The weather was pleasant enough after the threat of rain, making for a good opportunity to do some painting on the holiday day. These two pine trees are at the end of a long row of pine trees that are near the st Lawrence river. Painting bark is an interesting challenge, the base bark colour is pale beige with a red-orange tint, but the chroma is so low that it reflects blue light from the sky. Where the bark flakes off it creates a secondary whitish colour. Pine trees are also knobby as compared to hardwood.
Two pine trees near river, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2024 (No. 3802)
Where the old train track ran there is now a hill covered in flowers and grass. At night there are hundreds of mosquitos too, but it was too early for that. This is a concrete factory, still active it feeds a stream of trucks from a series of ramps and pumps. It was an ominous scene, with the X shape of the old railroad crossing sign. The tracks run all the way through Lachine, but they are not usable anymore.
Factory flower field, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2024 (No. 3803a)
For what used to be a lake bed, they sure built it up with canals, highways and factories. These overpasses are highway 138 connecting to the Mercier bridge, which would be leftwards. Of course, the bike path and canal are in the foreground. The highway colour is mostly red ochre with indo blue (PR101 + PB60) and some carbon black (PBk6) done with an economy of brush strokes. The sun effect on top was just lucky, I thought it would blend smoothly, but I like the way it dried. It was kind of a rough outing and not all the paintings worked, but these ones were quite nice. The pastel touches on the canal water recall impressionism.
Highway over Canal Setting Sun, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2024 (No. 3804)
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