Sunset treeline

After painting a few scenes on location including moon over the gravel pit, the sun finally set on the treeline. That treeline used to be the edge of a lake, and the lake would be literally where I am standing. Now there are highways and bike paths, and hopefully some re-naturalization efforts the city will do to bring back nature. Earlier in August, I did a painting on this location during the wildfore smoke, and it was an eerie yellow glow. Today the sunset was powerful and colourful, emanating rings of yellow, orange, red-orange, magenta, pale cyan and blue. Applying paint quickly and keeping moisture the same allowed the colours to mostly blend together. In the foreground, there is some grass, and a bunch of small trees that are growing at the edge of the bike path area. That factory is still operational, I painted the smoke stacks last using a very small number 2 brush in order to catch the detailed contrast and orange tints. Finally, I initialed using a mix of yellow ochre (PY43) and burnt sienna (PR101). 

Sunset treeline, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

To avoid cluttering up the blog I omitted the sunset pigments... here they are! 

yellow (PY154)

orange (PO62)

red-orange (PO73)

magenta (PR122) 

pale cyan (PG7 +PBR15 dilute)

and blue (PB15 dilute slightly neutralized with PO73)