Pastel sun set, clean snow dirty snow

Looking for something to paint after work (that should be the title of a book!) I found another scene on the Cavendish overpass looking west. If you zoom in, you can see evidence of the ice crystals that formed in the sky as I painted. The focal point was really meant to be the amazing pastel colours in the sunset, which were captured with a variety of high quality paints that are on my palette such as benzi orange (PO62), red-orange (PO73), benzi yellow (PY154), magenta (PR122), phthalo blue (PB15 sapphire) and for the clouds, dark magenta (PV55) and dark blue (PB60). The trick is getting all the colours to blend together seamlessly without any backwashes or hard edges, which I managed to pull off here. The trees had to be added afterwards at home when the thing had a chance to dry.

Pastel sunset Cavendish overpass, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, February 2025

 

Down in the parking lot of the Provigo on Sherbrooke and Cavendish, there was an enormous pile of dirty snow that you see in the foreground, while in the background was a few piles of clean snow. As with the last painting, the trees and some texturing, along with the window colours were added at home since the painting was very moist on location. I just wore the thin glove on the right hand to get better control, but that also limited the time I could spend on the painting. Normally I wear giant gauntlet mitts over top. Tomorrow is supposed to be some kind of sno-megeddan or snow tornado or something, it should be a good day to paint watercolours! Everyone is like wah wah stay home... hide in your condo, but I'm like, go make some paintings. Its never stopped me, for example the March 25th 2024 blizzard down by the river, The January 30th 2024 blizzard down in Dieppe park where the snow was blowing upwards, and the Febrary 27th 2021 snow storm that turned to rain ( I brought an umbrella) all come to mind. And the coldest ever location painting I did to date was -39℃ (-38.2℉), that is including the windchill, on February 3rd 2023. The paint was literally freezing solid on the palette, although my winter gear held up pretty good.

Clean snow dirty snow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, February 2025