Industrial Brossard, variety of shapes and colours

After making some paintings of the river, you know I could not resist painting some of the industrial parts of Brossard. Ending at the river is rue Illinois, which has a variety of light industrial and storage companies. These cranes looked like big blue dinosaurs with yellow eyes! They are called personnel baskets, likely for repairing power lines. In the background you can see how the clouds were tea-coloured. I added a few vans and trees in the foreground for ambiance. 

Personnel cranes, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4569)

 

A long undulating bunker-style building had a green drum next to it. Such an interesting shape, I painted it with a three-toned wash (clear, yellowish, violet), then over-painted the bevels and rust. You can see how bright the grass was, I created the effect with bismuth vanadate yellow (PY184) and touches of green (PG36). Some lads who work there walked past a few times, they must have been wondering what this guy was painting the factory for.  

Bunker with green drum, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4570)

 

 When I see something I have never painted before, I always try to stop and paint it. Years ago I did a painting of the st Enoch station in Glasgow Scotland, it had an even stranger shape, seemingly impossible, but I pulled that painting off. With enough experience, you can start to believe any painting is possible. Those splashes in the sky were not there when I finished the painting, it must have happened in the bike bag. 

Bunker door, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4571)

 

Taking advantage of the nice weather I just kept on painting in the area. This car had a pale lemon colour, but the prominent tree in the background was the main subject matter. To make the two elements pop (the car and the tree) I made the rest of the painting pretty grey and bland, with cool blues and violets. In the old days I might have used Aureolin yellow (PY40) to get that shade of yellow on the car, but it is a highly unstable and toxic pigment I removed about 15 years ago. This time, I used benzi yellow (PY154) with a touch of water. To paint the tree I used some techniques I learned from Van Gogh's paintings such as the Starry night and others where he painted cyprus trees. He did the tree in near-blacks, but here I tried to strike an optimistic note by infusing the tree with yellow. 

Yellow car and tall tree, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4572a)

Lastly for this area, I did one more of cars in a parking lot, one car had an interesting lime (chartreuse) the other was teal (Turquoise, dark cyan). Since neither colour is directly on my palette, I had to mix a variety of paints to get the hue and value correct. The lime car was bismuth vanadate yellow (PY184) and green (PG36), while the teal car was viridian hue (PG7) with phthalo blue sapphire (PB15) and a touch of indo blue (PB60). Surrounding the cars with a variety of olive tones and grey helped make the car colours pop.  

Teal and lime cars, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4573a)