Friday, June 22, 2018

Bakery in NDG, Montreal

A few doors down from where we live in NDG there is a little, old fashioned bakery and deli that sells pastries pasta lunch meat, sauces and that sort of thing. I tried shopping there once but it seemed to be more of a social club where the customer talks endlessly to the shopkeeper and tries a samples of everything before actually buying anything. The good news is that they give you free samples while you wait! The unique colour of the brick work and the contrasting bright colours of the sign and awning caught my attention for this painting. Across the street is the Royal Bank, but I put the current year on the sign instead!

Painting these kind of ivory colours in watercolour is very challenging like you see in the bricks. I accomplished the effect with a layer of warm yellow-orange to give it the brightness, then overlayed some neutral greenish-grey, very thin. When dry I looked at the actual bricks and adjusted the tone a bit using a third layer of very thin warm yellow in places to give is a shimmer. The brick detail is done in warm grey with a smaller brush. The effect is better observed in the original painting, but the scan version here does it justice.

5 x 7" cold press watercolour, June 2018

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