you can imagine the lines of the road, sidewalk and building converging on a point somewhere in the middle of the scene. The problem with linear perspective is that it only seems to accounts for objects at a certain distance from the viewer. It never seems to work accurately when objects are very close, or very far from your eyes. 

To test perspective, I set up a ruler at a fixed distance from my eye, and then moved an object away from me 1 meter at a time. Then I measured how big the object appeared to be the farther away it got. You can do a simpler version of this by holding your two hands near your face, and moving one hand away until it is about half the size of the other hand. You have to move your hand about 40cm away to have it appear to be half the size of your other hand. Now, try to move your other hand so it is half the size of the hand you moved. It seems like a real stretch now. In fact, in my object test the object had to be about 2.5 meters away to appear one quarter of its original size. 

However I look at it, perspective is not linear, objects that are close to the viewer will loose a lot more of their apparent size than objects that are situated further away. Depth perception is very complex, and I could not find an adequate equation to explain the phenomenon. Perhaps a deceleration curve or inverse log curve. 

What is this to an artist? Sharp angles such as the one you see in the painting above are very hard to get right. I believe the roof line of the building should have been shown as logarithmic, not linear! I was doing a painting of the Lachine Canal a few years ago, in that painting, as I sat quietly, almost meditating, I saw the curvature of the canal wall that I was sitting on. You see in the link, I tried to emulate it by making the straight lines curved. Your brain's visual system is telling you its straight. Anyways, it will take some trigonometry, calculus, and focal point knowledge to figure this one out.   
 

Av. Beesborough View 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2644a)

Silver Dandelions, Trenholme Park

Not far from home, this park used to be called Victoria park I believe, but was renamed Trenholme Park at some point. The dandelions were starting to go to seed, creating a silvery wisp across the field of green grass. The sky was overcast, but still had clouds floating about, which created an interesting silver-on-silver appearance that mirrored the dandelions. I did the trees in a about three layers, working from light to dark, and finishing with some yellow washes, and the bark and branches. After some refinement I have my palette down to a simpler format. Basically I have set up areas for browns, greens, blues, warms (yellow-magenta) and black, using 18 paints. That sounds like a lot of paints, but it is about as low of a number I can go without giving up any convenience, and besides the palette literally holds 18 paints so may as well fill it. For all the other paints I own, I set them up on different palettes for studio paintings, I will make a post about it soon. 

By the way, the heat is starting to come on here, going to be 30℃ tomorrow, time to wake up early. I did a little research into the weather this year and discovered that February 13^th was the coldest day of the winter at more than -20℃ below, I made a blog called deep freeze that day after doing some paintings. If I can do a painting tomorrow that means I will have painted in a 50℃ window (from -20 to +30) in just a little over a 3 months span of time. I will try not to melt, or thaw, or whatever happens in that situation. 

Silver Dandelions NDG, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2642)

Probe meets Probe

Lately various countries have been landing probes on mars for exploration. But what if some other planet sent a probe at the same time? The painting shows just that moment, when probe meets probe. To create the intense red atmosphere of mars I started with an under-painting of graphite grey to establish the shadows, form and some texture. The sky was done with rose-red (PV19, M. Graham), and the surface was burnt sienna deep (PBr7 Da Vinci) and yellow ochre (PY43 Da Vinci). Other colours were dilute organic paints like benzimidazolones and phthalos. Most modern pigments are derived from coal tar (petro-chemical). I found an old document from the mid 19^th century and they were mentioning 'new' coal tar pigments (e.g. aniline) but the authors were commenting on how unstable they were at the time. Since then, azo chemistry was figured out, and that resulted in a whole slew of new 'coal-tar' pigments all around the colour circle. Ironically, the coal tar pigments are extremely light, bright, and colourful in appearance. Actual black pigments are more commonly made from iron oxides or from carbon made by calcinating (burning) petroleum or bones.  I wonder what kind of paint could be made from the surface of mars? It would be pretty expensive I'd imagine.

Probe meets Probe, 9 x 12" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2665b)

Lab Book #23: No More Doodles

What was my new year's resolution? No more doodles? Certainly not, there have been plenty of doodles in the recent lab book. The books are numbered consecutively from when I started doing research in 1997, so that makes 23 books worth of science and some art. Aside from the pandemic, 2020 was rife with protests over social issues such as black lives matter. The painting captures some of the protest idea, it depicts protestors holding signs and a banner, and surrounded by a plethora of doodles. This painting is called a study because I might make a larger more planned out version later this year. It was done on the last of the d'Arches paper that had some issues with it, the colours tend to fade out so I really used strong colours to compensate. On a molecular level, watercolour paper is like a sponge, the pigment will travel into it loosing a bit of intensity along the way. A thin fatty substance called 'sizing' prevents the pigment from going to far into the paper, meaning that it sits nearer the surface and looks brighter as a result.
 

