Big brush, small paper
Posted: September 8, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alvaro Castagnet, watercolour, workshop 21 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.
The view from my studio
Posted: August 3, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: hydrangeas, still life, watercolour, window sill 18 CommentsWe’ve had a lot of rain over the past two days. So much that my hydrangeas are flopping over and blocking the view from my studio window. It was my intention to paint the old bottles on the window sill today, but when I saw the hydrangeas, I thought I would incorporate them into my painting. It was a bit of an odd experiment because usually things outside the window are further away and often lighter in value, or at least treated with a lighter range of values to separate inside and outside. But in this case they were right up against the glass so I incorporated lots of darks.
Painted on a quarter sheet of Saunders Waterford, CP, 140 lb, using a limited palette of Burnt Sienna, Quinacridone Gold, Payne’s Grey and Carbazole Violet. And a bit of Titanium White at the very end for highlights.
Zinnias
Posted: July 31, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, flowers, watercolour, zinnias 27 CommentsMy favourite thing this summer season is going to the U-pick garden when I collect my weekly CSA farmer basket at Ferme Tournesol. This year the zinnias have been terrific — such a variety of different shapes and bright colours for me to paint. For this summer bouquet, I used a palette that I have filled with bright Holbein reds, pinks and oranges that were just right for this bouquet.
I am still waiting for my scanner cable, but it should arrive tonight. One of the things I like about scanned watercolours is that I don’t pick up the paper texture like I do with a photo. But for now, this will suffice. Painted on a block of Millford paper.
Less than perfect
Posted: June 29, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: flower painting, watercolour 15 CommentsIn my studio, I still have piles of sketches (from this spring’s travels) waiting to be scanned. Here’s one from my recent workshop in Connecticut. The property of the inn where we were based has beautiful landscaping and plenty of hanging baskets and flowers in containers. But for a first day exercise we used a limited triad (Cobalt Blue, Quinacridone Rose and Hansa Yellow) and I chose a less than perfect subject for my demo. And by less than perfect, I mean I chose the only dead plant on the property to paint, much to the dismay of Pat, my organizer. The yellowing banana leaves were a great contrast in shape and colour to the blooming plants next to them but I have a feeling that by the time the next painter arrives at the inn, this pot will be relegated to the recovery garden. This was painted on a block of Millford CP paper, 10″ x 14″.
Sand on my scanner
Posted: June 10, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: beach sketches, Crete, Greece, watercolour 11 CommentsHi! I’ve been absent for a few weeks, on a family holiday in Crete. I’ve missed writing, but since it was a family holiday, I wanted to be fully present for whatever activities everyone wanted to do. It turned out that there was a lot of time spent sitting on various beaches, which is where I spent most of my drawing time. It’s also the reason that when I opened my sketchbook to scan my sketches, a whole pile of sand fell out.
With all this beach time on my hands, I had the opportunity to change the way I work. I didn’t use my big sketchbook, I hardly used good brushes at all, and I tried some new materials too! It was great to mix things up a bit.
Early on in the holiday I decided that I would focus on drawing people. I hardly ever get the opportunity to do this, and isn’t the beach the perfect place? There are lots of exposed body parts, people hold their poses for a long time, and there’s a variety of ages and sizes of the models.
Since I didn’t want to get my sable brushes full of sand, nor did I want to juggle water containers, I used a water brush most of the time. It’s not the most precise of tools, but it gets the job done. And as the week went on, I got a little better at using it and began to appreciate how my already small sketch kit could be reduced even further. These were done in a Hahnemuhle cotton sketchbook, 8″ x 5″ size. It was the perfect size to fit in my beach bag next to my sunscreen and towel. And once I clean the sand off my scanner, I’ll post some more of my beach sketches.
Alison’s daffodils
Posted: May 11, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bouquet, daffodils, flowers, watercolour 4 CommentsI am very grateful to my friend Alison. When she read that I couldn’t find daffodils at the store, she picked an amazing bouquet from her own garden and went out of her way to bring it to me. Alison is the best gardener that I know and she’s especially skilled at growing bulbs and spring flowers. Lucky me. My bouquet is far more interesting than what I would have picked up at a store.
Since it’s impossible to get dark values with yellow, I tried to get variety in colour temperature. I used all the yellows I have on my palette: Lemon Yellow (greenish and cool), Hansa Yellow Medium (a primary yellow, in the middle of the other two) and New Gamboge (a very orange yellow). For the orange edges of the centres of the flower, I added a bit of Quinacridone Coral. Painted in my sketchbook on Saunders Waterford paper, 10″ x 11″.
Ten tulips
Posted: May 6, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: flowers, tulips, watercolour 15 CommentsMy reward for suffering through some miserable dental work was flowers. Through the freezing and the drilling and the general discomfort of the whole thing, all I could think about was flowers. The ones I was going to buy for myself at the florist shop downstairs from the dentist’s office. I was really hoping for daffodils but I guess the season is over, at least at that shop. I must have missed it when I was in Vietnam, so I bought some yellow tulips instead.
The florist had just received the flowers from her supplier when I arrived in the shop, mouth half-frozen. I mumbled my request to her and made my way home to paint them. In a day or two the flowers will open and the leaves will unfold, but in that moment there was something beautiful about the compact form of the ten tulips wrapped tightly wrapped together, waiting for me to draw them.
Last day of winter
Posted: March 19, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Hudson, railway crossing, watercolour, winter, winter scene 11 CommentsYou don’t need many colours to paint on a dull day like today. From Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red and Hansa Yellow I was able to mix the soft grey of the sky, the dark grey of the road, the muted grey of the distant trees and the warm neutral of the bollards. The snow was falling quite heavily at times which required a few brief moments of turning the wipers on, but it was worth it to be out there, capturing this last-day-of-winter scene. Painted from my car studio, on a pad of Arches CP paper, 10″ x 14″.
Pop!
Posted: February 23, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: marmalade, still life, watercolour 20 CommentsThe Seville oranges arrived in our local grocery store last week. We wait for them in January or February so that we can make enough marmalade for the year, and this year we were especially excited because we had a new recipe to try, thanks to our friends Andrew and Eleanor. We’ve never been completely successful in getting the proportions right but this is the best recipe ever. There are no shortcuts as far as slicing all the peel and separating the pith, but it’s worth the effort.
While I was waiting for the lids to pop, I painted the jars. I used a wet-in-wet technique because I wanted to get some of that orange colour in the reflections. If you want the recipe for the orange tones, I used Hansa Yellow, New Gamboge, Quincridone Rose and Burnt Sienna. If you want the recipe for the marmalade, you can find it here.
Sunday walk in the boatyard
Posted: January 4, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: boats, hudson yacht club, watercolour, winter, winter boats 22 CommentsIt’s been cold in Montreal. Very cold. But with a pre-warmed car and some heavy boots on, I managed to do some painting (from my car) at the boatyard in Hudson this morning. The giant shrouded boats are always a favourite of mine. I don’t often see anyone when I’m parked there, but today I had a little company: a couple walking their black lab. Lucky me! I grabbed a small brush and added them in, making sure to check where their heads and feet lined up with the boats. I think it makes it so much more interesting to have them in there for scale. Painted on a 12″ x 9″ block of Milford paper from St. Cuthberts Mill.
