Ride Through Verdun, Nun's Island and back

 

Just beside the ice flow control bridge connecting to Nun's Island, there is a small sitting area with a board walk, benches, and shady trees. In the background is the st Lawrence River, and the foreground are a variety of wild flowers. The prominent yellow flowers on the center right were crawling with little red-orange bugs that seemed to be pollinating the flowers and doing other things. The whole area was teeming with life, birds were chirping and the occasional red winged blackbird landed and squawked at me. For this painting I used the new Fabriano cold press sheet, cut to 8 x 10", its a great paper because it does not buckle during painting and really hold the washes and colours.

Yellow Flowers with Pollinating  Insects, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2023 (No. 3619)

 

Painting this commuter train bridge was a challenge because nothing was straight on the thing. It had complex flat cones with tapering supports, long arches, and the structure under the tracks was trapezoidal shaped on the cross section. Plus it had a sweeping curve and I was looking up, not to mention the train obviously was moving fast. To capture the subtle tints in this scene I mixed neutral versions of yellow, chartreuse and blue by dabbing in black, then diluting with enough water. Other elements like the oxidized steel train bridge at the bottom right required high chroma colours like dark orange-red and a bright neutral orange.

New Commuter Train Bridge, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2023 (No. 3492b)

This bench was in Parc Gédéon-De Catalogne, a long narrow park that connect the Lachine canal to ville st Henri. I ride through this park almost every time I go to and fro a painting excursion, and sometimes sit in these benches to enjoy the shade. The bench colour was done with red ochre (PR101) and deep scarlet (PR175) with carbon black for the iron work (PBk6). The shadow effect on the path and the grass was done by applying the lighter portion first, then adding a dark neutral colour, allowing the light portions to shine. When a surface is close to white, light grey, or a tint, then shadows take on a blue appearance. If a surface is yellow, orange, red, magenta, or green, then shadows will not reflect much blue or no blue at all.

Bench in Shadows, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2023 (No. 3493a)