Benny cultural center and library, NDG

For the last few months the weather has been exceptionally good making it possible to paint springtime like never before. During spring the trees do not have leaves yet which makes certain sight lines possible. For example, in this scene, the building, which is the Benny cultural center and library (with the big ugly apartment building in the background) would be totally obscured by leaves. Usually it is too cold, wet and miserable to go out and paint in March-early May, but this year perhaps due to global warming or something its been near perfect conditions. It so happens that the pandemic started in March which meant everyone was, and still is, staying at home for the most part.

I wrote about the pandemic blues in a previous blog, referring to the brilliant blue sky as well as the feeling of being blue. These paintings are meant to capture the moment with mostly empty scenes of the neighborhood, and with blue accents. In this case, the top part of the cultural center was a powder blue, also known as periwinkle, which is a combination of cyan and magenta. Its CMYK code is 20,20,0,0 meaning that it was a little bit of cyan and magenta in equal proportions, with no yellow or black. I had actually studied that beforehand, and used the knowledge to mix this otherwise mysterious blue colour using phthalo blue and quinacridone magenta.

The red part of the building turned out a little disappointing, it is supposed to be a brighter red but after it dried it looked more brick red. I used pyrrol red but that colour is not mixing well, I guess I will have to work out a new formula for bright reds like that.

7 x 10" rough press, watercolour, May 2020