Ville St. Pierre, Early Spring

 

Elm Park is one of the few green spaces in Ville St. Pierre which is an extension of Lachine. I painted Elm Park before but it was a bit later in the spring when things were greener. At the time I figured nobody had ever made a watercolour painting here before, well here is the second one I have done. The design was changed here to show more of the path and less of the wall in the background. The wall of concrete pillars almost becomes a forest at first glance. The shadow mixes were a bit lighter this time around, which gives a warm spring glow to the scene.

Elm Park, Early Spring, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No. 2588b)

 

The highway overpasses in the neighborhood dominate the skyline. Three trees were in the shadow of the mighty concrete structure, their very tips finding the slightest bit of light. I painted the entire background and middle ground slope of grass, then overlaid the trees with a mix of burnt umber (PBr7) and indothrene blue (PB60). It looks like the trees are holding up the highway!

Overpass and Three Trees, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No. 2589b)

Signs of Spring

Today's goal was to find signs of spring. In the first painting the trees were just starting to make their leaf buds, visible in among the branches and new shoots. I liked the way the central tree was in silhouette against the illuminated brick wall. For the shadows I used raw umber with other earth colours which became muddy. The illuminated brick wall is quite accurate, just the shadow mix need some adjusting.

West Broadway Street, Tree Silhouette, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No. 2588a)

 

Speaking of signs of spring, here is a bike I last painted during the winter, but without the snow. It is also attached to the same sign. Instead of using earth colours in the shadow, this time I used higher chroma synthetics including perylene red (PR179), indothrene blue (PB60),  yellow (PY185), and a touch of the raw umber, which have a much more colourful and lighter shadow. I think the balance is somewhere in between, start with a high chroma mix then break it with a bit of earth paint. The sunlit portions of the brick is fine though, really captures the hue.

Harley Street Red Bicycle, after the Thaw, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No. 2589a)

Tangled Earth

These earth colours are subtle but can still have visual impact. For example in the background I contrast Venetian red with umber a greenish yellow. Dark raw umber provides contrast for the pale yellow and oranges. In the last earth test, colour adjustments, I included some of the bright synthetic yellow orange and red, but in doing so it made the earth colours look drab and lifeless. In this painting the earth colours are only comparable to each other. Since I have not gone out on a paint trip yet, I decided to tackle a larger version of this painting, using a poster sized paper. 

5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No. 2603b)

Lachine Park Point

Hi fans! Today was a holiday but I had a slow day. For painting the idea was a short trip nearby but my bike took me to Lachine park point. Last time I was here the ice floes were beautiful and the weather was brutal. It was much nicer today, I dressed full polar with moose mitts and woolie long johns. The scene looking west up the river was back lit and overcast until about half way through the painting when the sun came out. Staring directly into the glare, the tree seemed to disappear. I kept thinking transparent watercolour throughout the effort whatever that means. Tomorrow we will see, I will do a longer trip if I can. I used my old palette for this one, the only paint I missed was umber. 

 
Lachine Park Point Glare 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No. 2587)

Strained Glass, and Colour Adjustments

With mediocre weather I've spent most of the time indoors working on abstract paintings, partly due to some cold damage I took to my hands over the winter, and a general feeling of wanting to paint spring leaves or something cheery. When I went to the point I found some colourful shipping containers, and other scenes of interest. In this painting I was inspired by a sunset we saw on a walk, and included interesting colour contrasts with green blue and chartreuse. The idea came from some recent thoughts on 'transparent watercolour', which proposed that watercolour paint acts like stained glass by transmitting coloured light, which is not exactly true. The theory itself is strained, and can be easily debunked with facts as seen in Handprint.com (MacEvoy), the counter arguement is presented on the Transparent Watercolour Society of America. As I wrote in an earlier blog, I think the results are the same no matter what people think, watercolours are supposed to be light and bright, not dark and muddy. Unless an artists wants dark muddy, then they have every right to do that!

