Sunset on Girouard

It was another case of looking for something to paint after work... the sun is starting to go down earlier and earlier which is a sure sign of the seasons. This painting shows the sun set on Girouard which is near the Decarie expressway, I am looking north west roughly. The guard rail was illuminated and cast a neat shadow on the foreground road. At first I was thinking about how to paint this scene, then I just told myself to stop thinking, the only way to paint this is to paint this!  

Sunset on Girouard, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024

 

Just before the sun sets, it can be difficult to even notice that everything is getting darker. Your visual system adapts to the low light conditions. To tell, I look at car headlights or street lamps like you see in the painting. I just wanted to see if I could paint the illusion of the street lamp looking bright against a dusty blue sky. To mix the sky blue I used blue paint with some additional 'gunk' from the palette. Gunk is the greyish, greenish or purplish stuff that accumulates in the corner, and it is good for cutting the chroma or increasing darkness. The gunk in question was probably yellow ochre (PY43), red ochre (PR101) and some magenta (PV55).

Lamp at dusk, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024

 

This alley scene was the first one I did, the sun was still about 1 hour from setting. You can see the highlights are less orange than during sunset, and the shadows have more blue. In the old days I would avoid painting near sundown or at dusk because it was too hard... there is little time to catch the effects, its usually moist, and it requires some knowledge of value and chroma, two things I knew little about historically. Its been a journey over the past four years, one thing I learned was how the sky changes and importantly, which paints can be mixed to capture the effect. With yesterday's 'Sunset on Walkley' and the earlier 'Sunset with fire truck', its been all phases of dusk to sunset.

Sundown in alley, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024