Sun coming through, Benny Park, NDG

Made in NDG as easy as one two three. When I went outside to paint earlier this week, the sky was a gloomy purple-grey, and the sun was struggling to get through. The rain was holding off just enough to sit out on location and make this painting from the vantage point of Benny Park, looking northwest towards Cavendish boulevard. I was sitting up on a hill in the park away from other people. It reminded me of an old painting I made in Caledon years ago which was an impression of a sunset. Of course, Monet made famous the concept in his painting 'Impression, Sunrise'.

To depict a sun coming through the clouds, I started by outlining the sun with clear water, no paint, then I gently flooded the wash with dilute yellow. When it dried (about 15 minutes) I did the same thing, but flooded with the purple-grey wash. In this way, I painted around the sun rather than paint the sun directly. Another feature of this painting is that I used a cyan-magenta-yellow palette, that is, it was restricted to only three paints, phthalo blue (PB15:3), magenta (PR122), and yellow (PY154). All the colours you see in the painting were mixed from these colours, even the dark black which was an even mix of the three.

5 x 7" rough press, watercolour, April 2020