Lachine Canal Rainy Day under bridge

Making my way to the canal after work in the rain, and I found a good spot to stand under a bridge. Its where the NDG path comes across the highways and intersects with the Lachine canal bike path. Years ago, I did a good one from this location during the winter... its just a good spot to go when there is either rain or snow, although the scenery is not terribly engaging all the time. Leaves were strewn about the grass and puddles were accumulating on the path. It was so moist that the whole painting had to be done wet-in-wet essentially. 

Canal and bike path rain, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Looking east and there was an impressive orange-yellow tree with leaves all over the ground. The canal was whipped up into a churning frenzy by the rain and strong wind. In the background you see the flow of traffic on st Patrick street. Only a few cyclists went by, one of them seemed to be not ready for the rain though. I had a full rain suit on with an extra layer of insulation. 

Orange-yellow tree rainy canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

The support columns under the bridge had the letters CASTRO on them, which could refer to the legendary graffiti artist who has been working (defacing) Montreal since the mid nineties. I found quite a bit of info on line, and read over the Montreal reddit page discussion on graffiti. People are generally split on what to think of graffiti... one one hand its urban art, on the other hand its vandalism that costs money to clean up and makes the place look seedy. At any rate, I meant to include 6 colums but ended up with 5, which was perfect for PJD25, the true legend under the bridge on this day. 

Legend under bridge, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Night sky autoroute 15

Looking south along autoroute 15, there was an incredible view of the elevated train approaching Montreal island, dense traffic winding its way along the roads, and the Champlain bridge illuminated in cyan off in the distance. It was a daunting scene to paint on location and I wasn't sure about it until the elevated train rumbled by and then everything clicked. The composition held together with a Van Gogh-inspired sky, undulating highways, and a curving bike path. When Van Gogh completed the famous 'Starry Night' painting he wrote to his brother Theo and said that perhaps he had gone too far with the painting, too abstract. I had the same feeling about this one, had I gone to far? It was the idea of graffiti that kept me going, just paint the city and stop thinking. To that end, my intials were added in graffiti bubble letters on the bottom left. After completing this painting, I went back to the glass factory, did one more, and headed home. 

Night sky autoroute 15, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

 

 

 

 

Half moon, on top of world

The evening of the 29th of October was a half-moon, which I knew from consulting timeanddate.com. It reached its peak around 7:45PM which is about the time I did this painting, however, it was partly overcast which created an eerie glow around the moon. Underneath, the twisty highways of the Turcot intechange were busy with cars zipping back and forth. 

Half moon over Turcot, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Making my way down to the Lachine canal bike path, I found a good view of the pink house atop of the old Canada Maltage factory. Somehow, someone found a way to light up the interior of the pink house which got me to thinking, maybe people actually live up there even though the factory is off limits. Its also covered in graffiti from top to bottom. The sky was my favorite combo of indo blue (PB60) and pyrol orange (PO73)... I had duplicate blobs on my palette specifically for painting night skies. That allowed me to keep the colours clean... the other indo blob was for making grey, like you see on the building, and the other pyrol orange blob was for making bright reds, which came in handy for car tail-lights. The pink colour is quin magenta (PR122). 

Living on top of the world?, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

This was the location I wanted to paint tonight... well, last night as its past midnight already! The moon was off to the south and fuzzy so I went and a did another painting, then returned when the moon had cleared the cloud level and appeared directly over the montains of glass at the recycling factory in Point st Charles. Incredibly bright floodlights were all around, it was like painting during the day but with a night sky. In reality the glass piles were not sparkling quite this much, so I embellished for maximum effect. 

Half moon over glass piles, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 

Intense sunset, clouds, canal and Turcot

As the sun descended behind a large purple-grey cloud, its beams shone through in a star-burst pattern. To create the effect I started with a yellow ring for the sun, then filled the middle area with a neutral purple cloud. While moist, I dabbed in a wet brush full of bismuth vanadate yellow (PY184) and let gravity pull it downwards. Since I paint standing up, the paper is naturally tilted this way, I just had to be sure not to let it run elsewhere. My brush was true today and I got the effect in one clean pass. 

