At last, here is a painting on the new blogger format.They changed a lot of stuff and then made it mandatory to follow the new interface in July (now!). Being a luddite, I kept it the same way for as long as possible. The new format has additional features I am finding like pages and lists, which were probably there before but now you will find them on the front page. The pages will have lists of the series paintings including 'The 27 stations of the green line metro, Montreal' series which is featured in this blog. In the first painting you see one of the 4 entrances to the Peel metro station, it is incorporated with some fancy boutique stores and elaborate mirrored surfaces and windows that angle up and around the structure. A lone tree was growing from an opening in the sidewalk. The metro entrance is reflected on an acute angle above, and the sun was just getting over the buildings and casting light here (it was about 7AM when I arrived).
As I sat painting, a black man was stopped by the police, I saw two white men running out of these doors in the painting and pointing at him. I don't know what was going on but the sight of white people pointing at a black man and the police arriving really made me think of the reality of the whole black lives matter movement. My other thought was I showed up at 7AM to avoid trouble downtown, and now I was painting in the middle of an arrest or something. The police talked to him, and the situation seemed to be diffused. That happened in the middle of doing this painting, I tried to stay focused but was concerned about the goings on. I think the situation ended well. 8 x 10" cold press (cut from 22x30 arches), watercolour, July 2020
Before the next painting, I took a little walk around the block to scout out the other 3 entrances to the Peel station, and also to see if there was any more trouble. In fact, nothing was happening except some construction on Metcalfe, and they were setting up a sidewalk sale/street event on the same street. Before arriving on location I was thinking of doing a Hiroshige composition where he shows the scene on a simple 1 point (cartoon) perspective from a birds eye viewpoint. For example, in his print called
, Kuwana from the The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road, you see in the link he created an imaginary perspective to show the street, buildings, and pedestrians. I studied that print the night before to understand the angles. It was harder than I thought, to warp the perspective, I was sitting on the sidewalk near the orange sign you see at the bottom, looking at the station entrance. The orange sign is the only thing with proper perspective that I saw, kind of a mistake but you can see how different the imaginary perspective had to be. 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, July 2020
The last painting was a lot of fun, these pigeons showed up thinking I feed them, and I decided to include them in the painting albeit they look a little larger than they were. They kept walking away until I threw them some peanuts, then they posed for me! When I was done I tossed some more peanuts down as payment for their modeling services. The violet sign in the top middle was the inspiration, I used violet paint (PV19 and PR233) in most of the mixes including the pigeons. The actual sign was a neon violet which is impossible to do with paints, especially since I lack certain colours. Since I have the next week and a half off for vacation I plan to drop by the art store and get some new colours. 6" x 7.5 cold press, watercolour, July 2020.
For the fourth entrance I just did a sketch, since the door was open you could see into the station which was cool. There was also an amazing reflection on the windows above the sign which are not quite obvious from the simple pencil drawing. The road in this part of de Maisonneuve was in pretty bad shape but at least the cracks gave some interesting lines for the foreground. That was the end of a pretty eventful location. 8 x 11" sketch book, pencil, July 2020
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