Ranger Park, Lasalle, Montreal

After painting The Blue House, I headed down the Lachine canal path to the beginnings of Lachine, and turned left into a small park called Ranger Park technically in Lasalle. The view looked westward down the St. Lawrence river through some old crusty trees on the shoreline. Armed with 5 different blue paints I created the complex, wavy shimmering water, and then proceeded to deface it with the dark brown trees. Part of the distant shore line is shining through the tree, I thought the iron oxide paint would cover it but it was more transparent than anticipated, I will have to remember that next time.

Brushes are quite important for painting, otherwise you are finger painting! Most of my brushes are synthetic, with a half dozen sable brushes from Escoda or Winsor and Newton. The sable brushes are not from actual animal called sable, they are from a kolinsky weasel (Mustela sibirica) that lives in the wild and is trapped for its fur. This animal is on a watch list for species, but not considered endangered in any way. To take care of my brushes properly I read the section on brush maintenance from Handprint.com, and discovered a lot of things I did not know. For example, to clean the brushes I acquired some glycerol bar soap from Lufa farms, and used it to soap down the brushes and rinse them well. Then I treated them with hair conditioner (like for people) for a few hours and rinsed that off. They are like new now.

Note, I just got the new paints from Stoneground paint company yesterday, and made a painting that I will blog about soon. 

5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2020