Lemon sunset lachine canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

The Turcot highway interchange looms in the distance, its a massive twisting and turning concrete nest of serpents with cars and trucks crawling on top. It makes for a great backdrop when composing scenes, and often catches the sunset effects as seen in the recent painting called Sunset on the Turcot Overpass. I painted the top half first, leaving the bottom blank paper, then filled in the dark highway shapes and vehicles with grey and black forms. As it all dried, I applied impressionist-style hatch marks to tie the two sections together. Had I painted the entire background first, it never would have dried in time to overlay the highway. I will try to use this technique in the winter when things dry very slowly. Today it was cool but the air was dry, making it a pleasent afternoon to paint. 

Sunset clouds Turcot, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Fusion scenes down at the Lachine canal

The gantry crane is an old steel structure, about 12 stories high, it used to lift cargo on and off barges from the Lachine canal. A disused train truck runs underneath it, which would have brought or delivered goods from the many factories in the vicinity. Nowadays, its a historical artifact and defining feature of the local landscape. Over the years I have painted it, including a good one done in the winter of 2022. Today, I tackled the reflection of the crane in the ripling water, with the murky side-walls of the canal visible in the foreground. Looking down, one could see the brown muck decending into a dark blue abysss, with yellow leaves sunk to the bottom, and a few leaves floating by on the surface. 

Gantry crane reflection, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

The other day it occured to me that I might paint on the front of old paintings. Like the Construction project down on Dollard street, you can see in the last painting a potato in the background because I did the painting on the front of an older painting. In the example above, I painted over a cutting from an old 'doodleism' painting I did awhile back, in order to make it look like I had put artwork on these silos. Its a kind of fusion painting... In my University days I was quite the experimental painter, and its fun to bring it back every now and then. 

Fusion silos, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

This one shows a close-up of the gantry crane with a painting underneath, but the forms got jumbled up creating the sensation of a fourth dimension, or something trippy. I think this style works better with a large surface such as the silos in the previous painting. 

Gantry crane fourth dimension, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

 

Cool Burner, catalogue update

Time for another catalogue update... in 2020 I used some of the down-time to name and number every painting I ever did, and have kept up with it ever since. Its quite a chore, this time it took a few days of sitting down and going through the pile. Its also fun to look at the work from the past little while, it gave me a few ideas. I broke through the 6000 total painting mark when I did a painting called 'Self Portrait in vehicle' by coincidence. This year, there are about 871 paintings to date with a little over 2 months left. I haven't concerned myself with numbers or volume of paintings, in fact, I planned to paint a lower number but on larger pieces of paper and ended up doing both. Although the plan one day is to go even bigger on location like 9 x 12" or even 16 x 20", its just a logistical issue with the bike, and windy days. At any rate, the painting shown above is an abstract done in a colour scheme I call minus 1.... that means you use every colour minus 1, in this case there is no blue. I called it cool burner because graffiti artists call a masterpiece a 'burner', so this is a cool burner, lol.  

Cool burner, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025
 

Curio Folio: Vend-a-Pylon

Lately, I have been doing a lot of construction zone paintings and noticed a growing trend in Montreal, the Vend-a-Pylon. Just when you think the depravity of Montreal construction can not get any worse, they come up with a vending machine built into a construction pylon. So now, not only does the construction company get a flat-rate $2 a day to rent the pylon to the city, they also get to collect money for selling snacks and bevarages to a captive audience, that is, people stuck in traffic. It should be a real outrage, like there is enough construction going on without profiting from traffic jams. For posterity, I made a painting of one of the monstrosities... it had a card swipe panel, selection buttons, and a mechanical hand that would reach out and give the product to the customer through their car window. There was also an option to connect your smart phone to the pylon to order directly on the Vend-a-Pylon app. Controversially, some of the pylons were selling Provincially sponsored alcohol, cigarettes, and cannabis, and a few I could see had slot machines built in for gambling purposes. Its so Montreal, and a great addition to my Curio Folio of things you have never seen and don't really need in your life. 

