kcp – Artblog

Impasto experiment and landscape featuring ice skaters in Old Montreal

Now up at my Imagekind gallery, here are the pictures I promised of  “Les Patineurs” – I have mixed feelings about this painting – I’m happy about it and then I’m not happy – I guess that it just did not turn out the way I envisioned it – Also the style is very different than my other realistic/illusionistic form paintings – I think that’s what’s bothering me; I know that I can draw/paint better than that but impasto and the use of a palette knife doesn’t give the same finesse and details than with fine and soft sable brushes – Okay, okay, I’ll stop tormenting myself now; it was an experiment anyway, I tried it and that’s that. End of story.

So now here are some close-ups of the skaters – Like I said in my previous article, I selected skaters that I thought were the most representative of the different skaters typically found on a skating rink:

Here is the novice girl – With her arms spread, she’s having a little bit of a hard time keeping the balance:

And now here’s a young couple holding hands:

And here’s another older couple, perhaps in their 30’s or so:

In the far back here are the parents with their little one leaning on a blue construction cone to help keep balance:

This is the mischievous little boy with the yellow toque – I don’t know for sure if he’s really mischievous but he looks that way to me:

Finally here is the one I call Maurice Richard (a hockey legend) – If you go to any skating rink, you are bound to see at least a couple of those young boys (sometimes older) who speed skate through the crowd as if they’re heading for a winning goal on the last period of a Stanley cup playoff game.

At last, I must say that I’m really happy with the work I did of the Bonsecours Market dome and Montreal City Hall’s green roof (yes, that’s our City Hall) – These are perhaps two of the most stunning buildings in Old Montreal. There’s a lot of history behind them, look them up!

The Bonsecours Market dome:

Roof of Montreal City Hall:

Today I have completed “les Patineurs” – I’ll take a picture of it tomorrow and put it up here later – I’m not really happy with it but since it was an experiment I guess that it’s not bad. I guess also that I could have continued working on it for a little while longer but given that I’m unfamiliar with the technique and style, I was afraid of making it worst. For instance I thought of adding a little bit of shade on the ice under the skaters with glazing – I tried but it just looked awful and so I removed it right away – I believe that there comes a time when you must say it’s enough and stop adding to it or else you just end up making yourself go crazy and frustrated – I added a little bit of yellow ochre to enhance some of the details in the buildings and a little bit on the skaters too and that’s it; that’s as far as I’ll go.

What I really like though are the skaters in the far back. Just a few brush strokes is plenty to render their silhouettes – I been working with pictures such as these (above & below) and selected skaters that I thought were the most representative of the different skaters typically found on a skating rink; from the novice girl, the young couple holding hands, the parents teaching their little one leaning on a blue construction cone, this mischievous looking little boy with the yellow toque to the young boy speeding on ice with ease like he thinks he is Maurice Richard (More picture later)

 Although not on the painting, I am on the pictures (see cameo) – I’m the one with the sky blue toque and sunglasses – The person next to me is my friend Maryse; She also used to play tenor in one of my saxophone quartet which unfortunately ceased to exist about a year ago.

I wrote that I would never again work on more than one painting at once and here I am at it again – But this time I’m doing well; I’m on a roll – Plus I’ve got nothing else to do during the holidays. That’s just perfect, that’s just what I wanted for Christmas. No family coming over, no guests (save for a jam session last Friday), no parties to attend to and all the time I want to paint. I try to go to bed early so I get up as early as possible to benefit of as much natural daylight as possible since there isn’t a lot of that around this time of year.

So I put the phyladelphus flowers on the back burner; I was tired of doing green, green, green *Ugh!* bored me to death and it felt kind of weird to paint flowers in the middle of winter and I picked-up two new paintings. The first one is “Les Patineurs” (the skaters) which I picked up from where I have left it last spring – I’m experimenting impasto for the first time with Les Patineurs. It features a typical winter scene; people ice skating on the Old Port basin in front of Bonsecours Market in Old Montreal – So far only the top part is done; the sky, the buildings in the far back, Montreal city hall (for those that don’t know that’s the green roofed building on the far left) and the Bonsecour Market (central building with the beige dome) – Only approximate flat colours have been applied on the ice, the skaters and the snow – I’m working from pictures taken 2 winters ago and for some reason I don’t understand, there is only one tree on the pictures that has snow on its branches; On the painting I decided to put snow on all the trees… it’s prettier.

The other painting I’m working on is a fresh new one. I got the idea when shopping for Christmas gifts. I saw those poinsettias for sale and I couldn’t resist. The vibrant red leaves appealed to me too much (By the way I named my poinsettia “Jules” it suits him well I think) I had just bought a bottle of Porto and knew I had some other bottle of wine over at my place that would go well with Jules the poinsettia – “So what’s missing?” I thought… Oh I know… nuts!!! So I went to the grocery store and bought nuts. As soon as I got home I fetched the old nutcracker that’s been at the bottom of the junk drawer for ages and at last, the final touch: a small oil lamp that was given to me several Christmases ago – Yeah I know, it’s very “Christmassy” – So what? At least next year folks won’t be able to say that I’ve got no real Christmas Creeting cards ;-)

That painting which I don’t know what I’m going to call yet has quite a few challenges: The clear transparent glass of the oil lamp and its flame. Fire, I’ve never done in oil before. As for the clear transparent glass, I’ve done that only once when I was 9 years old, I think. It was not really good. It is not quite like the glass of bottles which is often dark and pretty opaque – Whichever, I been working on that painting for the last 3 days and it is coming nicely – I did the clear glass on today and I think I’m satisfied. As you can see from the pictures I’ve started the poinsettia painting with a medium dark reddish-brown ground colour – This will help create a dramatic chiaroscuro effect – I did the sketch on a piece of paper of the same size as the canvas, then rubbed some charcoal on its backside and traced over the lines to transfer onto the canvas. First thing I painted were the dark negative spaces behind the poinsettia’s foliage with a mixture of Van Dyke brown, Carmin red and a tad of yellow ochre to lighten it a little bit as I don’t want it to be too dark yet. I’ll darken it along the way as needed. I want to work these dark spaces wet on wet along with the poinsettias leaves to successfully lose their edges into the darkness.