Dwarfed by a Drift

Here is a small painting made years ago on a new-years-party-trip to Montreal... the weather was "real" Montreal, lot's of snow and really cold. I was young and foolish enough to want to sit in -10C and make watercolour paintings on location. This particular scene was right outside of the youth hostel, not far from the Bell Centre which would be just off to the right a little. The snow drift behind the car was really that high, a mini mountain of snow that looked like it was going to avalanche on the poor little hatch-back.

I have talked about painting windows in previous blogs, it is always a challenge when painting scenery in the cities. In this painting you may not have even noticed that the windows on the buildings are just single brush strokes, and they are dark on a light background, which is much easier to do in watercolour (you can never paint light on dark, it is impossible because the paints are transparent).The simplified strategy for the windows was necessary because the paint does not dry very fast when painting in sub zero temperatures (you put salt in the water). If you look at the windows on the right building you can even see the edges kind of rough, which is what happens when you put a layer of paint on top of another layer that is not quite dry. At any rate it is worth the effort to paint on location in winter because as an artist you can see the colours and the shadows much better and capture the correct tones in the snow that would never come out with a photograph due to the low winter light.

5x7" very cold press, 199something