Decarie Square, Melting Snow

Sitting by the Decarie expressway, this scene looks north from the vantage point of the Decarie Square Mall parking lot. Piles of snow, encrusted in dirt and sand were melting into puddles. The expressway can be seen dipping below the overpass on the right of the picture. It was extremely windy and cold when I did this painting, things were blustering and I felt like I was sitting on top of mount Everest or something! 

I made good use of the new colours, the traffic signs on the overpass were done with helio green (PG36), and the big mall sign in silhouette used bright magenta (PR122) to give it that warm grey. I used ferrari red (PR254) to punctuate the garbage that was emerging from the melting snow, and bloodstone genuine to do the outline at the beginning. As usual by now, I used phthalo and indo blues for the sky. Due to the lack of automobile traffic during the pandemic lock down, I have noticed that the sky is more blue than usual. In the past I would see a pale orange on the horizon (smog), now it is a clear blue sky. Or should we call it a pandemic blue sky?

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, March 2020