Trees around town as colour change begins

As fall approaches so do the colours start to change, albeit subtly. This tree on campus was darker and had an orange tint, captured with various blends of dark green (PBk31), green (PG36), yellow (PY97) and orange-yellow (PY110). The shadow elements at the bottom contain black (PBk6) and dark red (PR179). The trick here was recognizing the value of the leaves, a dark grey, as compared to the sky which is a light grey. Getting the brushwork was essential too, the bottom of the tree needed some bright leaves, and the top of the tree needed some dark leaves. I wonder if this is the most realistic looking tree I have ever painted? 

Dark green tree on campus, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No.4046a)

 

The city has gone around town digging up the sidewalk and installing rectangular planters where plants, flowers or trees grow. Here is a pine tree, looking kind of lonely surrounded by concrete but still standing strong. It was even making pine cones in hope of producing new trees around it, since trees are supposed to be a part of a forest. I embellished the height of the tree considerably, as if five years in the future, in order to have its shape stand out from an incredibly busy background. It was like painting a miniature forest in the middle of a bustling city.

Pine tree standing strong, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No.4046b)

 

 

Crabapple countours, high spy, and rusticle surprise

With all of the painting lately, it was about time for some palette cleansers where I clean the palette literally and proverbially. On location I usually stick to the colours of the scenery which tend to be green, green, brown and blue. The rarest colours on location are red, magenta, and violet. For about a month now I had quinacridone cherry red (PR209) on the palette but it was not working well enough so I have gone back to pyrol red. In fact the paint I have now is called cadmium red hue, which is a mix of pyrol red (PR254) and nickel titanate yellow (PY53). Despite the name there is no cadmium in it which is toxic, this is a replacement formula that closely matches the original cadmium red paint.

Crabapple contours, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024 (No. 3885a)

 

Brilliant red, yellow, orange and magenta shapes are broken up by a black and white pattern cutting across the diagonal. An organic eyeball seems to float in space. There is a game called eye spy where one person picks a colour and the other tries to guess where it is. Looking at this painting it seemed to be a high spy.

High Spy, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024 (No. 3885b)

 

Hearing about the titanic and how its disintegrating on the ocean floor I learned a new word, rusticle. Its like an icicle made of rust hence the clever name. The formation is created by iron bacteria that can dissolve and consume iron oxides this creating the drippy brownish shapes. The amount of iron oxide pigment in this painting seemed fitting. Van Gogh was known to eat his paint, maybe he got a rusticle surprise the next day?

Rusticle Surprise, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024 (No. 3886a)

World Inspired Landscapes: Paraguay

Deep in South America is Paraguay, a small country with lush jungles and massive waterfalls like you see in the painting. Knowing a lot of Brazilians, they think of Paraguay as the place where knockoffs come from, like fake handbags and the like, so they say if something seems fake that it must from Paraguay. To be fair I don't know anyone from Paraguay so maybe they would say the same thing of Brazil who knows. Like most of the countries in South America Paraguay was colonized by the Spanish and the local indigenous peoples were mostly converted to Catholicism. Since it is a landlocked country, the people and the economic activity surrounded the mighty rivers that cut through the jungles. Although not known for tourism, there are apparently wonderful lakeside beaches. The painting is a bit of an exaggeration, it depicts a waterfall that looks as if its running over top of a staircase, with some tall spindly palm trees in the distance. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Paraguay, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, September 2024 (No. 3886b)

Zen Factory (graffiti inspired)

As the structure of this old factory/warehouse in front of me started to emerge on the paper, it occurred to me that all of the graffiti had transformed the building into an open air art gallery. Seemingly, every square meter of its walls had some colourful tag, legible to only those that made them. Instead of trying to transcribe the graffiti onto the painting, I channeled its energy to produce a surrealistic fusion with the old industrial structure. Vertical clouds, red and green fauvist shadows, and a neapolitan ice cream colour scheme come together to create this awe inspiring interpretation of a derelict factory. After spending the weekend carefully crafting realistic looking landscapes, it was liberating to just blast this one with whatever colour came to mind. Kind of a palette cleanser. The result was pretty unique to say the least. 

Note, the history of the structure is unclear... 4010 st Patrick was registered to a Federal Corporation dissoveld in 2019. On google maps it says Bando factory but that could be a joke... some locations around here have prank names on google maps. 

Zen Factory (graffiti inspired), watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, September 2024 (No. 3908)

Atwater market, rust, and graffiti

Looping back around the wonderful Lachine canal path, here is a scene of the Atwater market across the canal. I was not intending to paint this, but on the way home I had to stop behind a utility building to get out of the wind for a few minutes. Looking to my left, there was a flock of seagulls, about 50 or more flapping around and hovering in the air, which tells you how strong the wind was. Sheltered, I could paint this scene at my leisure which shows the market, the canal, the boat that is a floating restaurant, and some gulls on the water. In the background is mount royal, and the condo towers that I painted with black and white scratches.

