Sailboats at Macdonald Marine

24 x 30

Oil on canvas

I know this is quite a change from my previous posts. I entered a "contest" at the upcoming show (the Artist Project) that I am doing Feb 20. Even though I'm exhausted from painting, I committed to the contest which is called "Set Sail". I looked through my marina files (photos I have taken over the years at different marinas on Lake Ontario) and found one that I thought would be good to paint. Well....it was really really difficult. I had the water pretty much the way I wanted it, and then the mast reflection had to go in. What a mess.  It was more about paint removal than putting paint on.

These sail boats are moored at Macdonal Marine in Hamilton.

Under the Gardiner,Toronto

30x48 oil on canvas

Toronto's Gardiner Expressway runs along the lake and divides the city of Toronto from Lake Ontario. Not a great idea, but when it was built no one was concerned about the industrial lands along Lake Ontario. Now of course, with condos along the water and much of the industry gone, everyone wants the Gardiner gone.

I liked the way the concrete pillars receded into the distance on this messy day. Without a lot of interest in the concrete highway of the foreground, I got out my palette knife to create texture and some interest.

Late Evening on Bay Street

30x48 oil on canvas

When painting city scenes at night, it seems there are no rules for warm and cool colours. With daylight, a warm light creates cool shadows. In cool light, shadows are warm and light areas are cool. Its hard to follow these rules in a city at night. There are many types of city lights: incandescent, flourescent, mercury vapor, sodium, Led, etc. Each one has its own colour. I find more and more lights that create a green hue, which of course adds a green hue to everything around it. ( not a good mix with the warmer yellow lights). Green traffic lights are more turquoise now rather than green. I suppose the rules apply, but it seems much more complicated.

These street lights are warm, creating warm colours on the surrounding buildings. The iron fence in the foregroundis from the National Club.

Thanks to John Tavares for the use of this photo reference.

King and Spadina

30x48

I needed a break from squinting at night lights so I thought I would do an early evening rain. I allowed myself to do a little more detail in this one. The image is cropped a bit due to the difficulty in photographing a dark wet painting. (I removed glare the easy way rather than using photoshop) Photographing dark paintings poses many problems and oil paint dries unevenly so getting a good photo is not possible at this stage.
(Thanks to Ben Roffelsen for the photo reference)