Curio Folio: Vend-a-Pylon, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4815b)

Curio Folio: Thought Bubbles

While at the trade show where I saw the ingenius Pizza Tomato, there was a promotional product called the Thought Bubble, as seen in the painting above. The Thought Bubble was a very small microchip encased in a bubble, like the kind of bubbles that children make by blowing soap through a loop. The product representative was blowing bubbles at people as they walked by, which I tried as much as possible to avoid. Once a bubble contacted your body it would pop, leaving the microchip attached, which would then make a neural networking-artificially intelligent connection with your central nervous sytem. At that point, a thought would transmit into your cerebral cortex, like 'Eat at Joe's!', or 'Eat more Pizza Tomato!'. So it was being used as an advertising tool. Unfortunately, I could not avoid the bubbles and one got me... suddenly I craved pizza tomato and went and had another slice. It worked, although ethically speaking, these Thought Bubbles seem a little dubious. Lets hope the only place you have to ever encounter them is in my Curio Folio of things you have never seen, or wanted to see. 

Curio Folio: Thought Bubbles, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2025

Fire truck depot

Out in Hochelaga neighborhood, there is a large fire truck depot, with about a dozen or so parked out in a lot. Usually fire trucks wont stay around long enough for me to make a painting, or they are in the station. To complete the composition there was a large robin-egg blue factory in the background with a toasty looking dumpster in the foreground. No graffiti here, but I replaced the fire engine number with my inititals and date. The sky had a yellowish glow today, with purple-grey clouds. To make the cloud shadow I mix indo blue (PB60) with magenta (PV55) cut with some earth paints like burnt sienna (PR101) or raw sienna (PBr7). 

Fire truck depot, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4859b)

On the graffiti trail, family wall

 

Riding east along the Maisonneuve bike path there is an old defunct autoshop painted beige, its across from the Sherbrooke metro. The reason its painted beige is that the city will fine any property-owner who leaves graffiti up on their building. Hence, a lot of buildings are grey or beige in order to make it easier to paint over the graffiti. In the media, these are called tags, but according to graffiti lingo they are throw-ups, containing a fill. Translation: coloured-in bubble letters. This SODAX is new on the street, although PJD25 is well known by now. Oh, yeah... and there are beautiful autumn colours and a pastel sky in the background!

Beige autoshop throw-ups, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4858b)

You think it costs taxpayers a lot of money to clean up graffiti? How about the cost of the Big Owe... Olympic stadium that costs hundreds of millions per year. This location is near boisé Steinberg, a small forest that is now protected by the city. The location used to be an enormous train yard, located near the port of Montreal, but now it is an urban nature area with plenty of graffiti on the fences and backs of factories. PJD25 put his throw-up on a factory wall, while SODAX put her art on a yellow fence. I know SODAX by the way, but can not divuldge her identiy for fear of reprisals. I also saw JD CD initials here, they must be beginners... a beginner is called a 'toy' in the graffiti world.  

Graffiti walls and Big Owe, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4856b) 

On my recent mini-exploration of the Montreal Graffiti scene I have studied the art and some of the characters involved. I did't know what I was looking for, but today I found it. On the side of this building in the Steinberg forest area in Hochelaga, you can see graffiti art by FRITZ, CILS, and their pet D-DAWG! Top right is the king of graffiti, PJD25, his partner in crime SODAX, and the new kids JD and CD. JEN makes an appearance, and hints of ANN and ROSS are behind the golden-Autumn foliage. Actually, I changed the real graffiti to represent some of my friends and family as you may have guessed. In doing so, I felt a warmth, a kind of connection to the graffiti wall. And just then, I truely understood what graffiti was about, a sense of belonging, recognition, and family connection. Then again, its also vandalism punishable by a misdemeanor charge. 

