More scenes from the demo mall

For today's paintings the idea was to catch the last bit of sun before it set, so I rode down the Terrebonne bike path to what I call the 'demo mall', its an unsightly old strip mall that is slated for re-development soon. The first painting shows the old lashes-and-nails place, it still has most of the signage intact and even still has curtains. The paint painted bricks retain the original pinkish hue, which I recreated with dilute pyrol-orange (PO73). Using pyrol-orange to paint pink seems wrong, but according to MacEvoy's handprint.com, the source of all watercolour knowledge, he said pyrol orange has coral (salmon) undertones upon dilution. Trusting his assessment, I diluted the colour and it looks great here.

Lashes and nail shop, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2025 (No. 4208a)

 

I've been looking for a good barber in town but unfortunately this one is shut down and ready for demolition. Right next to the lashes and nails shop, its decorated in all manner of beige and caramel tones, with a dark chocolatey sign painted with golden letters. In fact the whole colour scheme seemed like baby puke and it was not easy to coax a good painting from it. I infused the shadow with purple, and tried to texture other elements to distract. Its the hardest one to paint because the front is really long, and well, the colour scheme.

Coiffure entrance, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2025 (No. 4208b)

 

This version mostly features the sign, and the sun-decals on the window. I was rather hoping for some nice weather but as the sun descended it became very cold and windy. I used the brand new palette that was featured in a recent blog, however being new, the paint beaded up and was harder to mix. It will take a few sessions to get it broken in, just not literally broken at least for awhile. You may wonder why I return to this doomed building so much, and so do I. The interesting thing is that the demo mall blogs have garnered the highest view counts this year so far, so the work is connecting with more than average viewers. In 2022 I returned to Dépanneur Diamond 10 several times to get the perfect painting and it also has a high view count, which was the whole idea. Photos, and google maps, retain the images of these structures, but an artist can only visit and paint on location until they are gone. The Dépanneur Diamond 10 is just an empty lot now. For the demo mall, perhaps a few more visits are warranted, its always been cold and miserable there, so hope it lasts at least until spring time.

Maurice Coiffure, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, March 2025 (No. 4207b)