Saturday Painting: Cold Day on Maisonneuve

Boulevard de Maisonneuve stretches all the way across NDG and Montreal. Through NDG, Maisonneuve is located between the train tracks, bike path, and rows of light industrial warehouses, car washes, and some housing units. I rode my bike past these buildings hundreds of times but never painted them due to the lack of places to sit and paint- the area between the bike path and the fence that surrounds the train tracks is about 1 meter and infested with poison ivy in the summer. On foot, I am able to just stand and paint, albeit in a deep snowdrift today. As I fumbled around with the water bottles in my attache case (by Calvin Klein- from the reuse store) I dropped my paint brush in the deep snow. Luckily I recovered it before I left. The intersecting road is Hampton. I made a few touch ups at home since it dried a little washed out.
 

Maisonneuve Blvd Warehouse 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, January 2021 (No. 2531b)

 

 

For this painting I was standing next to the Muslim school on Cavendish and de Maisonneuve which had a little patch of open snow and some trees to break the wind. Unfortunately there were very fine snow particles blowing onto the painting which I tried to brush off. In the foreground is the mucky road, a billboard, and in the background is the Provigo grocery store across the train tracks on St. Jacques street. Even with the salt, the water was freezing slightly and the paint was like slush, so it was more like using crayons! Next time I need to double the salt, the amount I used will prevent freezing at -10℃, but today it was -22℃ with the windchill. At least I was warm with the new Baffin boots (from Amazon) and the parka (from Schreter's). The jacket's colour is called smoked paprika, which is actually burnt sienna. If I spill burnt sienna paint on my jacket nobody will notice.  

Maisonneuve Blvd Billboard, 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, January 2021 (No. 2532)