Family wall, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4855b)

 

Last time I was at the Rouen graffiti tunel there were just a few artists at work. Today there were dozens of them working in teams on their wall murals. Someone had painted over all of last week's work with green paint, and they were aplying new paint over top. I tried standing down-wind at first but the fumes were something else! This scene is standing up wind, looking east. You can hear the 'click clack click' of the spray paint cans shaking, and the hiss of the paint. There was a lot of shouting too. Most people were wearing chemical respirator masks but not everyone. Hip hop music was playing from a car radio. It looks like the Family Clan was here... big boss PJD25 at the top with SODAX, CILS, FRITZ, D-DAWG, JD CD, and JEN all present. 

Rouen graffiti tunel weekend, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4860)

Writing on the City, graffiti alley

A back alley that runs parallel between st Laurent and Clark in the Mile End has been designated a graffiti alley. At least, for most of the structures because I did see a few buildings like the bank that removed all the graffiti from the laneway. Every available surface has been marked up with paint, pens, paste-ups (thin sheets of art glued to wall) and wood-ups (art on wood fixed to wall). I even notice a wood-up similar in style to the one I say at the Independant building likely done by the same artist. In this painting, I depicted a wide array of graffiti along with a trash bin that practically melts into the background. 

Trash bin graffiti wall, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4857a)

It was a very quiet place to paint with few people around, on the weekends the tourists come here to see the graffiti and take selfies. Almost all of the graffiti said PJD25 which coincidentally, is my initials and the year! Actually, I just try to copy the style of the graffiti, but usually I can't read the letters so I use my own. Plus, I get a bit of the exhileration that the writers must feel. Writer is the street term for a graffiti artist.  

Graffiti alley yellow tree, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4857b)

If you want to practice brush work and detail, try painting pictures of graffiti on walls. If you look back to the first painting, the graffiti had been over-painted many times, and the wall textures had to come through. They also use shiny silver paint which needs a specific effect. In the above painting, there were faded letters on the brick from where the original sign used to be (STORAGE) with additional text. Somone named Cilei wrote her name at the top, and that pesky PJD guy wrote his initials at the bottom. 

Cilei + PJD graff, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4858a)

With the last of the sunlight I caught this scene of a yellow tree, the old warehouse, and the upper wall of the st Laurent underpass. Of course, the writers had done their work, including CRD! in Brazillian yellow-green and blue colours, with PJD25 in red white and black. I don't need to sign the painting when it looks like this. Perhaps its too incriminating through? 

Writing on the underpass, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4859a)

Night on the town, NDG lights

Down on Sherbrooke and Decarie boulevard there is a PFK fast food restaurant, that stands for Poulet Frit Kentucky, or Kentucky Fried Chicken in English. Actually, the chain is not allowed to use Kentucky anymore due to copyright infringement with the state of Kentucky, for real. At any rate, the STM bus went by, that stands for Society de Transport Montreal, which really completed the scene. All colours are represented here, with plenty of red, blue, green and yellow interspersed with dark purple, orange, white, black and brown. In the midst of painting, a cop car drove up and stopped nearby, they looked over at me for a few moments and I kept painting, hoping that it was okay to paint watercolours in the PFK parking lot at night. Needless to say it was fine, they pulled over someone who drove through a red light. 

PFK STM bus night, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4854)

Standing in the same spot, I made a painting of the gas station across the street. It was familiar because I have painted the autoshop across from our condo so many times at night that I knew what to do. It still took some time to complete this one due to the amount of detail. A large throw-up (graffiti art) was on the side of a condo, which I changed to my inititals and date PJD25. Since the cops were around, I felt pretty safe, and I got to do graffiti (in my paintings) and get away with it! 

Gas station Sherbrooke x Decarie, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4855a)

 

To the left and off in the distance you see the Turcot highway interchange, and in the foreground are some of the shrubberies lining the concrete wall of the bridge that spans Decarie expressway. The bridge runs along st Jacques, but I like to call it Oscar Peterson bridge because he deserves to have a bridge named after him, and the bridge itself looks like a piano when viewed from the side. Of course, he was a famous black Canadian pianist. Doing these paintings is tough, I put together a page on night painting, it covers technical things and shows some neat night paintings from over the years. Today I made a few adjustments... I brough fresh cut paper (not the backs of old paintings) so that the paint would absorb properly. I squeezed out fresh indo blue (PB60), pyrol orange (PO73) and carbon black (PBk6) to make it easier to make the paint concentrated. Usually I let the paint dry on the palette but then its harder to use at night. The adjustments seemed to work, especially in the first painting of the blog which I actually did last chronologically on the night. 

