Plamondon Station at dusk

Getting out in the relatively cool evening to make a few paintings, I found myself up at Wasserman forest, but the sun was too far down to go into the forest. I turned north west and found the Plamondon station, on the corner of the busy Van Horne and Victoria intersection. I caught a good view of the bus parked at the station, with a pastel blue-orange sky in the background. At this time of day you can see the headlights on the cars piercing the gloom, as seen on the left part of the painting. I have gotten better at painting that headlight-effect over the years its a tough one to get the hang of. 

Bus at dusk Plamondon Station, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025

Because of the extensive wildfire smoke still lingering over Montreal, the moon had a strong tea-coloured tint that I replicated with a mix of yellow (PY154), orange (PO62) and raw sienna (PBr7). To do this painting, first I established the medium value blue sky using blue (PB15) raw sienna (PBr7) and magenta (PR122). Important for the effect, are the three white lamps in the center and lower right... they provide the necessary contrast to make the moon really look tea-coloured. The trick with this painting is that everything has to be done in one pass, no mistakes or fiddling. If the sky is incorrect its not possible to fix, same with all the light highlights. I will put another painting I did last week to show how it can go wrong. By the way, on August 9th Saturday there is going to be a full moon, I am already hoping to make a night painting trip. 

Tea moon, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 

This painting was actually from last week, I didn't post it at the time because there were a lot of paintings, and this one was a bit of a fail. It wasn't a good corner to be standing at for the time of day so I hastily tried to finish and move on. The funny mistake was that the moon was visible in the sky, but I painted the blue over the whole surface, just leaving an oval for the street lamp. So I tried to turn the street lamp into the moon, then changed my mind and made it back into a lamp. There was a huge pile of rubble on the bottom left where they had demolished half a block. In fact, the Archambault store is closed, but the city said the sign has to stay up because it is so iconic to the corner (Berri and St Catherine).  

Archambault sign on st Catherine, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025