Scenes from rural Caledon by bicycle

Reaching a train crossing, I stopped to drink some water and make a painting of the livestock train, probably meant for transporting cows or pigs, although it was sitting idle. Painting the train tracks was by now familiar after painting train tracks in NDG quite often. The rest of the painting was fairly straightforward, cloudy sky, green trees and some wild flowers. The flowers are done by applying the green and dark yellow leaves, leave white space, then daubing in some yellow (PY97) and pink (PR122).  

Livestock train and wild flowers, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2024

 

I felt obliged to paint these hay bails, with he rickety old fences. It was the closest I could get to them standing on the side of the road with the bike. The hay bails are done with combinations of yellow ochre (PY43) orange (PO62) red ochre (PR101) and a bit of burnt umber (PBr7), careful to retain the light highlights on top of the hay bails. Monet was famous for painting hay stacks, its something I would like to try more of if I can get access to some hay up close.

Hay bails with fence, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2024

 

An area called Gibson lake is more like Gibson swamp, or last time I rode out there it was Gibson desert since there was no water. Ontario got a good dumping of rain the last few weeks, so the area was quite full of water and teeming with birds like ducks, geese, and red winged black birds like the one in this tree. The swamp had an orange-rust colour perhaps due to algae growth.

Gibson swamp west, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2024

 

Looking to the other side of the street the swamp showed a bit more water, and had abundant lily pads. I tried to capture the colours and textures quickly; the heat and humidity was bearing down on me at this point. The darker greens are perylene green (PBk31) and orange yellow (PY110). Perylene green is sold as perylene black but it has a distinct green hue.

Gibson swamp east, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2024

 

 I did a scene here many years ago, around 1996, its a painting I blogged about recently. In the 2024 version I used a landscape (horizontal) format, and used magenta (PR122) with blue (PB15) to make the delicate violet colour in the foreground. In '96 I used french ultramarine (PB29) and alizarin crimson (PR83) to make violet, but I dropped both of those paints many years ago due to stability problems. Ultramarine vanishes with weak acid exposure, and alizarin vanishes with mild light exposure. The newer pigments are lightfast meaning they have good durability to light, and they resist acid.

Field with with flowers Columbia way, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2024