Lamp Post, Barcelona, Spain

This painting shows the Gaudi cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. The cathedral spires can be seen in the sprawling city, reaching above the mountains and into the sky. I am sitting in a park near the old olympic village, on a nice grassy area on the sloping hill side. In the trees in the middle ground, you can see scary faces, which were inspired by the nightmare-like appearance of the Gaudi cathedral exterior.

You may notice he green reflection on the bottom part of the lamp bulb. White objects always reflect the surrounding colours, in this case the green grass below. Part of the reflection contains blue (from the sky), and the rest of the bulb is pure white from the bright sun. The bulb-shadow appears to be very light and full of colour, this effect is done by placing a very dark shadow directly underneath. The dark shadow on the lamp post provides enough contrast to make the other shadow look light and delicate.


Barcelona, Lamp post View of Cathedral, 5x7" cold press paper 1998 (No. 0875-2)

The Worms Take Over

Here, I am showing an abstract painting based on a short story that I wrote recently. The subject of the story was a group of homeless people living in a junkyard, and they had the ability to eat garbage and digest it. On one passage, one of the children has a nightmare that worms have eaten everything on the planet, and people that remain are primitive and fight for their lives against the worms. In the painting, three people with weapons find shelter under a tree while hundreds of worms crawl past in the moonlight. Incidentally, I wrote a similar story under the title 'the worms take over the world' when I was in gradeschool, I may still have a copy around, it was even illustrated.

Techniques in this painting include latex-masking fluid for the stars, tree branches, and the worms (see discussion for Cosmetic Makeup). The dark colours are a combination of ultramarine blue (dark blue) and burnt sienna (brown), as well as windsor yellow. The nearly black parts are based on alzarian crimson (dark red) and virdian (dark green). The dark highlights are applied last over top of the lighter tones. I placed the shadows on the people and worms to make the moonlight really pop out at you. The pale blue glow was applied last with thin layer of transparent blue paint.

The Worms Take Over, 5 x 8" cold press, 2008 (No. 1726)

White Wall Shadow, Cordoba, Spain

From the '98 Spainish collection, this painting was done in southern Spain in a city called Cordoba on a very hot day. I remember that I was sitting on a rock to do this painting, and beside me I had all of my socks drying on the rocks, which I had just washed that morning. The baking-hot sun did a good job on the socks. In the picture you can see the evidence of the sun, a clear blue sky, the bright white plaster wall, and the shadows cast by the trees.

The trick to painting shadows is to avoid the use of black paint. The shadows in the Cordoba painting are a mixture of cerulean blue (an opaque sky blue), and a few touches of french ultramarine, aurelian yellow, and rose madder genuine (a transparent pink). This colour combination is similar to the one I use for the sky, but it has a little more of the red and yellow added. Notice how the colour of the shadow varies; on the wall facing you, the shadow is a colder purple, while the wall that is facing the tree is tinted with light orange (because of the reflected light from the other wall). I will talk more about painting light and shadows more in the future as this is one of the most important aspects of landscape painting.

Cordoba, White Wall Shadow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1998 (No. 0947)

Monkey Thinking, Gibraltar, Spain/UK

This scene was painted on location in Gibraltar, Spain/UK in 1998. I was half way up the rock of Gibraltar when I came upon this animal, which is technically an ape, not a monkey I suppose. The funny thing about doing this painting was that the monkey actually sat still and posed for me, and as soon as I finished, the monkey got up and left. I wish people would be so helpful when you painted them.

You can tell how hot it was from the way the paint
dried. The sky has several visible brush strokes, which indicates that the paint dried very fast. The hot temperature also allowed a lot of overlapping detail. You can see the bars of the fence overlapping the mountains in the distance, and all of the detail in the monkeys fur. To be honest, the monkeys were kind of gross, and if you let them, they would jump on you and try to steal things. But hey, they looked cute.

Monkey Thinking, watercolour, 5 x 7" hot press, 1998 (No. 0930)

City Hall Square, London, Ontario, Canada

 

This scene was painted on location in London (Ontario!). The name of the city is often the source of great confusion. Many packages were mailed to London, England and then re-directed to London Ontario. The packages would arrive at work with a million stamps and labels attached. Often we wished that we could go to London, England to pick up the errant packages but the boss would not pay to fly us out there.

People often ask me how long it takes to paint a picture. Or sometimes they ask 'how long have you been painting for?' to which I usually answer '15 years, but not all on this painting.' Incidentally, a picture like this would take close to an hour. A less detailed painting could take about 30-45 minutes. The studio work (most abstracts) can take anywhere from 3 hours to 3 months depending on the size and complexity. The paintings that took the most time were 'Tuscan Vineyard', 'Lab Book #7, Construction at site 22', and 'Cosmetic Makeup', each one took about 50 hours of painting time.

City Hall Square, watercolour (No. ?) 

Ben's Deli

On several occasions I have painted scenes that disappear shortly after. The most eerie occasion was a barn I painted a picture of back in Bolton Ontario which burned down a couple of weeks later. I went back and painted another picture of the smoldering embers of the barn. In this painting you see Ben's Deli before the waiter strike and eventual closing of the famous restaurant. In the window you see customers sitting and eating and you may see a few pissed off waiters.

When you paint a scene you want the light and shadows to stay the same for awhile so you can have time to paint it properly. Painting in the city is very tricky because the sun tends to go down quick and the shadows from the building change. The light was coming in from the right side of the scene and going down fast. So I had to memorize a lot of the light patterns as they changed.
It is also important to have sunlight on your own body to keep warm, and to have the same lighting on your paper. I sat myself on the opposite sidewalk, in a spot where the sun came down on me and the paining. If you do this, the colours are rich and true to what you actually see.

Ben's Deli, watercolour 5.5 x 9" cold press, 2006 (No. 1098)

A Man Loosing His Umbrella

The umbrella is a metaphor; it is something we can all loose at times in our life. In our modern age we have all sorts of objects that we carry around with us and can forget about if we do not think of them enough. Like an umbrella you put under the table or leave on the bus, and then the next time it rains you wonder where it went. Did the cave-men loose their stone tools? I wonder. Fortunately we also have friends that can help us along. And in this case I had a friend who had found the lost umbrella.

A Man Loosing His Umbrella, watercolour 7.5 x 11" cold press, 2008 (No. 1593)