While in Japan many years ago I had the pleasure of riding a bike around for a day making paintings along the way. Kyoto is surrounded by a pristine, clear river and convenient bike paths that seemed to go on forever. It was unfortunately a rainy day which limited how much I could do. I spent the better part of the afternoon drinking tea and enjoying the view from the comfort of a local cafe. This painting was done early in the bike ride, it shows a jumble of signs in Japanese which I did my best to transcribe into the painting. Who knows, maybe a Japanese person could see that it says 'car wash' or something. The granular effects you see in the clouds and the mountain, a kind of grainy appearance, were created with cerulean blue (PB35) mixed with french ultramarine (PB29), and phthalo green (PG7) in the mountains. The foreground elements give an impression of the busy scene. Since painting the stations of the Montreal metro, I improved my 'urban sketching' quite a bit. Would be interesting to go back to Japan in the future, maybe during cherry blossoms.
Japan, Kyoto, Yellow Signs, Mountain, watercolour 9 x 12" cold press, 2006 (No. 1214)
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