Tulips, Cavendish Underpass

 

I made a short bike ride up to a location where I made a painting of tulips back in 2020. The Cavendish underpass that heads up to Cote St. Luc is landscaped with shrubbery and pink tulips that have just started to rise up. There were also dandelions and fresh pine cones surrounding the garden. For contrast, I painted the Cavendish road and the underpass using a variety of greys, which I am very adept at capturing. It will take a few tries to get all the greens and yellows right. With each season comes a new palette of colours.

Tulips, Cavendish Underpass, watercolour 6 x 8" Aquarius II, May 2022 (No. 3004b)

Ground Stone Paint

 

Most paints these days are made from very bright, synthetic pigments that are meant for various industries. The price of these pigments can be very low since they sell them by the ton for making car paint, cosmetics, plastic, wood stains, brick colours, and the list goes on. Fine art paint is a very small segment of the market. Yet there are still 'old fashioned' pigments used to make paint for artists. In this painting I used paints from a Canadian company called Stone Ground Paint, which has a product line that uses mostly natural pigments. These natural paints tend to be hard to work with, it takes more effort to get colour on the paper, and even then it dries somewhat dull. But not every painting needs to be blazing bright. Using these natural paints puts the emphasis on design and brushwork. It is also kind of neat to know that some of these pigments are similar to those used hundreds of years ago.

Ground Stone Paint, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, May 2022

Riding the Wave

Watercolour paint generally comes in two forms, pan or tube. The pan hearkens back to the beginning of watercolour when artists used cakes of pigment that took hours to activate and produced thin washes. Modern pans are formulated for easy re-wetting and super bright colours. In this painting I used the pan format, mostly from Van Gogh company, and some from Stoneground paint. I also squeezed some tube paint into the pan and let it dry, so that is a kind of hybrid. Most companies sell a bit of both formats. I never took to the pan format because they get muddy very quick if you mix paint a lot; they work best if you apply the paint direct to the paper without too much mixing. The pan by the way, is not really a pan, nor is it made from metal, it is just a little plastic container with four sides that holds about 2 mL of paint. The paint is semi-solid, and can last for hundreds of paintings. 

Riding the Wave, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, May 2022

An occasion for colour

Awhile ago I made a painting trip out to Hamilton and found some great views there believe it or not. It was during that trip that I discovered the mixture of purple and green to create the distant trees on the horizon. To create the purple I would have mixed some combination of french ultramarine (PB29), cerulean (PB35), alizarin crimson (PR83) and rose matter (NR8). To that I added phthalo green (PG7). In effect, I was making a duller, bluer version of green, which was the correct colour albeit using a convoluted way of getting there. It is much easier to mix indo blue (PB60) with perylene green (PBk31) but I wouldn't have those paints until over twenty years later. 

After reading Handprint.com by MacEvoy I learned that blue plus yellow does not exactly equal green. It equals purple-grey-green. The reason for that is blue does not actually contain green reflectance unless you use a paint like phthalo blue or cobalt blue with green shades. Yellow on the other hand, is technically a mix of green and red reflectance. Thus, mixing blue plus yellow results in a little bit of blue and red (purple) and a lot of green reflectance, which gives the green appearance. If you are in doubt, examine the painting, and you will see pure green ribbons at the top half of the painting, and some adjacent blue + yellow mixes which look like olive green and army green. The bottom of the painting represents the purples that are within the greens, making their escape!

An occasion for colour, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, May 2022 (No. 3104b)

Two Squirrels Trenholme Park

As the weather continues to warm up the grass is becoming greener and the leaf buds are emerging. In this painting I captured the moment in Trenholme park which is transforming into spring time. As usual there were squirrels looking around for handouts, one is on the ground and the other is climbing the tree, almost camouflaged. Cilei thought it looked like an crocodile which I found amusing, a tree crocodile, camouflaged in Trenholme park. With global warming and climate change, who knows what can happen. 

Another reason for doing this painting was to test out a limited palette, I only used six paints here including carbon black (PBk6), phthalo blue (PB15), red-brown (PBr7/PR101), yellow ochre (PY43), and a smidgen of phthalo green ys (PG36) and benzi yellow (PY175) for the grass effect and new buds. The carbon black was used for the outline, while the blue, ochre, and red-brown were used for the rest of the painting. Just those three colours produced a very dull and muted scene, which made the green and chartreuse really pop. The plan is to try this method out more extensively and really focus in on the drawing elements and less so on the vibrant colour. It may work well in the city, lets call it the 'tourist technique'.

Two Squirrels Trenholme Park, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, May 2022 (No. 3105)

Molissana, the matter of perspective

Molissana is a small deli with fresh pasta, sauce, and deli meats. I tried shopping there a few times but discovered that it is actually a social club for Italian ladies. They show up as soon as the store open and chit chat for eight hours while sampling deli meat. So if you show up to try and buy something then too bad, unless you want to chit chat and stand there for hours. At least the facade is interesting, the slight off-white bricks contrast well with the grey surroundings, and the ochre coloured roof is a challenging shade of orange green neutral. 

On location, the perspective will change depending on where you are looking. Looking at a building this on a 45 degree position I see both sides and the there are two vanishing points. If I look to my right there is one vanishing point. I was thinking about this lately, and concluded that I must look at the same point as I establish the drawing elements. It worked okay here, the perspective on the building looks about right. Its something I worked on a lot the past few years.
 

Molissana, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April  2022 (No. 3104a)

Meeting of the Minds

Many creatures have intelligence, although the jury is still out on humans. Octopi and squid for example can do basic math and solve puzzles, usually in the pursuit of food. In the painting, which was done through pure creativity, there seems to be a number of octopi congregating, or maybe it is just one since they do have 8 tentacles. I only count six though, I guess that means I lack intelligence.
 

Meeting of the Minds, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2022 (No. 3094b)