Since I was taught with this idea, my painting style generally follows the transparent rules, even if the science behind it is false. For example, I never use white paint, rather all the white in my paintings is showing through from the paper. The paper is slightly off white, and it does not transmit though the paint, rather the light from the paper is reflecting in between the particles of pigment which mixes. Thus, the pale blue you see in this painting is a mixture of off-white light from the paper that is adjacent to the blue light from the pigment, and your eye reads it as pale blue. 

Strained Glass 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No 2603a)

 

With so many earth colours now (I have almost 20) it has been fun to explore their potential strengths and weaknesses. On their own they can be drab and lifeless, but with the right contrasts they are great supporting colours, and can really glow depeneding on context. Here, I juxtaposed pale yellow with dark brown, which accentuates the pale yellow. I also added high chroma (bright) colours in strategic locations to make it pop. As I was painting this, some complex issues related to diversity in my workplace were going through my mind. So their is a subliminal message on diversity and inclusion that  permeates the painting, but not an idea I formed literally. So it's opened to interpretation.

Colour Adjustments 5.5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, April 2021 (No. 2602b)

Opaque Ideas, Last Rain

 I did a little more reading on this 'controversy' between transparent colour and body colour. As expected Handprint.com (MacEvoy) had an extensive explanation debunking the whole theory that light can bounce off the paper and travel through a layer of watercolour pigments on its way back to your eye. Watercolour pigments are like any pigment, they absorb light and reflect light, but they do not transmit light. Boring science aside, I think everyone is talking about the same thing- you definitely don't want watercolours to get thick and muddy. In the test painting above, I really tried to be a bad artist and use my opaque pigments at full strength including bismuth vanadate (PY184), venetian red (PR101), benzi orange (PO36) and burnt sienna (PBr7). The only difference really was how much water I added- the opaque paints looked fine when diluted, but they looked a little 'over cooked' when applied full strength. But then again, so did the prussian blue one of the most 'transparent' pigments there is, it also looked bad at full strength. As MacEvoy pointed out it is all a matter of finding the right dilution. 

5.5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2601b)

 

This painting also used the opaques venetian red and bismuth yellow, along with the prussian blue. I've been researching one of the next World Inspired paintings, this time Brazil! The book I read described the Amazon river and rain forest destruction which was saddening and maddening especially for Cilei who is from Brazil. In the painting, the water is drying up and the mountains are scorched, while the plant is literally walking around and trying to catch the last rain. The World Inspired Brazil will not look anything like this because I try to avoid politicizing the series, but it will be on the theme of the Amazon River and rain forest. 

Last Rain, 5.5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2602a)

Two More Abstract Experiments

I had a craving to use the earth colours from Stonegrond paint after a bout of reading up on them on the internet. Most earth colours contain iron oxides to varying degrees, their content ranges from 10%- 90% depending on the pigment. The hydration state, and presence of other compounds like manganese oxide, clay, and silicate can also alter their properties. Most earth pigments are manufactured from iron ore slag waste, but some still come from the few remaining pigment mines in Europe mostly. In the painting I used them all! The main contrast element was the yellow ochre (PY43) and roman black (PBk11) with burnt sienna (PBr7) in the front brick wall around the staircase. I added some dilute ferrari red (PR254), ultramarine (PB29) and manganese violet (PV16) to the top and corner elements.

Ochre Alley, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2599b)

 

This was also an exploration of the earth colours, including green earth (PG23). From these small experiments I learned that value contrast is important to use in the compositions, since the colours themselves are rather dull on their own. I am slowly figuring out the earth colours, I have about 20 of them now. I used a thin (transparent) wash of manganese violet between the green fence thing which really made the green pop out.

I stumbled across something called the transparent watercolor society of America, they had a cool gallery of masterpiece watercolor paintings on their site, some looked just like photos! They said something odd about the judging, the paintings were not supposed to have too much body colour. I couldn't find further explanation, but it seems that using the watercolour in thin washes rather than thick brushstrokes is their preferred technique. Then I found another site by John Lovitt that said opaque paints can be transparent, transparent paints can be opaque, and you can use these properties to create great effects. The two sources seemed a bit contradictory.

In the end the only rule in art is that there are no rules! But you have to know a rule before you can break it.

Flower Samurai, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2601a)