Today was nearly complete darkenss, with only about 1.5% illumination according to a website called timeanddate.com that I have been consulting lately to optimize painting the moon or sunset. About a week from now will start to have a strong moon again leading to a Nov. 5 full moon.  

Turcot Oscar Peterson bridge, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4856a) 

Sundown on Notre Dame avenue east

Lately, I have been working in Montreal east, and by working I mean painting watercolours (working for me usually involves sitting in a cramped all-grey office without any windows). In this scene, I was on the way back from Hochelaga neighborhood and caugh a view of the Jacques Cartier bridge in the distance with some colourful fences and stroage areas behind the Hydro Quebec building. There was a wide gravel path here, and Notre Dame avenue immediately to my left which was rather noisy. Its interesting that graffiti artists (writers) put their name and artwork on the city, literally, whereas I pull images off the city and onto paper. But its the same idea. The late writer Scan got his name because he would constantly 'scan' the city looking for places to put graffiti. I constantly scan the city looking for scenes to paint like this one. 

Sundown Jacques Cartier bridge, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4852)

The old Molson's factory is slowly being demolished. Its bright red signage is still visible from Notre Dame avenue, although grey lines are showing up in the letters where the bulbs have burned out. Soon enough the whole structure will be razed and replaced with an affodable housing and community project. 

Molson Factory last light, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4853)

Hochelaga, Rouen Graffiti Tunnel

Riding out to Hochelaga took me to downtown east Montreal well past the Jacques Cartier bridge. I was out there looking for some graffiti by Scan, the NDG 'writer' known for making burners. Translation: the person nicknamed Scan was a graffiti artist who made incredible masterpieces with spray paint on wall. He passed away in 2017 and I made a painting of part of a tribute wall over in Sud West neighborhood. The above painting shows the sun going down over top of an old factory that was converted into affordable residential housing. Graffiti adorned the building but it was done in a tasteful sort of way. The sun popped out from the clouds for a moment, which is captured in the painting.

Sundown Hochelaga, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4849)

Standing on the same corner (Moreau and Ontario street) looking south and there was a big brick-red factory with numerous metal chimeys. It is the Lallemand food company that manufactures micro-organisms on an industrial level... like edible yeast and bacterial products. You get the sense of the neighborhood, triplex brown-brick dwellings, small trees along the sidewalk, plenty of cars and people coming home from work, and active factories. There is a massive train yard nearby too, but not easily visible. 

Lallemand food company, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4850)

Where Rouen street goes under the train tracks, the city has authorized graffiti in the tunnel. People were there spray-painting artwork as I went by. It was tempting, but I opted for a watercolour painting instead... a lot less work it seems. Coincidentally, all of the graffiti art said 'PJD25' just like my initials. I found a City of Montreal report on graffiti published in 2003 when graffiti was getting out of control. In the report, they identified needs of the youth and community, and decided at that point to make certain areas permissiable for graffiti, to sponsor 'mural festivals' in designated areas, and to provide funding for public wall art. In doing so, there would be an outlet for people. Having said that, writers (graffiti artists) will still view an illegal piece with more street credibility. But at least the amount of graffiti is down.... NDG used to be covered in it, now there are just a few graffitis here and there. 

On the way out I saw a massive burner (masterpiece) by Scan on the wall, untouched since he did it probably ten years ago. You can see it on google maps Rouen street, just west of the graffiti tunnel.  

