Recently it was announced that the historic Empress Theater in NDG would be torn down, sort of. It seems they will attempt to preserve the facade with steel supports behind it, leaving an open park area where the theater was. Might as well tear down the whole thing if that's the idea, but hey, you gotta leave something for the graffiti (and watercolour) artists to paint! In this painting, I was standing across Sherbrooke street in a snow embankment next to the sidewalk, and did a painting of the left part of the facade with the fire escape, and a street lamp illuminating with an eerie glow.
Empress fire escape, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, February 2026
Looking just to the right of the Empress theater, there are a few shops with bright neon signs and warm interior lighting cutting through a gloomy evening. With overcast skies on a winter night, it takes on a kind of greenish-grey glow with blue and orange tints. I ran the mixture off raw sienna (PBr7) and tinted with indo blue (PB60) and pyrol orange (PO73). Next time I will lean into the raw sienna-blue mix more, to get the greenish glow, which only comes out a little bit in this painting. That greenish grey sky colour is difficult, with a bit more tweaking maybe I can get it right. In 2023 I did a good night painting of a dépanneur with a greenish sky, you can see it in
this blog.
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