Bolton Path with White Flowers

My parents had this painting hanging in their house for about a year, every time I visit I change several of them to keep the art new. Since it was done in Bolton, it never seemed to have made it onto the blog so I scanned it today. I remember walking down this path which goes from the suburb into the Bolton Forest towards the derelict camp. Recently the city widened the path and tamped it down with some sort of adhesive gravel so that people can easily walk in the forest. When standing in the shade was getting attacked by mosquitos, so I had to stand in the hot sun as a deterrent and paint fast! The little white flowers were a real challenge since there had to be a complex negative shape painted around their shapes. The rest of the scene was a high contrast, textural wall of foliage that I depicted with various shades of yellow and green. The path was actually a pastel, almost grey, shade of red. I make it with pyrol red (PR254) carbon black (PBk6) and a decent amount of water.

Bolton Path with White Flowers, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 2022 (No. 3518)

Working Count

Its been a lot of years that I have been painting watercolours, going on 35 now. I clearly remember doing the first one, I looked at the palette and then asked the teacher if I was supposed to add water to the paint? Over 4000 paintings later and it is still just as fun and challenging as it was back then. I am working on the catalogue update, the last one was in late March, since then there are a few hundred more paintings to tally. The number of paintings never mattered to me, and it still doesn't despite the incessant cataloguing that I started during the pandemic when we all had more time on our hands. I do have a sense of progress though, over the past three years. Around 2017 I pulled all the paintings I had out and put them on the kitchen table and had a feeling of uncertainty about what to do next. It seemed as if my skills had reached a plateau. In retrospect what was holding me back was a number of things. My palette was inefficient and my mixing strategy tended to produce a lot of greyish results. I wasn't blogging actively which meant there was little to no interaction with my audience. And I was underestimating the quality of the landscapes in and around Montreal. With the knowledge I obtained during the pandemic by reading MacEvoy's Handprint.com and other sources, and a renewed sense of optimism and engagement, things really did pick up regarding my side career as a visual artist. We will see how things go, each year I tend to evaluate where things are with the art and what kind of goals I might have. In the meantime its just a matter of enjoying the ride. 

Working Count, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper November 2023 (No. 3636b)

Windmill in Lasalle

You may not believe this but Lasalle has a tourist attraction. They even built a little parking lot nearby, and a gazebo with benches lined up where they must give talks or something. I set up under the gazebo and luckily the last of the sun was coming across my left shoulder. The shape of the structure is that of a cone, with a dome on top, and a semi-cricle protrusion that houses the wheel at the top. I suppose it was hooked up to the wind, and the big wheel could be used to drive a grinding device. To paint the scene I sketched out the structure and its windows and door using paint, then established the left highlight and shadow of the main structure. The rest of the painting was done in successive layers, finishing it with the textural elements and details like the old stone wall underneath the balcony. The foliage in the foreground was important for the composition, it gave the windmill a bit of environment, and I squeezed in a bit of the river on the left. There were a lot more trees in the scene but I edited them out to not distract from the obvious star of the painting.

Windmill in Lasalle, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3633)

Point of Park Late Fall

I was at the point of the park near Lachine, looking west up the st Lawrence river. A lot of people congregate here to take in the view and snap photos, and I have made many paintings here before. This scene shows the little beach with seaweed washed up, it smelled like seaweed as I painted. The trees on the shore line become paler and bluer as they recede into the distance. The brushwork is quite nice on this painting, I used a soft synthetic brush with a pointed end that I got from Kama Pigment a few months ago.

Point of Park Late Fall, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3584b)

On the way back the sky turned to dark purple although the sun was still coming through the clouds in some places. One of those hybrid trees near the path, the ones where the bark is brown on the bottom but white on top, had nearly white leaves. Against the dour background it appeared to be illuminated. I actually rode past (you can see the bike path to the right of the tree) then stopped, turned around and made a go of it. Painting white on dark is not possible in traditional watercolour, so I painted the sky first and dabbed in the negative space for the tree. While the painting may not be very accurate, it does have the same shock value that the scene had.
 

Ghost Tree, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3582b)

Ride Down to Canal Nice Cool Day

Along the Maisonneuve bike path there are plenty of old light industrial buildings that used to be autoshops and warehouses. Every year there are less of them as the city converts them into condo developments. The one on the right is fire damaged, I've rode past it plenty of times and always wanted to try and capture the green shingles and interesting plaster wall with graffiti. There were several shades of green which I made with combinations of Pg36, Pg7, PY110 and PBk6. As usual I replaced the graffiti with my own tag. 

Greens on Maisonneuve, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3583a)

 

I've tried to paint this old train bridge before without much success, this time I composed it from the other side of the canal with the interesting iron fence in the foreground. The colour of the old bridge is actually a pale green, probably a mix of chromium green and titanium white, but it came out a little too dark with the mix of PG7, PBk6 and water that I used. It was a complex scene that I navigated with zeal. It helped that the warm sun was creating a pleasant painting atmosphere on an otherwise chilly day.

Old train bridge over canal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3585a)

 

Lastly I turned down what was Monk street and turned west, then finding Hamilton Street on the corner of Denonville. A yellow tree set against a pale violet background caught my eye and I stopped to make a quick painting. There was a very tall chimney that I could only show a little of in the painting. The rest of it was a matter of perspective, and making sure that the yellow tree popped against the background. Adding a dark purple road in the foreground helped with the contrast.

Yellow Tree Auto Shop Verdun, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3586a)

Overcast Sun Autoshop

 When the sky is partly overcast, sometimes the sun is penetrating the cloud cover. It creates a halo effect that cam be quite interesting to paint. I started with a circle of yellow, I made the circle bigger than it needed to be because I always adjust it to be perfectly circular but with each adjustment it gets smaller. When satisfied with the shape, I added a second ring of orange, with more water in the mix, then surrounded by a purplish grey. The purplish grey paint has to have less water then the yellow-orange, so that it creates the feathered-halo effect. It takes awhile to master this technique because the amount of moisture in the paint layers is difficult to judge accurately. To paint a nice sky in watercolour, it is best done in one pass without any fussing or adjustments. The rest of the scene is pretty standard by now, in fact, I have painted the autoshop dozens of times. The new paint on the autoshop is dark magenta, made with magenta (PV19), a touch of blue (PB60), carbon black (PBk6) and water.

Overcast Sun Autoshop, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2023 (No. 3583)

The Bored Room

 

This is an unusual painting, part palette cleanser, part memory, part real life. I was sitting in a plethora of meetings this week which made it difficult to get out and paint at all, but I made a detailed sketch of the scene in one of the board rooms up in the proverbial ivory tower where I was chairing a thesis defense. From memory I recreated the sketch and the scene and filled in some colours. On the left was the drop down screen with Zoom being projected on it, while to the right was a view out the window of campus. The desk in front is a sampling of objects people had in front of them. When you doodle at a meeting like this you have to make it look like you are taking notes. My closest colleagues have figured it out though, one of them even bought some paintings off me few years ago! In the painting I made the zoom screen into an abstract tapestry, and I warped the window frame to give it a trippy vibe.

The Bored Room, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper November 2023 (No. 3657b)