Lab Book #23: No More Doodles Study,  9 x 12" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2665a)

Colour Puzzles

 

Wouldn't these make great puzzles? They are already like puzzles, with each piece somehow aligned with the next. The two swans represent a unity of colours such as the graphite grey and red, or the magenta and blue. For a more literal example of the style check out Addictive Puzzle.

Hue Relationship, 8 x 10" cold press (Winsor and Newton), watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2660b)

 

Earth colours are rusty, earthy, and much like shades of tea or coffee. They also provide a great backdrop for brighter colour. This scene was meant to represent an underground cavern with water, and various forms of like snaking through the crevasses.  

Between Earth, 8 x 10" cold press (D'Arches), watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2661b)

Finally, this painting started to become the inside of a brain on a microscopic level, with connecting axons and astrocytes. In between the brain tissue are little pops of colourful objects that are dreams. Everything we think and dream exists on the grey and red stuff called brain!

Colour Dreaming, 8 x 10" cold press (D'Arches), watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2662b)

Saturday Painting Trip: Sides of Buildings

 

Today's theme was 'colourful sides of buildings'. I rode past these scenes many times and always wanted to do a painting of them but never really stopped. The first example is the side of the Decarie Square shopping mall, it has a minty-green roof, bright red and orange trim, and some old school toffee-coloured concrete walls. Including the two cars this painting took a bit longer than usual, it was done on the new Winsor and Newton cold press paper I picked up recently at Av des Arts. Instead of soaking it, I just cut it this morning and used as is. In fact, it worked great and stayed flat the whole time. I called this one complementary because it has the red-green and blue-orange complements.

Complementary Building 6 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2643)

 

Once you cross under the train tracks via a narrow sidewalk you are in the shopping complex parking lot that leads past the old Hippodrome land and up to Devonshire street. Following it North to Autoroute 40 there is an underpass for pedestrians and bikes that opens into a mixed industrial residential area in the Bois de Franc neighborhood of the St. Laurent borough. This building is actually a sprawling storage warehouse for people's stuff. Getting the colours right was tough, especially that green wall. I applied the colours very bright, because watercolour paint always dries a little duller. I called this one triad because orange, blue-green and violet are a classic colour triad.

Triad Building 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2660a)

 On the way back I stopped at a derelict building just across from the old Hippodrome land, this is actually Jean-Talon west, and seems to be the end or the beginning of Jean-Talon street. Of course I had to put my initials on the graffiti wall. I enjoyed painting the hanging vines on the left of the painting, they were blowing in the wind. The top half of a pickup truck was in the grass. I used all the earth paints for this one, so it was called Earthy building. Today I brought a new palette with me, physically it was new it is to replace my very old one which was all cracked and held together with duct tape. It also has less colours on it which simplified the mixes. Today's paintings were essentially a test of the new paper and paint setup, not to mention my skill at depicting straight lines!

Earthy Building 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2638a)

Thoughts on paint mixing, part 1

I used almost the same group of paints and mixing strategy for about 30 years prior to 2020. The main 5 paints are depicted in panel A of the figure above, they were viridian green, aureolin yellow, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, and french ultramarine. Those paints could produce a wide range of turquoise, brown, black, greens, dull orange and dull purple. In panel B top right, I had cerulean blue and rose madder genuine, along with aureolin yellow, they produced a range of subtle grey mixes for concrete and shadows. To paint sky I combined cerulean and french ultramarine in a separate area of the palette (panel C). As I learned how to paint green it was important to have a separate area for that too, in panel D were greens including some convenience greens, burnt sienna, and yellow. Finally, I had some accent colours that were useful in situations and I used them a lot for abstracts. 

The main advantage of that setup was that each colour area could produce a wide range, but stayed focused on a theme. In particular, the greys and blues had to remain clean, without any of the phthalo green or alizarin crimson which would mess them up. The limitation was that I had to mix a lot, it was almost a matter of pride that I could swish together 4 or 5 paints and come up with something that looked good. When I look back on old paintings, one trip that really impressed me in retrospect, was the 2000 Keystone Colorado seen here and here. The colours required really pushed the limits- warm wood paneling, atmospheric greens on distant mountains, glowing skies, pine greens, and mounds of snow. Clearly I could do a lot with the palette, so why change?

Part 2 of this blog will have to come some time in the future, because I have totally redone my paint selection to remove toxic, obsolete, and non-lightfast paints. If you follow my blog you will see updates from time to time, I added a lot of paints, then simplified it for spring time painting. I would prefer to settle on one way of painting, it is the best way to learn. At some point your paints and palette become an extension of your vision and inspiration requiring no thought whatsoever. But it takes years to get there. One thing I can say is that painting is a life long pursuit, there is always another discovery or improvement to be made just around the corner. 

Note: For the recreation of the pre-2020 palette seen above, I copied alizarin with pyrole red (PR254), with a bit of perylene red (PR179) and quin purple (PV55). The rose madder is actually dilute PV19, and the cerulean is cobalt blue with a touch of phthalo. Aureloin is just PY154 diluted, and sap green is PG36 with PO36. Just wanted to note that replacing those old colours was not too hard.