Between 6th and 12th

Sunday morning is always a favourite time to paint street scenes — before the stores open and the bustle of the day starts. I love to have the street to myself, and that section of Notre Dame in Lachine, between about 6th and 12th, is ideal because of that small town feel and the old warehouse at the end of the street that closes off the view. I don’t often use pure red in my paintings but that section of the street is lined with red lampposts, so I used a limited palette of organic vermillion, cobalt blue, burnt sienna, cerulean blue and indanthrane blue. Not so limited really, but mostly reds and blues. Painted on Arches 140 lb, cold press, 15″ x 11″. About 2 hours.

Bird island

Photographing my paintings from my West Coast trip the other day reminded me that I had also travelled to the very easternmost point in Canada that same summer. There are still some scenes from Newfoundland that haven’t been painted, so I thought I would work on one of those today. Elliston (previously known as Bird Island because of the puffin colonies) is on the Bonavista Peninsula. I walked out to that far rock to see the puffins (on another rock hidden from view) but at the top of the rock I was on, there was the most unusual sight — dozens of single black bird wings (not puffins), separated from heads and torsos, scattered on the top of the hill. It was strangely horrifying and not something I’m likely to forget any time soon. In this scene, I painted the sky first starting with a  diluted wash of Raw Sienna. I find that if I don’t add that touch of yellow, a sky composed of only greys or blues is a little bit flat. Once that warm wash is on, I used a mix of Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna for the clouds. Painted on 1/8 sheet of Arches cold press paper, 11″ x 7.5″.

Mackaye Harbor

Two summers ago I had the chance to travel to the West Coast of both Canada and the USA.  One of the places that I will never forget from that trip was Lopez Island, where I took a watercolour workshop with Tom Hoffmann. The skies on Lopez are amazing. The clouds must swirl around the San Juan Islands constantly because they often look like smudges in the sky. When I returned home that summer I painted a full sheet watercolour of the view of Mackaye Harbour, but I never got around to photographing it until today when I was shooting some other large format watercolours.

A question about paper

Can watercolour paper deteriorate over time? I’m asking because I don’t know the answer to this question. I received some old Arches paper, stacks of it really, both 140 and 300 lb, cold press and rough finishes. I’ve been using it occasionally, but have never really been satisfied with the results. In fact, it made me think I didn’t like Arches paper at all, which is in fact not true. I’m not sure  where the paper was stored, but I am pretty certain it was kept dry. When I take a brush to it, the texture is just not right, and the paper seems flat and seems to have lost its sharp edge, if that makes any sense.

This first sketch is one I painted on new Arches paper. When I run a dryish brush along the paper I get what I am looking for, which is a textured line. I am also happy with the way the paint granulates in the hills and valleys of the paper.

The second sketch is a detail of the same setup, painted on the old stock of Arches paper. The granulation is much less apparent and I can’t get those nice edge effects. I am curious to hear if you have had a similar experience with old paper. If this paper is no good, I am wondering why I’m letting it take up shelf space in my studio.

Cold, cold

My neighbour’s yard, sketched on a very cold day, through the fog of a terrible cold. I haven’t taken a sick day in years but I stayed home today to get over this, and since I don’t really know how to do nothing, I sketched. The view through the fallen fence to the next yard is best at the end of the afternoon when the shadows are long. When I look at this now, it seems a bit fuzzy, which perfectly matches how I feel today.

Awful beautiful

Awfully cold but very beautiful in Montreal today. Too cold to even sit in a pre-heated car to paint, so this was done from my window, on Arches 140 lb cold press paper (because when the snow is this blinding you need really white paper!) The weatherman says that this is the coldest day since last winter, and tomorrow will be much the same.

Azur on the Orange line

I don’t often get to ride the Montreal subway, but when I do, I look forward to the opportunity to do some people sketching. It’s an unpredictable experience because your model could hop up at any moment and get off the train and oops, there goes the drawing you just started. I was pretty lucky today. I was only on the Orange Line for 15 minutes but the two models I drew sat still for quite a while. I was able to draw one guy twice when he decided to close his eyes and take a little snooze.

Coincidentally, I also ended up on one of the brand new AZUR trains, which just started running last Sunday. So far they are only operating at non-peak hours, so I guess I just happened to get lucky. If you haven’t been on one yet, they’re pretty cool. You can walk from one end of the train to the other because the cars are all open, and as advertised, they are roomier and brighter. The short experience made me long for a free afternoon to spend riding the train and sketching the people.

Park here, paint that

I’m not sure why this is, but every time I choose to  paint from my car, there’s light snow falling which makes it difficult to look out the front window. I end up turning to my left and painting what I see out the (drier) side window. I don’t really care what I draw — I just want to draw something during the short time I have — but that can frequently leave me with some strange subjects in my sketchbook, or at least some oddly cropped views. I liken this one to painting the model from the knees down. I could see a bit of old house, a bit of old tree, a bit of foreground, and not much else. With closeup views like this, ink and wash work better than watercolour alone, no doubt because of the varied surface textures. Drawn with a Platinum Carbon pen on Fluid watercolour paper.

Visibility: poor

A snow fog descended over Montreal today, wrapping the city in mist. Even the most mundane of subjects turns to magic in this type of weather. The recipe for the soft layering of trees in the park was to use a triad of colours — none of them very dark or transparent — and build up the values slowly while painting around the bigger white shapes. I’ve recently added Yellow Ochre back into my travel palette, replacing the Raw Sienna that was there, and used it along with Cerulean Blue and Organic Vermilion for this muted triad. I’ve really been enjoying experimenting with triads this year and will incorporate these lessons into my summer workshops.  Sketched on Fluid paper, 8″ x 8″. White gouache added to the finer branches at the very end.

Spring on St. Urbain

It’s almost warm enough to sketch outside. In early February?? Seems very unusual for Montreal. In fact, I think the grass is even greening up in some southern facing exposures. With a bit of time to sketch this morning, I found a window seat in a café on St. Viateur, facing north on St. Urbain (with my favourite rooftop water reservoir in the distance). I don’t think the brownstones are quite as colourful as this, but maybe the warmth, the sunny day and the strolling crowds had me thinking that spring may be closer than we think.