As the sun descended behind this tree, it appeared to burst forth out of the branches. It is an immensely difficult effect to create, and not the first time I have tried it. To start I applied the sun in the background using concentric rings of yellow, orange, pale red, pale cyan and blue. As it dried I applied the background trees and worked on filling in the foreground with a light and airy field of grass with shadows, and the edge of the Lachine canal with black fencing. Then came the hard part, the tree had to be over-painted using several variations, starting with a cool grey trunk, then multi-coloured branches of dark red, dark green and black. Meanwhile the brush texturing and detailing needed to disintegrate into the intense core of the sun. The illusion is quite complete, it seems almost the same as what it looked like. The neat thing is that a camera could never take this picture, but a person can make a painting. I honestly felt so rotten after work, I didn't think I would paint anything good today, but instead the location, the quiet, the sunset, somehow resulted in some classics like the reflection of the gantry crane, and this painting of the setting sun through tree.
Setting sun through tree, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024
After painting 'Setting sun through tree' and 'gantry crane reflection' I felt somewhat vindicated and decided to goof around for this one. The highway is on an extreme angle, the sun is like a beach ball, and the cars are ambiguous marshmallows with yellow hats. I kind of wanted to make the point that these cars are all going along like robots, all the while an incredible sunset is unfolding in the background.
Sunset over cars, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024
Lastly, I captured this scene of the moon rising over the canal, with its reflection below. Because of perspective, the moon was over top of the telephone in the sky, but it was around the middle of the telephone pole in the reflection. It would take some trigonometry to understand that one, so I just painted what I saw. the sky and water were embellished significantly to create more drama in the painting. If you compose an element cutting straight across the middle, there needs to be enough visual interest in the elements to carry the scene. Well it was kind of fun but the mosquitos were starting to get to me and I headed home.
Moon rising over canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024
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