Surreal or real? Fire smoke orange sky

Last month I wrote about the fire smoke palette, where I made some adjustments to account for the amber tint from wild fire smoke. Today the smoke cover was extremely heavy in Montreal, it was so dense that the sky looked overcast despite the absence of clouds. I set out around mid-afternoon, and the sky was already looking like a peach-orange sunset. For this painting, I used the full range of the smoke palette to evoke the thick amber atmosphere and its surreal effects on the landscape. With orange-yellow light, the blues turn grey, and greens tend to pop out more. The brick red walls seem to glow. 
 

Orange sky warehouse flowers, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, August 2025

This location represents the last remnants of Otter lake, which was drained in the 19th century to make way for highways and the Lachine canal. Its just a drainage ditch now but I like to make paintings of it for posterity. It was the first painting of the day, I was not quite aware of the smoke warnings, although earlier I noticed that the light coming in the apartment was orange-yellow. The horizon had a dirty orange tint, while the upper sky was a pale, neutral blue-violet, almost grey. 

Remains of lake haze, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025

Here is a view next to the canal bike path, you can barely see the downtown city scape on the horizon, and the light/shadow effects were bizarre. Normally, shadows are infused with blue at this time of day but today the shadows were dusty light purple, and the white highlights had orange tints. I used a lot of the raw sienna (PBr7), yellow (PY154) and orange (PO62), and the bright yellow (PY184) for pops of colour. Yellow ochre (PY43) was used to neutralize and tint the shadows and grey areas. 

Loading docks haze, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025

Along the Lachine canal there are what I call 'hybrid trees', they have a vertical bark skin on the bottom, but more of a horizontal, birch bark pattern on the top. Today, the orange light cast an eerie glow on an already eerie tree. I went with the surrealist vibe here and embellished the highlights to create the spectacle. While these paintings are slightly exaggerated, looking at them now reminds me of the reality. Its like something for real that belongs in my curio folio collection.  

Hybrid tree orange sky, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025