Less than perfect

Posted: June 29, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , | 14 Comments

In 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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 11 Comments

Hi! 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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

I 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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

My 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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 11 Comments

You 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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 20 Comments

The 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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 22 Comments

It’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.

Liberty Bell Mountain

Posted: November 14, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

Some years ago, after teaching a workshop in Anacortes, WA, we planned to visit our son, then living in Kelowna, B.C. Our new Anacortes friends suggested we take the North Cascades Highway instead of the interstate, as it’s more picturesque. They were so right, and it turned out to be a terrific trip, as we encountered some spectacular landscapes of high granite peaks and turquoise lakes. I even found a bit of time to sketch along the way.

I’ve always wanted to go back to painting some of the scenes from that day. And recently, I had a good reason to go back. As part of my Peaks and Valleys launch week events, yesterday I used a quarter sheet to paint Liberty Bell Mountain, captured in a photo from that drive. If you’d like to see my process for painting this — from value sketch to drawing to final painting — I will be posting all the steps tomorrow in my launch week email update. If you’re not on my email list you can sign up here.

I hope you enjoy seeing the process as much as I loved revisiting that long-ago drive.

Peaks and Valleys: Sketching Mountains in Watercolour

Posted: November 10, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

There’s a lot going on these days. Last week I held my first local in-person workshop, and it was terrific fun. I’ll post about that soon. We also had our first (way too early!) snowfall yesterday. Just a sprinkling, actually, followed by a lot of freezing rain. But this morning there was still snow on the ground, so I am planning to get out there today to sketch a winter scene of some sort.

But the real news? Today I have a new online course on my school website.

I’m very excited to have just launched “Peaks & Valleys: Sketching Mountains in Watercolour“, based on the sketches I created following my recent trip to the French Alps. In this course, we sketch three of my favourite views: a sunlit granite peak all aglow after a storm; a range of snow-covered peaks at 14,000 ft., which I actually sketched following a breathtaking cable car ride; and, of course, the stunning snow-covered Mont Blanc from a valley view.

These scenes are all in the Alps, only because that’s where I happened to be this past summer. But in fact, the sketching techniques we cover can apply to any mountain scene. I just had a look back at some of my older sketchbooks from the Canadian Rockies, the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, as well as mountain ranges in Wyoming, Idaho and Utah. The methods and techniques are the same: tonal values, atmospheric perspective, colour temperature, edge control, etc. In the new course, we also discuss and try out the best brushes for creating those jagged peaks, and how to mix the best greens for near and distant valleys.

As always, there’s a special launch price on Peaks & Valleys: Sketching Mountains in Watercolour, valid this week only. Normally priced at $49 USD or $69 CDN, I’m discounting Peaks & Valleys​ to $42 USD or $59 CDN until midnight (ET) on Sunday, November 16, 2025. If you’d like to know more about this course, have a look at all the info and the course trailer here.

From the post office

Posted: October 22, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 14 Comments

When Canada Post’s striking employees came back on the job last week, I rushed off to the post office to mail a package. The post office in my town is on a busy commercial street but for the first time, I noticed these little red buildings in a field behind some stores. I guess I never noticed them in summer but in autumn they are quite striking with the yellow trees behind them.

I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to do some fall sketching so that I could try out my Lintner palette in the car. I used the universal clamp it comes with to attach it to my steering wheel.

I’ve been painting from my car for over a decade, and have always set up my palette on the passenger seat. But I have to say that it was pretty cool to have the palette and water containers just a few inches away from my painting surface. I keep a third water container in the cup holder between the seats so I can have a really big water reservoir to rinse my bigger brushes, but it’s really useful to have the smaller containers much closer than they used to be. And the clamp has two ball-heads on it so I can level the palette and keep my washes from dripping all over the car. No doubt I will still have paint splatters on the seats, but hopefully fewer than before.

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