Little Italy Fiat show, tomatoes and signs

 Making it out to Little Italy and I found a sidewalk sale/festival with live music, food booths, street shopping, and a cool car show. It was featuring the Fiat 500 model, a common utility car made up until about 1975. They look very small, like they barely stand a meter off the ground and are about 3 meters long. The owners must take really good care of them, they were very shiny and well maintained. I just painted the last three on the row, there were about a dozen lined up beside each other. The cars were a major draw, people were stopping and taking pictures all the time, so I had to find a spot right next to a bike stand behind a tree and look on the angle like this. The sidewalk sale is visible in the background. The painting started with a painted outline using a sharp number 2 brush, then the blocks of colours and textures were filled in one by one. People were stopping and commenting on the painting, so it must be a good one! 

Classic Fiat 500 show, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025

I talk a lot about my palette, and the same word is used to describe a wood surface used to move cargo, like the blue ones in the front. When you see that shade of blue, kind of a blue-green, its actually cyan. Cyan is what you see when the blue cone and the green cone are activated simultaneously in the retina. I used phthalo blue sapphire (PB15) and some phthalo green viridian hue (PG7) to make the colour. For the tomatoes, I used a mix of pyrol red (PR254) and pyrol orange (PO73), then perylene maroon for shadowing (PR179). The hard part of this painting is actually the middle ground, I had to fill it with people, produce, and some abstract structural shapes to give the ambiance. 

Tomatoes cyan palette, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025

As I looked around for a third scene to paint, nothing was grabbing my attention until I saw this scene of all the signs around the parking area. I instantly thought 'there is your painting' and set about painting the outline for all the signs and the structure. Its not even an exaggeration, the scene was literally just like this, no artistic license needed. One of the most viewed blogs was a similar scene of train crossing signs...Montreal loves its signs especially when it comes to parking. Several apps have been invented to help drivers determine where it is okay to park. 

Parking signs, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025