The Château Frontenac at night

Without any hesitation I marched down to The Château Frontenac at night with my shoulder bag and headlamp ready. Knowing that this would be a long paint time, I found a bench facing the classic hotel and settled in for the effort. After a long day at the conference it was a pleasure to sit there on a cool evening in relative silence. Well, there was a street show going on, and a gaggle of tourists at all times but it didn't bother me. Before leaving for Québec City I wanted to paint the Château again since I have made attempts on the last few trips such as here. Painting it at night just added to the challenge. To start the painting I made a fairly detailed outline in grey paint making sure to get all the roof angles correct, and the verticals straight. I simplified some of the brick work  and ornate details to make the painting feasible. Even so, it was probably about 1.5 hours of painting which is a lot more than usual, on par with the Sugar Shack painting from 2021.Since I didn't have pyrol orange I used dark blue (PB60) with benzi orange (PO36) for the sky and a touch of carbon black along the top. The greens were done with perylene green (PBk31) and touches of phthalo green (PG7) and dark blue. To paint the facade, I applied grey, and overlaid with neutral brick orange. They key to this paining were the value contrasts. The roof at the top was darker than the sky, and the bricks were illuminated from below. The very top of the building had purplish flood lights, which I depicted with tints of magenta (PR122) and blue (PB15). Finally, I filled in the windows with bright yellow in various tints, and added details like the brick patterns and window frames. It was a painting that gradually looked better with each painting step, I just had to trust the processes. A lot of tourists came over when the street show ended, I was the most photographed painter of the night!

The Château Frontenac at night, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, August 2023 (No. 3624)