McGill Metro Station, green line, Ville-Marie

By the time they are done working on all the stations they will probably look great! It is hard to tell since most of the work is behind tall fences with bright blue tarpaulin and yellow danger tape. The McGill metro station is really blocked off due to the work on de Maisonneuve, the road is just a 5 meter deep crater right now. A narrow passageway allows pedestrians to go down the sidewalks and get into the metro entrances. I found a staircase leading to a platform where I could set up safely, and made this painting of one of the McGill metro entrances, or at least what I could see of it. I am getting good at depicting the blue fences using phthalo blue (yellow shade). 6 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, July 2020

For the next scene I had a whole street corner pretty much to myself, however, the metro entrance was visually blocked off by a construction camp. They had just finished spray painting the new bike lane detour, and there were a bunch of cones there to stop bikes from riding over the fresh paint. Most of this scene was brown, with little splashes of orange, red and blue. Everything was in shadow. I tried depicting two trucks at the construction site but I think one is missing a wheel! I was glad to move on to the next scene. 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, July 2020

For this scene, I sat on a busy corner across from the Bay. Cars are depicted as little bumps at the bottom of the design. The metro station entrance is on the bottom left of the Hudson's Bay building where you see the black sign under the overhang. The location was shady at first, but the sun came over the building and I had to finish it fast before burning up. I actually went to Place des Arts and finished there before doing this one, because there was somebody on the corner bothering people when I first arrived. In the end, I could finish the painting without being bothered. 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, July 2020

This sketch was the first thing I did on location, its when I realized that McGill was going to be a construction mess! The scene was awesome, but there was a ton of detail and everything was in shadow so I passed on making a painting. On the wall I wrote the letters FUM which stands for Thank You Montreal. 8 x 11" sketchbook, pencil, July 2020