Monday, July 28, 2025

Stinkin' hot day, another reflection

Finding a spot to paint in the shade during lunch hour was not easy, I found a location that was nearly perfect at the corner of Grand Blvd and Maisonneuve next to the bike path. These yellow flowers were in shadow, and formed an interesting silhouette against the brightly-lit asphalt of the road. Getting the yellow shade correct took a bit of fiddling, I used various mixtures of bismuth yellow (PY184) yellow ochre (PY43) and some orange (PO62) and green (PG36). Making dark yellow is tricky, it can lean to the orange or greenish hue depending on the mix.

Yellow flower silhouette, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

It was so hot and muggy that the paint on my palette was turning soft and gloopy. It made for quite an interesting mess to control! Its the opposite to the problem I have in the winter, when the paints turn hard and brittle making it difficult to get colour on the brush. The scene was done on the exact same spot as the previous painting but looking east. The bike path is tucked in between the road and the foliage, it created a good triangle for the composition. 

Bike path parked cars, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025

Getting back to the PERFORM Centre, aka work, I parked my bike in the shade of the adjacent building, and saw this neat reflection in the glass front of the Centre. The glass has enormous laser-etchings of people making various physical motions, its a type of glass mural meant to convey the sense of human performance. To paint the scene I established the perspective of the building with an outline, filled in the reflected trees and sky, put in the glass support struts, then painted the figures over top. Finally I added a few interior lines to signify the blinds in the windows and a bit of the internal detail. The glass had a strong green-blue tint which I made with a mix of green viridian hue (PG7) indo blue (PB60) and diluted carbon black (PBk6).

Perform Centre reflection, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 

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