After some decent Chinese food take out with Fritz I took off on the bike and found this scene of the sun set in Verdun. It was a bit of luck that the painting worked out, I had to apply the orange-yellow highlights and sunset first, hope it dried, then apply the successive layers of darks and details. The trick to getting a scene like this to work is to apply some dark middle values such as the grass and trees which make the light highlights pop.
Sunset in Verdun, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, May 2022 (No. 3123b)
Turning right out of Verdun the bike path takes you down to the massive Farine Five Roses with its prominent silos and adjacent water from the reservoir at the end of the canal. The sign on top was a bright red neon that turned on and off every few seconds. It is not possible to paint neon on a dark sky background, but I attempted the feat by applying a fairly dark sky, then adding pyrol red with benzi orange at medium dilution. The sign worked out okay, and the rest of the scene is really neat, you can feel that cold night atmosphere permeated by the amber lights under the overpass. I've never made water using orange and black before, that was neat.
Farine Five Roses at Dusk, watercolour 8 x 10" Fabriano Artistico, May 2022 (No. 3022)
On the way back home I rode through Atwater Market and saw this scene of the market stalls and cityscape in the background. It seemed the impossible painting, to capture that much contrast with watercolour at night. With wearing the headlamp I could better judge the values and subtle colours under the numerous lamps that are strung out over the stalls. The gloomy dusk sky was done with yellow ochre (PY43) on the horizon, then working in layers of blue (PB15 and PB60), and a touch of carbon black at the very top.
Atwater Market at Dusk, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, May 2022 (No. 3126a)
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