Toasty grass new bike bag

 

With the arid weather lately most of the grass around the city is a toasty yellow colour. I painted this scene down by the Lachine canal using raw sienna (PBr7) and yellow ochre (PY43) for the grass, with some daubs of green where weeds were still surviving. The pole is a dark neutral yellow with brown and black details. I liked how the dark blue water of the canal was so cool, the perfect contrast to the toasted appearance of the foreground. 

Toasty grass canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025

Here is a picture of my new bike trunk bag to replace the old one which I had for well over 10 years and it had started to disintegrate.  The new one required a different rack system which took some fiddling to get the old one off and new one on. Its a great product from Topeak, over-engineered as they say with a mechanical track and lock system, and lots of neat features like handles on top and extendable pouches on the side. In all it can hold 20 L of stuff. There is a velcro divider which was perfect for keeping the water cup from spilling. I made a bunch more paintings today with the new setup. Best of all, the zippers opened and closed easily, the old one needed safety pins and the zippers were falling off. I also got a smaller version of this bag which also clips in.