Atwater market across canal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4045b)

 

A lot of times I paint this iconic water tower it gets lost in the details, so this time I painted it as a close crop, almost like a rusty space ship in the sky. Hey, its like the space capsule that Boeing made! Lucky they didn't put the astronauts in it, needs a little rust paint touch up.

Rusty water tower, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4041b)

 

A large factory/warehouse sits derelict on st Patrick, all the windows are smashed and its plastered in graffiti. What interested me was the contrast between the colourful spray paint and the fall colours in the foreground. One can only imagine that this whole thing will be razed and replaced with condos, its prime real estate being right next to the canal. I did see wildlife here, a small mole or vole or something was swatting its little claws at me and it was showing me its little teeth. It wasn't very scary, but it was a tiny reminder that if you leave things alone nature will come back.

Graffiti and fall colours, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4035b)

Old Montreal, a popular painter?

Its always fun painting in Old Montreal and the Old Port, its usually full of tourists and they like to take a look or make a video of me painting. Not shy, I just park my bike in the middle of the walking avenues and start painting. This scene is the classic dome of the Bonsecours market, despite the cloud cover, the metallic roof and dome were reflecting light. Technique is required for a scene like this, I used wet-in-wet followed by side-drag to create the shiny, texture roof and dome.

Bonsecours market roof line, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4037a)

 

Quite a few people talked to me here, and seemed to think it was a good painting. One lady asked me what kind of trees those were, I said crab apple and the apples are too bitter to eat! I liked the violet colour of the ice cream kiosk, made with quin magenta (PR122) and blue (PB15) and a touch of quin purple (PV55). The darn ferris wheel never turns out right, so here I just made a basic image of it with some circles, lines and blobs. You get the feeling here, just imagine someone is looking over your shoulder.

Ice cream and ferris wheel, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4043a)

 

No its not fair, fall colours are here already? In this painting I had to wait for it to dry before applying the ferris wheel over top of the cloudy sky. Using the drunken master technique, this painting seeks to capture the elements and the feeling of the moment without fussing over the details. On a painting trip like this I usually start of 'tight' and by the end of it I am slapping paint on the paper with glee.

Fall colours ferris wheel, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4044a)

 

This is the spot where it rained yesterday and I had to abandon ship so to speak. After doing the outline in paint, I filled in the details and textural elements. I don't know what they were thinking when constructing the monstrosity in the background, the steel and pink tinted glass really doesn't go with the whole stone and brick theme of Old Montreal. 

View up street Old Montreal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4043b)

 

It started to rain a tiny bit here and the washes collapsed on me, that is, turned to a moist mess. Anyways, you see the old stone and brick buildings with a grotesque glass and steel thing in the background. Maybe next time I will find an angle without the modern building, there are plenty of options in and around this part of town.

Old Montreal blue building, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4044b)

Shaughnessy Café and other scenes along the way

The first painting of the day was a second attempt at the Shaughnessy Café location, this time facing almost head on. There was a minivan blocking the best spot to stand so I had to mentally straighten out the perspective into a single point view like this. It took some time, all the while getting blasted with cold wet wind, there seems to be a wind tunnel effect next to the massive old forum building, it was all I could do to hold onto the paper, which was held on a cardboard backing by elastics. In the painting you can see the pale yellow, ornate wood trim which has sun-burst patterns on top of the windows. Whomever designed this built a sun theme into the architecture, combining the yellow with the sun beam detailing, something I had not noticed before. The rest of the painting was a jigsaw puzzle of textures, details, and various shades of grey. Under the awning, is the half-basement floor which contains the actual Café. Its a scene worth revisiting, now that I understand the structure I can probably do an even better version. Last year, or maybe the year before I've lost track, I made several visits to the Dépanneur Diamond 10 in Lachine which was a good thing since it has been knocked down last time I was there. Unlike the Lachine location, this building is a mega triple A+ heritage building and will likely never be changed.

Shaughnessy Café, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, September  2024 (No. 3907a)

Continuing with the theme of making corrections, this is the funny old yellow ochre office tower that looks quaint next to the soaring glass and steel sky scrapers going up around it. At the time, I'll bet this building was impressive and very prestigious, it seems to be a brick and wood structure, although it may too have a steel frame underneath. Definitely a 1960's style construction. Its right next to the Bay building, behind the Hertz rental. Like the cafe location, I was here yesterday but the shade of yellow was not correct, so here I amped up the chroma with yellow ochre and dabs of synthetic yellow (PY97).

Yellow ochre building, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4042a)

Speaking of soaring buildings, these ones really take the cake. If you look to the bottom left of the painting, you see the old triplex buildings, which would have seemed tall when they were built in the 19th century, then behind you see tall, taller and tallest buildings. In fact, the condo on the left was about 20% taller and more narrow than you see it scaled in the painting. My brushes were not fine enough to paint the triplexes small enough to scale it to the sky scrapers. This scene by the way is standing in the Place des Arts area where Jazz fest and other festivals are held. If there is a housing crisis in Canada, its not here!

Tall taller tallest, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2024 (No. 4037b)