No Truck Parking! NDG, Montreal

Capturing textures is a key part of landscape painting. I saw this scene awhile ago, it is down by the Provigo near the southmost part of NDG where the plateau drops off into the trains and the highways. There are several interesting textures here, starting from left to right, the dilapidated painted brick with rusted trim, the corrugated aluminum wall panel, the wooded truck siding painted blue, the plywood hiding the underside of the truck, the pebbly asphalt, the clear blue sky, and the tree with new spring leaves. Each texture required a layering approach. For example, the plywood had a base coat, a washed texture, then a drybrush grain texture. The joke was that the traffic sign depicted the no parking symbol with an image of a truck below it, so no truck parking!

I took the watercolour pans with me for this outing, the ones from Stoneground Paint Co. The grey ochre was used for the grainy, grey asphalt along with some tints added. Buff titanium was used for the cream colour in the bricks, the umbers were used in the treebark and tires of the truck, and roman black for the deep shadows under the truck and aluminum wall. I also used some cobalt blue for the truck. The yellow lines were with PY110, but I feel that it looks too dark, still unsure how to easily make those parking spot lines! Next time I may try buff titanium tinted with the PY110.

I have taken this week off to unwind a bit, and concentrate on painting, so far I have just been able to paint sporadically on weekends or sneaking out for an hour here or there.

7 x 10" rough press, watercolour, May 2020