Rouen Graffiti tunnel, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4851)

Sports Field Rainy Night

Paint at night, during a rain storm? Why not?! The numerous challeneges of doing a painting like this on location include dressing in waterproof clothes, finding an overhang to block most of the rain, and keeping everthing togther. Just getting the painting home without smearing is a feat, luckily it worked out in this case. To find a spot with enough light I gravitated to the sports field adjecent to the research center, where there were really tall, bright lights illuminating the field. The overhang I found was small and ineffective, but it kept off the worst of the rain, allowing for just a few drops here and there to create the rain effect. So the rain effect is created by having some rain fall on the watercolour while still wet. In 2021, I was caught in a rain storm and made some cool paintings of some condos and cars, and did a few out in the Jarry area. That sky byt he way is indo blue (PB60) and pyrol orange (PO73) an incedible combination. A dab of phthalo blue at the horizon completed the sky effect. 

Sports Field Rainy Night, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4848)

Tribute to Scan, a great Montreal writer

On Cabot street, part of the Sud-Oest neighborhood in Montreal, there is a long factory made of cinder blocks that has an enormous mural. It stretches about a city block, and looks to be at least 4 stories tall at least. I've often wanted to paint the scene because it appeared to feature a prominent graffiti artist, there is a large portrat of him holding a spray-paint can at the beginnig of the mural. Today I was on the location and noticed a big engraved metal plaque, the kind you see for historically important locations, and it told the story of 'Scan' who died in 2017, he was widely considered to be one of the greatest graffiti artist of all time and it seemed up to a hundred colleagues from Montreal, Canada and around the world had joined to make this monumental mural. Most of the wall is painted in turquoise, with white outlines and other designs throughout. To tackle such a scene I had to find a composition, and some kind of connection to the landscape... I rarely paint other people's artwork out of respect, so here I intgrated their ideas with my ideas. Graffiti artists put paint on the wall, but I put the wall onto my paintings!

When I saw the saturated red fire hydrant with yellow-green cap and orange-yellow snow marker (when the snow falls this allows the hydrant to be found in the winter if its needed), then I knew it would work, along with the cinder block textures, barred window, and one of many air conditioner units. Painting something like this on location leaves no room for errors, I had to establish the outline with a small brush, then fill in the details before applying a pale yellow wash, letting it dry mostly, then applying the turquoise layer which really pulled everything together. I added the letters 'SCAN' in the center of the composition which is barely discernable, but that was the idea. 
 

If you want to know more, or see the work of Scan, I found a link telling the whole story on a web site called wall-2-wall Montreal. Reading that link, I learned that graffiti artists prefer to call themselves 'writers', and they produce burners, tags, and throws. I don't know what those words mean but I'll look into it. Hey, if there were ever a wall to paint on (legally) I would be up for it. Check out The End of Art is Art (Ecipse Flowers). I did meet a 'writer' once, he was walking along the train track path when I painted Train Crossing, in fact, he talked to me for awhile and admired the painting and told me he paints on walls, I had included him in the Train Crossing painting, just a simple blue-clad figure in the distance. 

Tribute to Scan, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4847)

Urban Montreal: Rue Cabot area

For some good scenery of urban Montreal, rue Cabot is an accesible location just off of the Lachine canal bike path near the Passerelle Côte-Saint-Paul bike and pedestrian bridge that runs next to the highway. For this painting, I captured the Lachine canal with its famous black railings, with elaborate concrete-work and pigeons. Oh yeah, and a few autumn colours with a yellow and a red tree growing out of the old stone wall of the canal. As usual, I converted the local Graffiti into my own initials and year (PJD 25). Its kind of fun trying to emulate graffiti artists, their work (vandalism) can be very elaborate. In doing so, I get to be a graffiti artist without wrecking anything! 

Yellow green and turquoise graffiti, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4845a)

As most Montrealers in the area know, some intrepid artists painted part of the old derelict malt factory pink with green trim. I did a good one on that location of the Old Canada Malt Silos, albeit without a view of the pink house. And earlier this summer, rather incredibly, I saw people sitting on the roof of that thing driking beers which seemed absurdly dangerous.  

