A recipe for grey and some great news
Posted: November 10, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Urban Sketchers Symposium 9 CommentsThe colour choices I make for a particular painting or sketch are most often intentional, depending on what I am trying to convey. If it’s a very cold and snowy day, I will likely choose cool blues and purples. If I’m painting in a tropical place, I will probably use lots of yellows and bright greens or oranges. But occasionally, the colours I choose are based on some unplanned disaster that happens after refilling my paint wells. In this case, it was from a runny tube of Naples Yellow that I probably should not have used.
It was an old tube of paint — these are usually hardened and need to be trashed — but when I squeezed it, it still seemed to be moist so I optimistically filled my paint well with it. At first glance, I could tell it was too runny but I was hoping it would eventually congeal. You can see from the photo what it looked like at that point. It eventually oozed its way across my palette, infiltrating a good part of neighbouring colours as well as my mixing area.
But enough about the mechanics of it. I needed to use it up so it’s in a good part of this scene that I painted last week in Hudson, Quebec. It was a grey day to begin with, and I was painting at the end of the afternoon. The sky still had hints of brightness so I started by pre-wetting the sky with Naples Yellow and adding some blue/greys on top of that. I used it for the first wash on the house at the left, as well as in pretty much every grey I mixed after that. Since this Winsor & Newton Naples Yellow has some white in it, it will grey down everything you use it with. So the vegetation is grey, the trees are grey and the grey houses — still grey. And now that I’ve used up pretty much all of it, it will be off to the store for me to get some fresh pigment.
And now for the great news…
I am very thrilled and extremely honoured to be part of the lineup for the next Urban Sketchers Symposium in Toronto in August of next year. As a proud Canadian, I did a little happy dance when the location was announced a few months ago. After years of travelling all over the world to these events, it is so exciting to have sketchers visit us here. If you’re thinking of participating, have a look at the full schedule here. Hope to see you in August!
Fancy shoes
Posted: November 2, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsYesterday was vacuuming day and I spotted these in the back of closet. A little dusty but still beautiful, and even nicer once the dust was gone.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle them (and I may eventually do several versions, maybe with ink or watercolour) but this first try was with graphite (my mechanical pencil with a 2B lead) on Bristol board. Bristol is a great drawing surface because it’s so smooth. You can go over the lines again and again, building up the darks until the surface is shiny and solid grey from layering.
I haven’t drawn shoes in ages but symmetry is always an issue, especially from this angle. Now that I’ve scanned my drawing, I see that the shoe on the right is a little wider than its partner. I was sitting on the stairs going down to my studio to draw these and the shoes were on the floor (because the light from the window was great) but when you are that close to something all you have to do is move your head a bit and one part or another of the shoe gets wider or narrower. Something to remember for the next time I sketch these fancy shoes.
North American Beech
Posted: October 15, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsWe’re having a good autumn in Montreal. Lots of sunny days and spectacular colours in the trees around here. When I was out for a walk with Alice earlier this week, I took a close-up photo of a North American Beech tree in full sun. The leaves were shockingly vivid — bright yellow/green in some places and fading orange in others.
I painted this without a pencil drawing. I just grabbed a new sable brush I received from Rosemary & Co and started painting leaf shapes in yellow/green and rust. I was hoping to capture the juxtaposition of those two main colours set against a dark background. If you follow my newsletter “The Wheelbarrow”, I’ll be posting the step-by-step photos and a description of the process there. If you’re not a subscriber but want to be, here’s a link.
Northeast Harbor AND a free event!
Posted: October 8, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Acadia National Park, Watercolour, Sketching Retreat 2026 Leave a commentI’m just back from a few glorious weeks in Maine. Yes, we got hit with a few days of rain at the tail end of the Nor’easter that made its way up the coast, but mostly we had perfect autumn weather for both weeks of my workshops with Madeline Island School of the Arts. And some of the clearest light was on the days when we were in Northeast Harbor.
I love drawing in that spot because the boats are in a bay with a backdrop of hills and trees. In the two weeks that we were there the colours on those trees turned from green to yellow to orange.
The harbor has both pleasure boats and working boats. We spent lots of time watching the lobster boats come in, unload their catch and go out again. On one of the days we also drew a parade of people emptying out the water from their dinghies after the rains.
And now for the free event…
I’m very excited to be part of Sketching Retreat once again this year. It’s a free 6-day online event with 50+ workshops (mine included!) all about architectural sketching & drawing — both analog and digital techniques.
The event takes place from October 27-November 1, 2026, and it’s one that I am always proud to be a part of because of the quality of the instructors. In the coming days, I look forward to watching videos from people whose work I admire like Simone Ridyard, Darman Angir, Sebastien Thommen and Oliver Hoeller. And of course I look forward to discovering some new sketchers too.
In my demo “The Yellow House: Sketching in Water-Soluble Ink and Wash“, I’ll sketch a half-timbered house I saw this past summer in Alsace. I’ll start by drawing it in copper-coloured water-soluble ink. Then, when I go back in with watercolour, you’ll see how the ink line partially dissolves and blends with the paint pigment. The result is warm and meltingly gorgeous. My recent experiments using water-soluble ink and paint have found their perfect subject! I invite you to watch, and then try it out yourself.
On top of all that, I’ve also prepared a downloadable pdf “10 Ways to Think about Ink” for all the attendees! Here’s the link to register for the free event. Hope to see you there!
September hydrangeas
Posted: September 18, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: flower painting, hydrangeas 18 CommentsIt’s a banner year for my hydrangeas and I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything special to them but the blooms are so huge I had a hard time finding a vase that was big enough to hold them. And I almost needed a ladder to cut the blooms.
