Crab Apple Blossoms, NDG, Montreal

One more blog today, then I plan to head out and make some more paintings on my week off ("staycation"). At this time of year the crab-apple blossoms are out, in all their pink and red glory. It only lasts a week, and then they drop the flowers and produce the small bitter berries that the squirrels wont even eat. I had seen them earlier, but couldn't quite muster up the courage to try it. To get this effect right, I practiced a few times beforehand at home, working out the best way to do it. You see, painting light pink on a darker brick red is one of the toughest things to do in watercolour, not to mention the shadows have to be there too. I don't use white paint, so the best way to do this was to draw a faint outline in paint, then wet the paper, then carefully put the brick-orange colour around the shape of the tree and in between the branches. When it is drying, then drop in the purple-orange shadows. The last thing I did was put the pink, then darker pink, then the two leaf greens.

This is where I made the painting called Cultural Center Looking at Benny Housing, in fact, it is the same building seen here behind the tree.


That grey colour on the right was made from pyrrol red and winsor green, I was waiting for a moment to try it out. In the future I am going to buy a greenish raw umber which may do the trick with half the effort and a less expensive pigment.

5 x 7" cold press watercolour, May 2020