View Down Lansdowne Avenue, Westmount, Montreal

Cityscapes are a kind of landscape done in the city, hence the clever name. I try to observe nature in the city such as trees, grass, and water and how they integrate with the human-made stuff. Houses are made of brick wood and clay, and concrete and asphalt are made of minerals and oils from the ground, so in some ways, even the human-made stuff is part of the earth. And the trees, grass, even the water are all put there or modified by people. In this scene I was looking down the steep part of Lansdowne Avenue from the vantage point of a small embankment of grass up and away from the sidewalks. The towering apartment buildings and old houses seemed like they were part of the forest.

With all the new colours in my palette I have been adapting to several challenges, such as tree bark and blue skies. In this painting, I left the tree trunk until the end, and then put down one quick wash of iron oxide red with phthalo blue. When it dried I made the bark textures with bloodstone genuine which is a heliotrope/hematite pigment. Heliotrope is a kind of black sandstone, while hematite is a red iron oxide found within the stone. I am quite satisfied with this method of painting trees, it provides the weight of a tree trunk, but still gives the warm reflectivity of the bark. The blue skies have been tricky since the clouds showed up- the phthalo blue tends to flood the whole area and obscure the shapes of the clouds. This time I put the blue last, but it dried with hard edges. The shadows in the clouds are almost the same mix as the tree, but with a touch of magenta and french ultramarine (purple) added in.

7 x 10" rough press, watercolour, May 2020