The full moon on August 9th was known as a sturgeon moon since this kind of fish is apparently abundant, although I did not see any sturgeons tonight. I did get to see Cilei down in Verdun who is still dog-sitting Davidson for her sister. Afterwards, I made a few paintings of the full moon on a muggy evening. At first, I could not see it anywhere, then over my shoulder on Blvd Henri Duhamel I saw it between some of the red-brick condos. The scene captures the brown and green that is iconic in Verdun, along with the tea-coloured full moon still low on the horizon.
Full moon over Verdun, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 (No. 4637)
Next I had the big brain idea to ride west on the Verdun street bike path all the way to the Lachine rapids to see what the reflection looked like on the river. This scene is the end of the Lachine rapids. Where my initials appear would be goat island I believe, with the little rocky outcrops in the rapids. The sounds of geese honking were prevalent here, they seemed to be roosting on the rocks in large numbers. I tried to capture their silhouettes along with the moon light reflecting on the rippling water.
Moon over st Lawrence geese, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 (No. 4638a)
A bit further upstream and I did one last painting of the moon over the Lachine rapids, by now the air was humid and the painting was a moist mess of a thing that got smudged all over. But the idea is still there. After these paintings, my brain was going a mile a minute (probably from the Brazilian coffee I had an hour earlier) thinking about how to better paint the moon effect which is very difficult to do at night. Most of the scenes were variations of 'moon over something' so I kept going until something good came up.
Moon over rapids, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 (No. 4638b)
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