Friday, January 13, 2023

Waiting for Vegetables on a Snowy Night

Thursday night happens to be the vegetable delivery night, but the truck was very late. Not wanting to sit in my office any longer I struck out into the bitter cold and mixed precipitation to make some night paintings. The first one is an exaggerated view of Oscar Peterson Hall. Angles were made more acute to give the impression of a sheet of piano music, a kind of jazzy synesthesia.
 

Oscar Peterson Hall at Night, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, January 2023 (No. 3384b)

 

The sky had that eerie maroon glow that tends to happen on a cold winter's night. I used the good old combination of pyrol orange (PO73) and indo blue (PB60). In Trenholme park they have a fenced-off play area filled with games in the summer, but today it was sombre, silent and snow-covered. Strings of small amber lights criss-crossed the trees and massive flood lights illuminated the area. The whole painting was moist making it difficult to capture details, but it created a soft glow. Without anywhere to sign I put my initials and year (PJD 23) in the tree branches.

Trenholme Park Bench with Snow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, January 2023 (No. 3385a)

 

Still waiting for vegetables I started one last painting of the dépanneur on Sherbrooke across from the intersection with Montclair street. From this angle the sky had an eerie grey-chartreuse glow, perhaps due to the artificial lights emanating from down-town Montreal reflecting off the cloud cover. I got the colour nearly right but the value is a notch too high and the constant snow pelting down created a strong texture. The front window of the dépanneur had a strong light beaming out from underneath its yellow facade. Half way through my phone buzzed and the vegetable truck showed up!

Déppaneur Marche Chartrand, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, January 2023 (No. 3385b)

No comments:

Post a Comment