Another Attempt at the Canal Path

 

Today I made another attempt at the canal path by bike and it went slightly better but the path still has a thick layer of wet snow. I was standing on the other side of the canal looking to the west, with the sun directly in front. A buoy was trapped in the ice. Part of the canal has been naturalized here. The walls of the canal were removed, a dirt embankment goes into the water, and reeds were planted for about a kilometer. I used a different format today, 6 x 10", which is what you get leftover from cutting 8 x 10" pieces out of a 22 x 30" sheet. I quite like the format, and it will be good for tall buildings.

Frozen Buoy in Canal, watercolour 6 x 10" cold press, March 2023 (No. 3378a)

In ville st Henri, there is a postage-stamp sized park called Square Sir-George-Étienne-Cartier. It is like several postage stamps in a row, stretching all the way down to the canal. With the last light I decided to make a go of it. At least the snow piles made for interesting tree shadows. I was surprised at how blue the shadows came out, I guess all that palette cleansing was worth while! I decided to throw a figure in this one. Since my ability to paint cars has improved substantially, its now time to work on depicting people. 

Snow Piles and Tree Shadows, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, March 2023 (No. 3409b)

Sprayed on Colour (Orange)

Recently I was researching dyes and their use in the food industry. It turns out that oranges are often sprayed with a dye called citrus red #2 which is considered to be a carcinogen possibly harmful to humans (and other animals). The only reason is to make the fruit more appealing at the store.  The assumption is that people will not actually eat the orange peels, and that juice has to made from un-dyed oranges. Chemically, it comes from a petrol-chemical called naphthalene and it has two fused benzene rings. Art pigments used to made from these types of dyes but they are mostly unstable and considered to be toxic. Its banned in California, but Canada still allows it on the peels of oranges. I wonder what happens when it goes into our composter? In the painting, I used benzimidazolone orange, called deep orange, from Da Vinci company, which is considered to be non-toxic. So you could eat one of my paintings and be better off than eating an orange peel, although I would recommend a slice of carrot cake instead.  
 

Sprayed on Colour (Orange), watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, March 2023 (No. 3376a)

Scenes around Caledon

With a fierce snow storm all day, I dipped back into the box of paintings and pulled out some old paintings I did of Bolton and surrounding area. This one shows a flower planter on my parent's back deck, with a view of the ravine trees in the background. Many of the trees were taken down by invasive vines, so last summer I pulled up a bunch of the vines to let some of the trees grow this year.
 

Flower Planter on Deck, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 2001 (No. 0192)

 

Done in the middle of 1996, this would have been among the first location paintings I ever did around the Caledon area. The scene is probably on one of the side roads that stretch north from Bolton. The painting has a lot of texture, it looks like I applied a yellowish wash then painted the green over top. At the time I did not have magenta paint, so the violet would have been ultramarine (PB29) with alizarin crimson (PR83).

Flowers and Fields, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 1996 (No. 0212)

 

Prior to painting on location I would go around and take photos. After getting them developed, yes it was film back then, I could make paintings indoors. I never really had a studio, in fact, this painting was done in the basement of a house I was staying at during undergraduate in London Ontario. The scene is another view from one of the lines around Caledon. I made a larger version of this one and my parent's got it framed. 

Red House Study, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1995 (No. 0203)

 

This was also from a photo I took along one of the lines north of Bolton. I was going for a photorealism style, but got stumped at the cow's face. Over time I went away from using photos and trying to be too realistic. Compare the first painting in today's blog to the the last few and you can see the stylistic change that occurred after the first 5 or 6 years that I painted.

Cow Under Tree Study, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1995 (No. 0207)

Ride down to Canal

After dropping off an item at the thrift store, I made a painting in the parking lot with a view of a huge pile of melting snow and the secret building in the background. Nobody knows what goes on in the secret building, but for some reason you can click on it in google maps and get a virtual tour of its non de script interior. I rather liked the variations of blue and turquoise. The snow pile was very dirty but also had a fresh layer of snow. I am attuned to the nuances  of painting snow.

Snow Melt Parking Lot Green Building, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, March 2023 (No. 3407)

Wanting a change in scenery I headed down to the canal. This view is looking back towards NDG with the beginnings of the escarpment in the background. The sun was shining through the clouds and through the branches of a tree. It is a complex effect to get right, the last time I attempted something like this was out in Lachine last fall. The range of warm browns is quite nice in this painting. I used a combination of umber (PBr7) and benzi orange (PO62) to create the warmth, and indo blue (PB60) for shadows. Yellow ochre provides the glow (PY43). The umber I used, from ShinHan, is the colour of orange pekoe tea with milk.

Escarpment with Sun Shining Through a Tree, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, March 2023 (No. 3408)

 

 

I did the under-painting of this one first, then worked on the Escarpment painting to give it time to dry. The second layer of the trees and shrubs went on to complete the painting. In the middl-eground is the Lachine canal, I was hoping to catch it with some melting ice but it was still frozen and covered in snow.

Canal with Shadows, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, March 2023 (No. 3409a)

World Inspired Landscapes: Honduras

 

Spanning Central America is the tropical, mountainous country of Honduras. Honduras has a mixed ethnicity owing to British and Spanish colonial rule, along with a variety of indigenous groups that remained relatively intact during the hard times. With dense jungles, impassible terrain, and vast swamp lands and rivers, Honduras provided a lot of places for indigenous people to thrive. They became independent as a country in the 19^th century although Mexico laid claim to the land for some time. The United States also interfered on a regular basis to protect the lucrative fruit companies that were operating in Honduras to grow bananas, plantains, pineapples, coffee, and sugar. Despite rampant deforestation, Honduras still has lush cloud jungles, which are forested areas on top of high mountains. 

In the painting, I depicted a tree branch high atop a mountain in the cloud forest, with a rich variety of bromeliads (the pointy ones), ferns, orchids and mossy growths. Since this is supposed to be a landscape series, I composed the tree branch as if it were itself part of a landscape, complete with trees that look they are from an alien planet. The undulations of the branch look like rolling hills. The notion that tree branches could harbor such a garden of tropical plants came from a book on Honduras I got from the library authored by McGaffrey and Spilling.

World Inspired Landscapes: Honduras, watercolour 6 x 9" watercolour paper, March 2023 (No. 3379)

Sunset in Recreation Park

Just down the street there is a large park filled mostly with recreation facilities. The snow within one of the baseball diamonds was smooth and untouched, while the pathway between fences was well trodden. In the background, there was a classic combination of brown and green that is so popular in Montreal, along with a subtle sunset emerging from underneath the cloud cover. I just had light gloves and gear on, yet it felt very cold yesterday due to the moisture. Today it seems we are getting more wet snow.
 

Sunset in Recreation Park, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, March 2023 (No. 3406a)

So Montreal

To close out February I made a painting of Sherbrooke street on a snowy night with a plethora of pylons. It doesn't get more Montreal than a cold winter's night with pylons and construction signs. The cause of the pylons seemed to be related to the sewer systems getting flushed out with hot steam, if I were to guess the pipes were frozen or something. Adding to the ambiance was a steady sleet, cold wet and barely snow. I enjoyed the colours of this scene. The snow took on a variety of greens from the traffic light, reds from the other traffic light, yellowish from a nearby lamp, and greyish violet from the sky. There were plenty of cars going by but they were omitted to make the painting feasible under the circumstances.

Pylons Night Snow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2023 (No. 3405a)