Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Blossoms near St. Lawrence River

The trees are making blossoms all over Montreal, crab apples and lilacs mostly. For lunch hour I took a quick ride down to the St. Lawrence river, it is not far by bike from my office, and made a quick painting of the blossoms. There was actually a row of dozens of trees in an L shape but the painting just captures a few of them, with pine trees and the river seen in the background. 

 Since the colours worked out so well this time, I will make a brief note to self about how it was done. To paint the rose colour, I used magenta (PR122) that was slightly neutralized by adding a touch of pyrol red (PR254) and carbon black (PBk6), and diluted with a decent ratio of water. Basically that is a way to create pastels, you take a high chroma colour, and cut it with some neutralizer and water, essentially you are adding grey. The tree foliage was made with some fairly concentrated green-yellow, dabbed on by holding a 2 cm wide brush straight up and down. The tree shadows on the ground were perylene green (PBk31), and the tree trunks a classic mix of red brown (PBr7/PR101) and indo blue (PB60). The sky phthalo blue red shade (PB15), the river PB60 with raw sienna highlights, and the grass a mix of yellow (PY154) and green (PG36).
 
Blossoms near St. Lawrence River, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, May 2022 (No. 3113)

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