The Conversation

From one of the smallest watercolour paintings I ever did (doodle study-posted today) to one the largest.... this painting is twice the size of a usual large painting that I do! The image is an artistic interpretation of the inside of a cell, not a jail cell, but a living biological cell. The planet-like thing at the top represents the nucleus. The objects all have their own personality. In the original design there was a stark horizon line, but to create the illusion of endless space I covered it up with clouds and objects. There was also a cartoon-like character with a fishing rod in the foreground that did not go with the overall tone so I covered that up too. Gee, an artist is never supposed to reveal their secrets eh!?

I used several interesting techniques in this painting.. the little white dots over the planet-nucleus were created by throwing some salt on the moist wash. The bubble shapes (vacuoles) were created by dropping paint with a plastic pasteur pipette (borrowed from the lab). I also used the pasteur pipette to drop water onto my palette, this helped to create large volumes of paint needed for the big scale. The design was completely original, no prior doodles were used, I just had a general sense of the composition. It was challenging technically and mentally, you really feel the pressure to paint something great on a large scale.

30x44" hot press. April-May 2013

Doodle Study 2

Here is one of the smallest paintings I ever did, only about two square inches. It was for a contest I entered years ago for miniature paintings. While I did not win the contest one of the judges did buy my entry. The style is very much like Salvador Dali, the barren dessert, the prominent oddly shaped object. Perhaps I will do more miniatures some time?

2.5 x 2.5" cold press. 2004

Geraniums in Rust Pot

Here is an eary work I did in 1991 after taking the watercolour lessons. It is a copy of an oil painting from a calendar, rather than a study of live flowers. By copying oil paintings I learned to create very bright and juicy colours. It is easy using oil paints but takes a little more work using watercolour paints. This early work displays many of the qualities that would mark my work...for example strong colours, brilliant light, and colourful shadows. The signature is quite different than it is today... the scribble signature was developed sometime in the early 90's, there is a piece of paper from that era where I was practicing the scrawl signature maybe it will be worth something someday? 

Geraniums in Rust Pot, 9 x 12" hot press. watercolour paper 1991 (No. 0088)

Love Left Leave Lego

Another doodle painting, completed in the midst of painting the big project (which is now hopefully complete... The Conversation), this one depicts an emotionally painful scene using lego and abstract form. It was based on doodles from my notebooks as usual, these ones would have been sometime during 2012. I have in the past depicted emotional subjects, but usually I hid the message in a highly abstracted design. Painting emotional scenes using lego form was a good compromise, where I could tell a story but still keep an artistic buffer in between. Does that make any sense? If you look into this one, you will also see Beatles lyrics from their great album "Help" which I was coincidentally playing as I painted this one. Their tales of love and love lost were fitting.  As for the bird, I don't know what she is all about but hey, art is definitely a journey.

22x15" cold press. April 2013

Swans near Lake, Stratford, Ontario (updated)

Stratford is a famous little town in Ontario Canada where they have a Shakesphere theater, as well as a big swan lake. I did this painting many years ago on a painting trip, the date escapes me, but I do remember watching the Toronto Raptors in the playoffs against Philadelphia which was 2001, so that must have been the year. It is a very small painting. As I remember the swans did not stay in the same place very long, so it was hard to capture this moment.

When "painting white" in watercolour, you actually just leave the paper blank... so the white swan is actually the white paper. In the style I use (old English) there is no white paint! This means that you have to paint around the object you want to depict. Easier said than done. Here, I had to paint the pond first, leaving a swan-shaped gap. The shape was not quite right, so you can see the brush strokes around the swans which I was using to better define their shapes. It is a hard skill indeed, I may have done a better job of it now. Also, in retrospect, I would have softened the edges a little on the swans. Anyways, hindsight is 20-20! 5x5" cold press, 2001 (excerpt)

 This painting was actually a two parter because I was running out of paper on the trip. Here is the full sheet, with the other painting oriented vertical, a nice scene of the sunlit river. They are on the same piece of paper divided by a line. 5x8" cold press, watercolour, 2001

 

Which Sense?

Another painting I did while procrastinating from the larger painting I'm also working on, this one was based on doodles. The doodles were just following the ones I used to make the last painting (Night Harvest). In fact, I just continually flip through the notebook and use up the doodles, in order, until the painting looks full. Not sure what this painting is all about, the title was because there were many senses depicted in the work.. taste, sight, hearing (I imagine that the people in the middle are playing a concert).

In the last blog I talked about glazing... that's where you overlap layers of paint. You do it by letting the first layer dry, and then applying a second wash. I used that technique extensively throughout this painting. The best example are the dark brown characters in the chairs, they were started with a layer of warm yellow (ochre), which dried overnight. Then I overlayed with cobalt blue. Finally I accented with some darker blues to produce the shadow and volume. Glazing was also used for the tongue-like thing... there are actually three or four layers of alternating blue-purple and red-orange layers. To make the tongue looked smooth, I quickly brushed over the finished product with a moist brush... this is risky to do and takes practice, but what it does is smooth out the appearance... I wanted the tongue to look soft and a little slimy even!

Another quirky note, I painted on the wrong side of the paper... rarely do I make this error anymore, there is nothing really wrong with doing that, but it does change the consistency of the washes, and I found that the overall product finally looked a little more matte instead of glossy, which kind of worked in favour of the overall mellow feeling.

Which Sense? 11 x 15" cold press, watercolour, 2013, (No. 1765)

Night Harvest

Night harvest was based on doodles made at work... of course I am always paying attention at the meetings, drawing just helps me focus ; ) I made the paiting while I was working on a much larger painting. Usually I do one at a time, but the large painting was feeling like work... so this one was a bit of a break. The scene was actually a daylight scene until I made the name for it ... Night Harvest... I then covered the back left part of the sky with the night sky, stars and the moon, and made the background a little grey. It would have been cool to do before and after photos because the scene transformed from daybreak to twilight in a few moments.

The dark red-brown colour in the shark-like things in the front was created from two layers of paint. This is called glazing... the trick is to put down one layer, let it dry completely, and then overlay a second layer. I did the undercolour in a bright pink (permanent rose) and overlayed a deep green (viridian). You need to control the consistancy well... if too thick then it looks like mud... it actually takes a surprisingly thin liayer of green to make the effect work. I first used this combination frequently in the "Three Ringed Flying Circus on Wheels" Seriese, and have employed it now and then ever since.

15x11" cold press. March 2013