The Naked Silo

20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009 When I saw this car on Queen Street a few years ago, I was so happy to have my camera with me. This Ford Fairlane is awesome: shiny red paint job, chrome, curves...it may be a horrible, gas-guzzling behemoth, but it's still a car with a ton of charm and personality design-wise and very fun to paint.

1963 Pontiac Parisienne,  private collection 1969 Pontiac GTO both: 20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009 A couple more cars done from reference I shot around Toronto over the years. For my first few car paintings I concentrated on their fronts, but I have multiple photos of most of these and some from interesting reverse angles, so maybe, one day, I'll diversify these "portraits" with some new views. Maybe make a calendar, or something... Apparently, that GTO is also a Pontiac, but I don't know the name/model of the black one. I do find it kinda weird, though, that most of the interesting vintage cars I shot around town just happen to be Pontiacs.

20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009 Here are a few clean energy windmills on a wind farm from a photo I found on the Internet. Enjoy! The tricky part of this painting was to give it enough contrast to separate the white windmills from the light blue sky --but I didn't want to make the sky too dark. I played around a lot with shadows, paint spatters, and wiping away paint from the windmills until I achieved a balance I liked.

20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009 Since my primary interest in painting is the figure (and I still have tons of figurative photo ref to work from and re-interpret), I thought I should try one on Yupo. Immediately, I realized that my usual glazing technique for flesh tones would have to change: I had to mix appropriate colours in various intensities so that glazing was at a minimum (as each time I ran the brush over a dry area, I risked wiping that away) while still letting the paint do what it wanted. Another chaotic element (along with colour mixing on the surface in unpredictable ways): I've discovered that the various surfaces in my studio (including the floor!) aren't perfectly level, so the paint tends to pool in the direction of the downward tilt, so now laying the paper down facing a certain direction (and sometimes rotating it, so the paint pools where I'd like it to) while the paint dries is part of the process. It's complicated, but exciting. An...

1971 Pontiac LeMans 20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009 1949 Oldsmobile Deluxe Coupe 20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009, private collection I'll be showing a number of my new watercolour-on-plastic paintings in the upcoming SpeakEasy Drawing and Painting Show in June (details in this post ), and these cars will definitely be part of the show. I love rendering metal -especially chrome (whether it's in colour or black and white ), and Yupo is pretty amazing for doing this since you can just wipe away areas you want to be white, and with the narrow edge of a brush, the results can be nicely convincing. Along with the interesting and sexy shapes and curves older cars have (compared to modern cars which are more aerodynamic and more fuel-efficient but visually boring), I like their inherent reflectivity and shininess (the hood of the top car is a perfect example of this) which is also fun to render.

both: 20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009 Without trying to sound like an advertisement or paid endorsement ('cause it's not), another thing I like about Yupo is that once the paint is dry, you can erase the bits you don't want. A pefect example in this painting is the swan's neck: there was some overlap of paint where the front of the neck "touches" the water and I wanted clear delineation, so I used a bit of clear water on my brush and simply wiped away the paint, creating a sharp edge. The same goes for the highlights in the beak, the water in both paintings, the clouds, and the top of Krista's arm (among other fiddlybits). To the right of the swan you can see I'm beginning my experimentation with spattering clear water on the paint as it dries on the surface, creating a mottling effect. More of this is seen in my car paintings. Also, on the left and right are some experiments with making the paint run and letting the str...

20" x 26", watercolour on Yupo, 2009 Ever since I started painting, I looked at my watercolour palette and was fascinated by the strange and interesting ways the colours would dry on its plastic surface. Some time later, I saw a display for Yupo synthetic "paper" in an art store that someone had painted on with some watercolours --not an image, really, but abstract colour mixing which looked a lot like my palette. Interest piqued, I bought a few sheets and tried one out immediately. The results were interesting but, as I expected, there was a bit of a struggle getting the paint to do what I wanted --or at least what I was used to with regular watercolour paper. The biggest difference is that regular watercolour paper is absorbent and Yupo is not, so I had to come up with a new way of painting. The results are strange and fantastic, yet still watercolour-y, and I love how my brushes glide over the smooth surface like skates on ice so, a few yea...

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2008,  private collection This is the colour-and-style test companion to the previous painting . This time it's based on a picture from a photo shoot of Ashley in which I dressed her up in Carmen's dress from the opera of the same name. I was briefly working as an opera costumer and had access to many great period costumes, but didn't really have many opportunities to co-ordinate models to play dress-up for my camera. Again, the shadows are interesting, especially in the skirt part with those amazing folds, and I like the way the fan is hiding her face, but it's just nowhere near as dramatic as the colour version from this shoot (or even the one B&W ink painting), but it's still nice and moody.

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2008 This is the most recent painting I've done featuring the Kodak Duaflex , again using extreme lighting to highlight the camera rather than the model. I deliberately wanted to keep the colours very limited here (and another painting I did concurrently) so that it would push me out of my comfort zone, colourwise. Yes, it's effectively "black and white" (nothing new for me there; just click on the tag below for "ink painting"), but the choice of blue shadows/form with a bit of the blue and green underpainting showing through, taught me quite a lot about restraint, colour, and forcing me to see things a little differently. This monochromatic and white-heavy approach was also a bit of a test for a CD cover painting I was planning (which turned out well, but a little different from this).