Montmorency Station, Orange Line, Laval

 

At long last I arrived at the north east terminus of the Orange line metro. It had been many painting ago that I made it up to Cote Vertu on the other side. Unfortunately the rain struck midway through the location, but then the sun came out again. The sky was partly cloudy, partly sunny which made for some difficult conditions. In this scene, a dark cloud was framing a pair of brilliant yellow-orange trees in the background. By the time I got to paint that feature the sky had changed but I remembered what it looked like and painted it from memory. I made a few other compositional adjustments to fit all of the elements onto the small vertical paper.

The Sun Arrives, Montmorency Station, Orange Line, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, October 2021 (No. 2866)

In this scene you can see Mont Royal in the distance with some colourful trees in the middle ground. The only vantage point I could find was behind a concrete wall surrounding a parking lot, so I decided to include it in the composition. It probably took me longer to complete the cars that you hardly notice than the rest of the painting! I like the sky a lot, it really gives the feeling of a tumultuous sky. I varied the greys from yellowish to a blueish by adjusting it with umber (PBr7), indo blue (PB60), or magenta (PV19). I started the sky with a thin wash of yellow ochre (PY43) and cobalt blue highlights (PB28).

View of Mont Royal, Montmorency Station, Orange Line, watercolour 6.5 x 10" cold press, October 2021 (No. 2913)

The last stop had to be spectacular. This painting was done in a dreary Parisian-style, with punched up blue and turquoise hues. It was a lot of fun painting this one, albeit challenging. It is not often you find turquoise on a location, but this was just the way it looked! And the sign on the other side. Not to mention my favorite motif, the garbage can in a brilliant cobalt blue. The turquoise was done with phthalo green plus phtalo blue sapphire (PG36 + PB15). An old fellow started talking to me during this painting and asked like 20 questions and offered his philosophy of art. It was really interesting but made it difficult to concentrate. Anyways, he moved on and I completed the painting with the tree in the middle and details on the brick walkway. Then I wrote FIN! on it, which means the end in French. I did the same on my previous triumph of the green line last year.

Pale Green Glass, Montmorency Station, Orange Line, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, October 2021 (No. 2914)

 

This was the first try of the scene but it started raining midway. It is still kind of a neat painting. You can stand there with me in the cold rain painting a metro station!

 Pale Green Glass with Rain, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, October 2021 (No. 2867)