Saturday Painting Trip: Sides of Buildings

 

Today's theme was 'colourful sides of buildings'. I rode past these scenes many times and always wanted to do a painting of them but never really stopped. The first example is the side of the Decarie Square shopping mall, it has a minty-green roof, bright red and orange trim, and some old school toffee-coloured concrete walls. Including the two cars this painting took a bit longer than usual, it was done on the new Winsor and Newton cold press paper I picked up recently at Av des Arts. Instead of soaking it, I just cut it this morning and used as is. In fact, it worked great and stayed flat the whole time. I called this one complementary because it has the red-green and blue-orange complements.

Complementary Building 6 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2643)

 

Once you cross under the train tracks via a narrow sidewalk you are in the shopping complex parking lot that leads past the old Hippodrome land and up to Devonshire street. Following it North to Autoroute 40 there is an underpass for pedestrians and bikes that opens into a mixed industrial residential area in the Bois de Franc neighborhood of the St. Laurent borough. This building is actually a sprawling storage warehouse for people's stuff. Getting the colours right was tough, especially that green wall. I applied the colours very bright, because watercolour paint always dries a little duller. I called this one triad because orange, blue-green and violet are a classic colour triad.

Triad Building 8 x 10" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2660a)

 On the way back I stopped at a derelict building just across from the old Hippodrome land, this is actually Jean-Talon west, and seems to be the end or the beginning of Jean-Talon street. Of course I had to put my initials on the graffiti wall. I enjoyed painting the hanging vines on the left of the painting, they were blowing in the wind. The top half of a pickup truck was in the grass. I used all the earth paints for this one, so it was called Earthy building. Today I brought a new palette with me, physically it was new it is to replace my very old one which was all cracked and held together with duct tape. It also has less colours on it which simplified the mixes. Today's paintings were essentially a test of the new paper and paint setup, not to mention my skill at depicting straight lines!

Earthy Building 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2638a)