Today was one of the best days of the year so far if you are into warm and breezy weather. For painting I prefer the winter due to the relative solitude, but there are a few locations that are inaccessible in winter like the sculpture park near Lachine. Its an artificial peninsula meant to form a marina on one side, with the st Lawrence roaring by on the other side. In the painting, if you look into the background there are some roof tops, those are houses along st Joseph Blvd Lachine. The toasty grass had a few sprigs of green coming through, I painted it with about half a dozen texturing layers over a base of beige.
Wind swept tree, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025
I painted a scene of the Mercier bridge in the background with sumac trees in the foreground overlapping, but it looked a mess. So I repainted the background elements here, and just included the remains of the leaning tree, now just a stump. The leaning tree featured in a few winter paintings, for example
here, and the second painting shown
here. It looks like the city cut it down before it totally fell in the water. You can see closer to the shore the water takes on caramel hues. Someone looked over my shoulder and talked the whole time, I tried to chit chat a little, they were impressed with the painting, and asked about the painting kit.
Mercier bridge leaning stump, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025
On the busy tourist magnet at the end of the park, I found a nook away from the crowd to get this angle on the rocky breakwater and some big chunks of ice nestled in among the rocks. The st Lawrence is mostly blue but it reflects caramel tones I make with variations of yellow ochre (PY43) and burnt sienna (PR101) and a bit of orange (PO62) or maroon (PR179).
Last chunks of ice, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2025
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