For about a week Montreal has been under a stricter lock-down due to the COVID virus spreading again. We are taking precautions, for example, on the weekend I went by bike to some wide open locations on the river, and wore a mask the whole time. In NDG, it is very difficult to find open space. For the 'pandemic blues' series of paintings back in March until May, I went to every possible option space. So today, I just popped out front where our condo building has a brick retainer wall set back about 5 meters from the sidewalk with a view of Somerled Avenue and Walkley Street. I already made a few paintings from this vantage point like the auto mechanic across the street. In this painting, the yellow school bus stopped for a few seconds and I captured it the best I could. Luckily I had not done the background (which is the metro grocery) so I could get the bus in there. The tree is the focal point, it had a great colour fade from yellow to chartreuse (lime green).
Fall tree and School Bus, Walkley Street, 4 x 6" hot press, watercolour, October 2020
One challenge I set for myself this year was to include people and cars in my location paintings, for example, the last one had two cars from the parking lot. In this example, the car was parked on the road behind a tree. You can also see the stone retainer wall on the lower level of our terraced garden, I was sitting on the upper level. The car has a lot of character although it looks like it was in an accident or something! I'll have to practice drawing cars, maybe just with a pencil until I get it right.
SUV and tree on Somerled, 5 x 8", cold press, watercolour, October 2020
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