Experiment in blue

This isn’t my usual way of painting, but I was in the mood to try something a little different today. I painted wet-in-wet on 300 lb Arches paper, which I don’t use very often, (and certainly not for experimentation), but I have some old stock that I wasn’t even sure was good anymore. I wanted to try some soft snow shadows, so I wet the paper completely (only one side is necessary with this thick paper), and then painted the sky and snow shadows with a big flat brush (2″) loaded with Verditer Blue. It’s an interesting blue that I think is a good substitute for Cobalt in winter scenes and I’ll definitely be trying it again.

Disappearing panorama

It’s been a while since I sketched the view of Montreal from the 5th floor of the school where I work. I usually do this when I have a long break between classes, and that hasn’t happened in some time. But this semester I find myself with an excessively long break, and on brutally cold days like today when even painting in the car is not an option, this location is ideal. There’s a heater at my feet, a wide window sill for my paints and sketchpad, and often a group of students looking over my shoulder, chatting with me as I paint. It could be worse. On most days, the view is clearer, but there were snow squalls all day today so a soft apparition of the mountain appeared and disappeared as I painted. Magic.

Blue Monday

Blue Monday. The third Monday in January. Supposedly the most depressing day of the year. I assumed the concept was concocted to give radio announcers something to talk about, but Wikipedia says it originates from a press release put out by a travel company back in 2005. None of this has any connection to my day though, except that it gave me an idea for colour in my sketch. Painted on a snowy Monday in Montreal, in a Fabriano watercolour sketchbook, mostly with Cobalt Teal, Verditer Blue and Indigo.

Draw wherever you are

In my frustration at not having much time to get to life drawing classes, I have been carrying around a thin sketchbook and some pencils in my bag, hoping to draw some faces when I have a moment. I was at a nursing home today and drew some of the people listening to the music. My chair was at the back of the room so most had their backs to me, but I got in a few good profiles.

Cemetery road

It happens quite often. Just as I’m about to finish a painting a few people will walk into the scene at the right time for me to add them in. This cemetery is full of dog walkers (some who stared at the strange intruder painting in her car) and these two appeared just as I was packing up. I grabbed my brush and with a few strokes, placed them on the road. Painted on a Saunders Waterford Cold Press block, 9″ x 12″.

Two guys at the window

It’s good to get out of your comfort zone, right? I pushed myself this morning to do a little sketching at Starbucks because I never draw in interior spaces. I used a small Canson sketchbook clearly not made for watercolour, and painted with the black from my little Van Gogh travel watercolour palette. This little scene looked ideal when I started to draw (and Starbucks was empty), but it turned out that it was where people wait in line for their lattes, so the display was often blocked by customers. I forced myself to stick with it though, because, like some sort of bitter-tasting pill, it was good for me.

Alice in the corner

I spent the day looking through drawing books in preparation for a workshop I’m giving at school tomorrow along with some fellow teachers. I won’t go into too many details, but it’s basically about drawing in the digital world, and how we motivate students to use pencil and paper. Because I most often work in small sketchbooks, I sometimes forget how wonderful it is to do a large pencil drawing. Leafing through the drawing books and seeing works in pencil or charcoal by some of my favourite artists pushed me to take out a large sketchpad (14″ x 17″) and do a pencil drawing on a paper that has the proper tooth for graphite. It was a pleasure to spend a bit of time with Alice after our walk. And it made me realize how much I miss life drawing.

Spot relationships

If you’ve purchased Charles Hawthorne’s book “Hawthorne on Painting”, you might want to do what my friend Suhita is thinking of doing, which is to take one of Hawthorne’s ideas at a time and work with that. I tried that today. In the introduction of the Landscape chapter, I read this: If you will only put a spot of color in the right relation to other spots, you will see how little drawing it takes to make form. Let color make form, do not make form and color it. Work with your color as if you were creating mass — like a sculptor with his clay. Interest yourself in the relation of one color to another — in this way your color rather than drawing creates form. The value rather than the drawing make a boat stay behind the piles of a wharf.

With that in mind I went out in search of a nondescript place to paint, nothing too pretty or picturesque (which is easy to find when there’s no snow in January in Montreal) and with no central structure (like a house) in the middle of the scene. Just a bunch of light and dark stuff. I did a bit of pencil drawing to set up the placement of elements on the page, and then with a limited palette of Raw Umber, Cerulean Blue, Organic Vermilion and a touch of Quin Gold, I tried to paint the relationship of shapes, one next to another. Near the end of the sketch, I dipped into some Phthalo Blue because I couldn’t get the darks dark enough to make the wires and the outside staircase. It’s not a great sketch, but it’s a really interesting process and I encourage you to try it next time you go out. Every time you put your brush down, ask yourself a question about what is next to the shape you are painting. How dark is the pole against the sky (very dark) or the pole against the trees (almost the same)? It’s a great exercise in looking. And keep this final quote from Hawthorne in mind: When you go out to paint and things mean only spots of color to you, you have your painter’s eye with you.

Studio still life and sketching materials

There’s nothing more dismal than rain in winter, at least in Montreal. I’d much rather have snow to paint than the big piles of grey slush that are outside my window now. With that in mind I decided today would be a good day to clean up my studio (but not before a bit of sketching) and also create a page with a list of the supplies I use when I go out to draw and paint. I’ve been wanting to create this for some time, and now that it’s a separate section on my blog, I’ll be able to update it as often as I change the colours on my palette. Have a look at the new page here.

Sunrise

If my dog could talk she would tell you that her morning walk was somewhat delayed. When I looked out my window at the sun coming up through the trees, I put off the walk for 30 minutes so I could sketch this scene. It was mostly done with a 1″ flat which is a pretty big brush for an 8″ x 8″ sheet, but I wanted to capture the big shapes of warm and cool light on the snow and houses. There was some morning fog and I vaguely remember the weatherman mentioning a smog warning too, hence the muted tones. My pigments are all on the light side: Cerulean Blue, Hansa Yellow Medium, Pyrrol Orange and Burnt Sienna. Maybe a little Alizarin Crimson in the tree. And if the dog could talk she would tell you that she eventually got her walk.