The bike ride down here in rush hour is something else, a lot of noise and vehicle pollution. By the time I was done painting, I felt calmer and the long week of paperwork, teaching and meetings seemed a little farther away. This scene of the gantry crane reflecting in the canal while the sun was setting seemed impossible to paint and I kept riding over the foot bridge, but no sooner had the thought entered my mind than I slammed the brakes and turned around. The composition used a triangle format in the top left where the canal walls, foliage and base of the crane appears. The remaining 4/5 of the painting shows the surface of the canal reflecting the crane and the sunset. I painted the reflection by applying a 5 part HSV blend... hue saturation chroma is what it stands for, essentially it means that I vary the lightness, colour, and the intensity from a brownish blue, to blue, neutral cyan, orange and red-orange. When it dried I could paint over the multi-coloured ripples and the squiggly, broken reflection.
Gantry crane reflection in canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024
Looking west to the overpass, the sky was a coral salmon colour under the bridge, fading to neutral cyan in the upper sky. Trees next to the path cast out rows of shadows. The canal was painted with an economy of brush strokes so that every component in the painting could fit together in harmony. It was so quiet here, just a distant murmur of cars.
Canal overpass with sunset, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024
This was the first painting I did on the location, you can see a faint impression of my shadow standing next to the bike in the foreground. As the geese ate the grass, one of them was always standing upright with its head up. I got the impression that it was staring at me in particular, in case I was danger... or in case I started throwing food out. They look like majestic birds which is true, but they also produce large volumes of excrement. You have to watch where you step around here!
Geese near canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024
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