Doing a lot of paintings at the moment. Up there is the control building for the revolving bridge that no longer works. It’s from a 2012 photo, and the graffiti is old, and the bike path doesn’t even go by it at the moment.
These two pictures are painted on terrible paper. Sort of like painting on the paper towels you dry your hands with in washrooms. Still, it affords its own effects.
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Seriously, yesterday I went to the Sartec mixer. That’s the Quebec union or group or whatever for French-speaking screenwriters. Got a couple of wires crossed. The meeting was taking place in the reserved salon, three stories up, and I was waiting downstairs in the bar. Met a nice couple who also couldn’t find the meeting, and had a drink with them. After they left, I nursed my pint, and started drawing characters in the bar. Here are a couple of them:
The guy on the left is the Quebec version of George Clooney. The guy on the right is maybe its Roberto Begnini.
Sometimes I worry about what people would think of their pictures, because I do this for myself, not to please others.
However, once I found out that the meeting had been going on all this time, in the suite up above, I sketched a couple of people there:
That’s it for the moment!
Many watercolour types have to spend a lot on sketchbooks, with the proper paper and all. I found these black spiral-bound books at Dollarama, and they’re pretty good for watercolour. I worry about the paper, since it probably isn’t acid-free. Also, it tends to break free from the perforations along the side rather easily. But for sketching, it’s great.
These are some things I’ve been doing during this time.
Painted pictures of “swamps” today, using various random methods. Got paint in my eye. That stung a bit.
Above is “wax resist,” which means drawing on the blank paper with a white china marker. I really can’t tell where it goes beforehand.
This is China Marker, also my dragging the tail of the brush on the paper, which makes little furrows. As well, there’s “backwash,” which is wet paint dripped over already drying paint, which makes little plant-like blooms.
I tried to make a “sun” in the sky with the china marker and yellow, but it didn’t work, so it becomes a box.
I turned this one upside down while drying, and also splattered paint on it by flicking the brush. Hence the paint in the eye. Finished off with a few blasts of compressed air, which produces those spider legs. Altogether fun!
Usually, my paintings are pretty tiny. So it’s nice to break out once in a while, and paint relatively big. (11×10 inches).
And a bonus cyclist!
I like the feeling of a painting taped to a stretching board. It feels solid, unlike the sketchbook paper. So, when I didn’t have to finish a stretched painting I started, I just used it as a place to practice things.
The result reminds me of the local “free graffiti wall” east of here on de Rouen. But this one’s private and just for Yours Truly.
Sometimes I don’t trust the scanner to catch all the little subtleties in light watercolour tones.
The colours on the palette look like little abstract comic panels.
From my second-floor deck. Also, the nearby dog run.
Haven’t been able to write that much, lately. I’ve also got sketches and words from the Blue Met literary fest last weekend, but haven’t organised them. Overcome as I am by end-of-month nerves. Still, here are a couple of things from off my balcony.
The police van pulled away as I was sketching it. But I’ve been drawing a lot of these sorts of things lately, so it was easy enough to fake it.
I don’t know what kind of car this was. As a young man, this sort of thing would be important to me. And I’d know the make and year of most cars simply by the shape of their taillights.
Update: It’s a Toyota Corolla. Who’d have thunk it?
Why am I painting between bouts of painting? Just on the brain, I suppose.
Painted these guys when I was up late last night, watching Youtube. Very tired now, but I worked hard today and solved some problems. So, I’m happy. I don’t think the cats are happy, but maybe they’ll manage.
Stroller woman. Not quite as charming as the ones in the sketches, but I’m not unhappy with how this turned out.