Pink house blue-green factory, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4846a)

Most of the autumn colours are dark yellow, olive, brown and maroon this year, no spectacular oranges or bright reds. To make up for it, as you can tell from reading the blog post, I found colours elsewhere, like this giant violet graffiti tag. Its part of an abandonded factory that the city is planning to develop into some kind of urban resisdential area. I painted this location a few times, for example I did an interpretive painting on location last year called Zen Factory. 

PJD graff in violet, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4846b)

The whole area around rue Cabot, which I believe is part of the Sud-Ouest (South-West) neighborhood, are factories and warehouses with just a few houses here and there. It seems to be a graffiti hotspot, with many colourful tags, and entire walls covered in street art. The rear side of this factory was a fascinating tapestry of shapes and textures. It must have had large windows at one time that were mostly boarded up and painted over. Multi-coloured bricks were plastered with bubbly graffiti tags in blue, green, yellow, pink and black. I painted fast here because dry dirt was blowing and it didn't seem to healthy to be standing around for too long. Usually we only get dry dirt clouds in the Spring, but worry not, there are like 7 days of rain predicted for us. 

Rear Factory graff tapestry, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4845b)

Frédéric Back Park, Autumn Views

When I was looking into places to see the stars in Montreal at night, I read about Frédéric Back Park up in Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension. I rode my bike there today and made some paintings of the unusual landscape and scenery. This park used to be a massive quarry which became a landfill for Montreal's garbage for decades. It has now been covered up and a park was built. Dotting the landscape are these spheres with one quarter cut out, a glass window on a curved door invites you to look in. In fact, they mowed paths so that people can walk up and look and take pictures. I put a yellow smiley-face behind the glass window to suggest someone is in there!  I got that idea from my Lemon Sunset abstract paintings, but the rest of the scene is pretty much how I saw it. Planes were going by on their way to land at the airport. 

Sphere and plane, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4842)

Here is the view that welcomes you upon arrival to the park from Rue Paul Boutet. The trees were all manner of yellow, with a bit of red and olive mixed in. I used a lot of Bismuth Vanadate yellow (PY184), its an opaque paint good for bright yellow or chartreuse (lime) colours. 

Viewpoint Frédéric Back Park, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025  (No. 4839b)

Just beside this park is the massive Cirque du Soleil office and warehouse where they presumably make and store all the circus supplies. In the background of this painting, behind the trees you can see part of the structure. I was walking with my bike down this path, when the curved tree caught my attention, it really made the composition work. The quarry wall was done with a mix of wet in wet and dry brush technique. It may look all brown, but I varied the hue angle (colour) of the neutrals according to what I saw. This is a neat one, and reminiscent of Van Gogh's Tree Roots painting which I have always admired and tried to find similar scenes.  

Trees on quarry wall, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4838b)

I didn't paint as much as usual last week due to a grant that was due... more of those deadlines! When I got back to the blog, suddenly I have hundreds of views! It seems to have stemmed from the Jacques Cartier night scenes blog, a lot of people looked at that one which feels great. Of course, thousands on thousands of people have probably seen me painting in Montreal as they drive or walk by... I'm the guy standing next to his bike painting out of the rear bike bag. As mentioned, Frédéric Back Park was a landfill, which creates large amounts of methane. To make the area safe for people, they encased these methane pipes in the spheres... there were hundreds of them all over, sitting in amongst some beautiful fields of wildflowers and trees. I may have embellished this one a little... 

Another arrival, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4841a)

On the way out I rode around the entire quarry on the bike/walking path and saw this view of the far quarry wall and a very old pylon sitting up on the ledge. There is a fence in between me and the scene which I omitted. Never has one brush stroke been so important in a painting... after doing a thin outline with a paint brush (I don't use pencil or pen at all), then I applied one brush load of pale red-orange (pyrol orange PO73) to the pylon. Since the rest of the painting is brown and dark yellow it is the only source of high-chroma colour (bright). Anyways, I've painted a lot of pylons before but this one might be Montreal's oldest pylon.  

