Bike and Paint around Town

 

The weather was slightly warmer today than yesterday, at least there was less wind which enabled me to ride my winter bike. This scene is looking downtown, from the perspective of the St. Jacques over pass ramp. There is a new bike path that leads to the Lachine canal, I was standing on it to make this painting. To simplify things, I brought my leather attache with the art equipment inside. Just one container of salt water, three brushes, rags, and two pieces of paper, with the portable drying rack. It was a struggle to get the colour and contrast correct because the paint was literally freezing even though the water was still liquid. You can see the train tracks going into the distance. This used to be part of a large rail yard and depot, now it is highway, light rail and a nature path.

Train Tracks to Montreal, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, January 2022 (No. 3060a)

 

I made it all the way down to the Ville St. Pierre bridge, luckily the path had been scraped and the snow was hard packed which made for easier riding than last time when the snow was thick. Still though, it was a great effort to peddle the small sized mountain bike that far, it is my ab-master workout! It was a challenge to get the chroma and contrast high enough, it looked okay when wet, but dried quite pale. I think the salt slows the drying time such that the paper absorbs the paint a lot more than usual. It is also hard to get enough colour on your brush when the paint blobs are freezing solid. I adapted some things for this painting, for example I started with the dark trees first, then filled in the lighter elements, which is generally opposite to what you would do in watercolour. It was necessary though, because had I painted the lighter background first, the trees would have been fuzzy. To get the contrast in the snow, you see the shadows coming down an embankment due to the sun in the background, I used indo blue (PB60) with some grey added (PV19 + PG36) and for the warm snow it was mostly dilute isoindo yellow (PY110). The structure in the background is the factory I painted a few years ago in the pandemic-blues series, and you can see one of the many highway overpasses hiding behind the trees to the right. 

Silhouette of Tree Line, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, January 2022 (No. 3059a)