Verdun #7-9, Old Stone House, and Beach

 

Last week I made a small painting of the old stone house in Verdun, which jogged a memory in my parents who knew the area back in the day, and they had a landscape painting of the scene done by Violet Robertson. It was a tough week last week so I didn't get any painting done, then it rained profusely on Saturday preventing any outdoor activity. Finally I got down to Verdun for some painting and did a new painting of the old stone house, technically this is the back of the house, with Lasalle Boulevard in the background. To get the shingled roof colour I mixed phthalo green with burnt sienna, and a touch of goethite and black, then diluted with water. The bricks were fun to paint, I just put them wherever it looked right. This was done on the new d'Arches 140lb cold press watercolour paper I got from Avenue des Arts, I got 10 sheet of it which should last awhile. They call it 'natural' paper since it is not bleached white. 8 x 10" watercolour August 2020 Verdun 7

 

Here is a sketch of the old stone house that I did prior to the painting. The roof line was at the exact half way mark of the height, and the width was one and a half the height. The main window and door was centered, and the flanking ones were halfway from center to the edge. Getting the proportions right is important when doing buildings, the rest of the details just have to be the right size, colour, value, and texture. No problem. 8 x 11" sketch book, pencil, August 2020

I have a plan to try and recreate the Robertson landscape, so I did a side view looking east. It is more colourful and filled with light, and of course there is no river embankment. Next chance I get I'll do a river embankment scene, then combine it with this scene. I used a simpler technique on this one as compared to the first one, I put down the warm beige of the wall completely, let it dry, then overlaid the brick. In this way I can not create the lighter tones stones and the coloured stones, but it creates a very similar effect. 5 x 7" hot press, watercolour, August 2020 Verdun 8

As part of the park development in Verdun they opened a beach recently. The foreground here just shows some of the landscaping and a piece of the sidewalk leading to the beach. The beach itself is not visible from this vantage point. Entering the beach required going though a checkpoint where they made sure people were not with COVID before going in, and getting hand sanitizer. In the background is Nun's Island, with a few of the condo buildings. To get that middle green, the cool grey-green across the river, I used diluted perylene green (PBk31) which worked out perfectly. The rest of the greens are mixes of phthalo greens, benzimida yellow, and some burnt sienna. For dark rich greens I mixed phthalo green (PG7) with perylene maroon (PR179). 5 x 7" hot press, watercolour, August 2020 Verdun 9