Old pylon quarry view, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4841b)

Belvédère Outremont sunset view

To better paint the night sky including moon and stars I did a little reading on astronomy and stargazing in Montreal. The fact is, Montreal is in a high 'light pollution' area rating a 9 out of 10 on the scale, making it one of the worst places to see stars at night. But local astronmers listed two locations where the view was a bit better including this spot, called the Belvédère Outremont, and the large park that used to be a landfill in the north east of town (Frédéric Back Park). Today I went to Belvédère Outremont after work and found a large clearing with rock slabs, chairs for lounging, and a wide open view to the west northwest direction. Its one of the few places that the city clears trees around the mountain, so as to not block the view. Several people arrived and snapped some pics with their smart phones. 

West view sunset realist, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4838a)

In the first painting I used a realist approach by painting the background, letting it dry, then over-painting the clouds and trees. In this version, I used an impressionist technique where I painted the trees first, capturing all the detail in the branches, trunks and leaves, then daubed in the surrounding sky and background vista. In the winter I will have to paint something like this most of the time since the paint wont dry fast enough. Even today, I did the background of the other two paintings, and did this one while they dried. 

West view sunset impressionist, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4839a)

This painting uses a surreal, colour-splash technique to create vibrant colour and energy. Its never clear how it will work out, in the midst of painting, I really thought it was a disaster and a waste of paper, but then I recalled the Cloud over Trenholme park painting, one of my favorites of all time. In today's painting, surprising colour blooms formed in the clouds and trees which added a mysterious texture to the scene. So I used three different treatments today of the same scene, realism, impressionism and surrealism. If I can make it back to this location in the winter I think it would be a good one. 

West view autumn sunset surrealist, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4840)

Gravel field botanicals

Painting around the gravel field, I found an old disused asphalt road that stretched for several kilometers to the east. The road was surrounded by fields of dry grass and aspen tree saplings, with thousands upon thousands of small white daisies and other occasional purple or yellow flowers. I stopped to make a painting of one small yellow flower and a star-shaped green plant, with a small bee on the flower. The two plants were growing out of a pothole in the asphalt, which I depicted in black and white. 

Yellow flower green plant bee, watercolour 7.5 x 11" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4876 top)

There were thousands upon thousands of these, so I made a close-up of just one plant at the same location. This time, I filled in the gravel and asphalt with a grey wash toned blue to yellowish, then daubed in the yellow centers (PY154 + PY43), followed by some foliage and shadow detailing. I dont often paint botanical close-ups, but today the scenes at the gravel field were all pretty much similar, it was just interesting to see nature coming back on its own. I did another one of cosmos flowers in the gravel field.  

Daisies asphalt, watercolour 7.5 x 11" cold press, October 2025  (No. 4876 bottom)

Old Turcot trainyard gravel fields

Down where the old Turcot trainyards used to be, there is a great expanse of gravel stretching from the Rue st Jacques bridge all the way east to the Turcot interchange, a distance of about 3 km. I painted a few scenes there back in June when there were thousands of yellow flowers. Today I headed back down there and made this panorama scene of the gravel field with its natural regrowth, and the highway and train in the background, with NDG up on the escarpment. The city has a massive plan, with Federal funding, to renaturalize the whole esccarpment area including these gravel fields. I found a link to the full plan in a gazette article, it was a 75 page pdf document filled with maps, pictures and plans. 

Gravel field panorama, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4835a)

Ever wonder where Concrete dividers go when they die? I never did, but got the answer today! In the gravel fields there is an area filled with rows of neatly stacked concrete dividers, with a tall pile of the broken ones lying at the end. A pylon had also passed away. Getting the concrete to look heavy and textural took many different techniques and layers. It does truly look like a pile of concrete dividers with a pylon. 

Concrete divider pile, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4836b)

Here is another scene from the same location, but looking towards the neat stack of concrete dividers. The sun was coming down from left to right here, which cast a neat blueish shadow on the sun-bleached rocks. The plan for this area is to turn it into a forest with some wetlands, and a meandering walking path. It sounds fine, but I don't mind it the way it is, silent and no people around. Given enough time, a forest will grow up, I saw thousands of aspen trees probably from the canal trees nearby. 

Concrete divider stacks, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4837)