Sunny Day (Back Alley) Le Plateau, Montreal

The Plateau has many wonderful scenes, for example the view down Laurier, the cafes on St. Denis, and the Cathedral on St. Viateur, but the alley off St. Guthbert is probably not considered to be one of them. It is only a few steps from the famous Schwartz's, just off St. Laurent Street, I won't mention what the sidewalk smelled like though. I had actually walked around for about half an hour looking for a decent scene to paint, it was a a beautiful sunny day in September, when this alley caught my eye. Something about the way the sunlight reflected off the dumpster really inspired me.



Painting silhouettes is quite difficult especially when using watercolour. In this example there are three major silhouettes, the building on the right with the windows, the building on the left, and the dumpster in the foreground. I used a similar technique for all three, involving a procedure called glazing. To do this, I first put down a layer of cool blue/brown, then when it was dry, overlayed with orangey brown tones. I varied the intensity of the second layer for the three silhouettes, the left was a pale orange, the right was a heavy brick-red, and the dumpster was a lively transparent reddish-orange. I wanted to do it this way to make the dumpster stand out the most, and the right side to really hold your attention on the alley. The left brick structure was there to hold the composition, and to provide a neutral backdrop for the dumpster.

watercolour 5x8" cold press paper, Sept. 2011