Since hydrangeas are so complex, I painted them wet-in-wet. First a light layer of background grey and then light pink (Quin Rose and Yellow Ochre) for the flowers. Into that I started painting the shadow areas and then when the paper was almost dry I added the sharper shapes and the darks. Painted on Saunders Rough 140 lb paper.
Hanging around
Posted: September 16, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alice, dog drawing, pencil drawing 7 CommentsA quarter sheet of paper has been hanging around on my drawing table for months. I keep sliding it over to make room for painting stuff because I know it’s not watercolour paper. It’s way too soft. Is it printmaking paper? Maybe. I don’t remember buying it. I didn’t want to discard it so I used it for this drawing of Alice. As you can see, it takes the 2B pencil well.
As for Alice, she’s been hanging around for a long time too. She turned 13 last month! She’s a little slower on our walks but still perks up when a squirrel crosses our path or when she wants to play with younger dogs in the woods. And as always, she is exceptionally good at hanging around when I want to draw her.
Left on the vine
Posted: September 14, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized 6 CommentsSeptember is the most beautiful month in Montreal. Cool nights, warm days, lots of sun. Today I brought a folding stool out into the garden to sketch what’s left of the cherry tomatoes in my very tiny vegetable patch. Mostly it’s just a mass of curling brown leaves and the last of the fruit on the sagging vines — a complex tangle of bursting juiciness and desiccated dryness. Painted on a block of Milford CP paper, using mostly Sap Green, Sepia, Hansa Yellow and Raw Sienna. With a little red thrown in for the tomatoes.
Close to home
Posted: September 13, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized 14 CommentsI’ve been getting out to sketch and paint in my new neighbourhood, and in my old one too. The other day I spotted this yellow dumpster in Hudson. What would have been a very mundane scene on an overcast day was made a lot more interesting with the sunlight on the front of the dumpster. Someone asked me what I used for the shadow on yellow. I had some Payne’s Grey on my palette and I mixed that into some leftover yellow wash I had in the mixing well. That gave me the greenish dark that seemed to work for the shadow colour.
This morning I went back to the old neighbourhood and parked in my usual spot to look at the boats on the breakwater. I had my easel with me, but with dark clouds on the horizon I decided to paint from my car. It was no easy feat to balance a 12″ x 16″ block of paper on my lap. It’s probably the biggest size I’ve ever worked on in the car. I almost tipped over my palette a few times, I definitely splashed some Naples yellow on the steering wheel when I was painting the sky, and I had a near disaster when a wasp flew into the car. But happily I managed to finish it.
Big brush, small paper
Posted: September 8, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alvaro Castagnet, watercolour, workshop 23 CommentsI’ve just finished jotting down three pages of notes from a weekend workshop in Montreal with the great watercolour painter Alvaro Castagnet. I’m sure plenty more will be added to my notebook as I process all that I tried to absorb over the two days.
A short time ago, I was lucky to see a brief Instagram post advertising the studio workshop, and I jumped at the chance to see Alvaro in my very own city. I’m sure it filled up quickly. Over the two days, we didn’t paint much but we were treated to five half-sheet demos. Three urban scenes, one landscape and one interior. That’s a lot of painting to watch, but all of it was fascinating. And after a spring and summer of being the teacher, it was a joy to be a student again. To watch, to listen, to have time to think about what was happening on Alvaro’s palette and the paper.
If you know Alvaro’s work, you probably know that mood and atmosphere are often used to describe it. He uses lots of greys, reds and blacks in his watercolours. And watching him paint is a bit like catching a glimpse of a chef at work in a busy restaurant kitchen. He draws quickly, he moves back and forth as he grabs brushes and mixes colour, he slashes paint across the paper, he shouts for emphasis, he splatters opaque washes on top of darks, and at the very end he seasons with dabs of white. His demos are done in an hour. It’s exhausting to watch, but oh, so entertaining.
And sprinkled into all of that he describes his thought process and doles out buckets of advice. “Don’t draw, PAINT!” “Values and temperature first!” “Paint small but use a BIG brush!” “Make every brushstroke beautiful!”
We were discouraged from taking notes as he painted lest we miss something happening on the palette or the paper. That was fine with me, but that’s also the reason I jotted down my notes today before I forgot something important.
My first day painting was garbage, but on the second day we painted along with him, as he did each step. I tried to pay more attention to my brushstrokes and the lost and found edges in the painting. Here is Alvaro’s demo.
And here is my version of the same NY scene, done in under an hour before we took a break for lunch.
If you ever see that Alvaro is reaching in your city, or if you can attend a travel workshop with him, you won’t regret it. It’s high-level teaching that really gets you thinking about how you paint. I’m so grateful that I had a chance to learn with him.
Olana, near and far
Posted: September 5, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized 4 CommentsThe best viewpoint to draw Olana (historic home and property of Frederic Church) is from below. That was what we did last year when I brought my workshop group there and that is what we did again last week. The house is situated on the highest point of land on the 250 acre site, and when you approach from the parking area you only see parts of the house. But walk down a slight incline to a flat plateau, turn around, and you get a view of the historic home and museum in all its Persian-inspired glory. It’s especially beautiful on a clear day when the morning sun lights the fanciful brickwork and decorative tiling.
Last year we visited in September when the “The Mingled Garden” was past its prime, but this year there were still lots of flowers to in bloom. If you are a fan of Frederic Church, this year is the 200th anniversary of his birth. Here’s a full list of upcoming events and exhibitions.
