Shards

The ice on Lac St. Louis is breaking up and probably will be gone in a few days with the warmer temperatures we’re having. It was fairly dark this morning when I painted, and a bit hard to see colour in my car studio, so I was mostly thinking about value. I used lots of ultramarine blue, sap green and raw sienna to capture all the subtle colours in the ice.

Rusty

I stopped in Pointe Claire Village on my way to work today and realized two things when I parked my car. 1: I forgot my pencil. 2. I forgot how to draw with an ink line. Wow, drawing skills can get rusty so fast. It doesn’t matter how many of these little sketches I have done over the past year. When I picked up that Pitt pen it was as if I was using it for the first time.

Morning light

We have had so much snow in Montreal this winter but the past few sunny days have been making me optimistic that spring is on its way. One of my favorite backyard subjects is an arrangement of pots under an evergreen tree. They’ve been hidden all winter but one just starting poking out of the snow and that may be a cause for celebration.

Sun!

After many, many, many cloudy days in a row the sun finally came out today. And so did the joggers and the cyclists. It was wonderful to roll down the window of my car, sit in the sun and paint something with sun shining on it.

Boatless

I love working with limited palettes. Today I tried a new one: Cadmium Orange, Ultramarine Blue and Rose Madder. Anything in the cadmium family is quite opaque (I mostly use transparent pigments) and needs to be used in small quantities otherwise it will dull and flatten a wash. But I do love the grays you get my mixing the orange and the blue. Too much orange makes it go green but a little dab of it in a blue wash will give you a wonderful warmish neutral. And if you want to cool it, like in the distant hills, just add a tiny drop of the red.

Circles

I am always looking for repeating elements or patterns in nature that I can use in my paintings to create some sort of rhythm. That’s why I picked this colander to draw today. Little circles within bigger circles, piercing a very big circle sitting on a drain board with circles.

Winter golf

This morning I had only 60 minutes in my car to paint on my way to work. That means no fiddly details, just a series of quick washes hopefully using the right values. Squinting my eyes really helps me to separate shapes into lights, darks and middle values. Of course the fresh snow and the sky were the lightest values but the rest blended into varying shades of gray. What does squinting do? It helps group close values together so I can decide what those middle values will be — in this case the foliage in back of the rocky outcropping and the lighter areas of rock. And the darkest values? The evergreens on the right and left as well as the darker areas of rock and the tree at the top. I might have done things differently if I had done a value sketch in pencil but with no time to spare I did the value sketch in my head and painted fast.

Painted on Fabriano Artistico Extra White, Cold pressed, 140 lb, 9″ x 12″.

Lunch tray

Here’s what you do while you are waiting for the soup to cool: draw it! I keep my smallest Moleskine in my bag along with a Pitt artist pen. Ready for any spare moments that can be used for sketching.

First workshop of the season!

Today is my 500th blog post (and sketch) so it seems fitting to announce my first watercolour workshop for 2013, which will be in Kamouraska, Quebec, from June 3-6, 2013.

Situated on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river, about two hours’ drive north of Quebec City, the village of Kamouraska is one of the most beautiful — and therefore paintworthy — sites in Quebec. Its breathtaking maritime scenery, history and charm were captured in Anne Hebert’s novel, Kamouraska, which Claude Jutra also made into a movie starring Geneviève Bujold. It’s also been a magnet for generations of Canadian and American artists, who have been drawn to its rough, unpolished beauty.

The workshop will consist of four days of instruction, painting, critiques and fellowship. If you think this might interest you or if you want to find out more about the workshop, the place, or how to register, have a look at my updated summer workshops page.

In the coming weeks I will be announcing dates for more workshops, including some in Montreal. It’s going to be a busy summer!