Montreal Skyline and Curving Highways

Behind the Glen hospital there is a very steep embankment accessible by a narrow dirt path. It offers incredible views of the city. The last time I painted this scene was in 2021 at night, and in 2019 in the fall. If you click on the 2019 fall painting, you can see the progress that I have made as a painter over the last four years. Today's painting features a light and airy atmosphere with a strong composition featuring the highways. The grassy embankment is subtle, and the skyline is playful. As usual, the cars are like marshmallows on wheels! Another improvement is a 3/4 inch border around the painting due to the 8 x 10" wooden rectangle I use to hold the paper down. That is significant because it will pop right into a standard 8 x 10" mat without any cutoff. One small detail, the brick-red building on the center right has a top-shadowing, which creates the sense that light is emanating from underneath. I used the same trick on the highway to make it look like it was glowing, and with white highlights on the horizon. With these tricks, the scene is infused with ethereal lighting from the overcast sun. Luckily I didn't get rained on!

Montreal Skyline and Curving Highways, watercolour 8 x 10" rough press, April 2023 (No. 3598)

Train tracks and other scenes

With rain in the forecast I stayed close to home today. This scene is down at the end of Trenholme park looking south to the train tracks. The rusted steel tracks really pop against a mostly grey background. A steep, rocky embankment connects the foreground and middle ground. 

Trees and Train Tracks, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3438a)

 

Toward Vendome, the bike path loops around in a circle. I have made several paintings from this vantage point because its a great place to set up the bike and get some views of trees. I've not painted it from this angle because the background is a horrendous wall of condos and apartment. Using my imagination, I added a more pleasant background! Recently I put in some fertilizer spikes for these trees to help them grow. An artist has to take care of the subject matter.

Trees near Vendome, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3439a)

 

A few drops of rain splattered down causing me to turn around. Inadvertently, I caught a glimpse of the Montreal General hospital on mount Royal where rumor has it I was born. The buildings of the new Glen hospital were framing the scene. The Glen hospital is like a giant pile of discombobulated Lego, which contrasts the classic brick structure of the General.

Hospitals Old and New, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3439b)

Signs of Spring with Mercier Bridge

Considering the gloomy forecast for the next week I took the opportunity today to make a painting down at the peninsula park near Lachine. I was hoping to catch the trees blooming but it was probably a week too early for that. Signs of spring included leaf buds, greenish grass, and some cyclists on the path. To paint the river I used pure indo blue (PB60) which looks bright violet-blue, but after it dries it looks more of a grey-blue especially on the rough press paper I was using. Certain papers absorb the paint more than other papers, which causes an extra dull (low intensity) finish after the paint dries. Being able to understand and predict the drying shifts of watercolour paint is an advanced skill. Both the colour intensity, and the hue can change. That means the colour you see while painting is not exactly what you get. Handprint.com by MacEvoy had extensive data on drying shifts which helped me understand the concept, then I practiced it a lot to be able to predict what the finished product would look like after drying. The funny thing is that I tried many variations of colour mixtures to capture the right colour of the st Lawrence river on a sunny day, and in the end it was just indo blue (PB60). Indo blue is the colour of brand new blue jeans, better known as navy blue.  

Signs of Spring with Mercier Bridge, watercolour 8 x 10" rough press, April 2023 (No. 3596)

Spring Field of Flowers and Trees

Today around noon the sun came out and the weather was very warm and spring like, which is fitting considering it is spring! Its just not spring in my office, where they crank on the air conditioning about now and it feels like winter all over again. I snuck out to the little strip of grass along West Broadway at lunch hour and made a quick painting of the beautiful spring field of trees and flowers across the street. Maybe that's how it used to look like anyways! To compose the scene I decided to eliminate the entire row of duplex housing from across the street and just show the garden flowers and glimpse of the backyard lawn which became a large field of grass in my painting. There was a strange satisfaction in transporting myself into a scene that the impressionist painters of the 19^th century would have found themselves painting. To complete the joke I kept in the ever-present sidewalk and road although I made the sidewalk like a glowing white-gold instead of dusty grey. I much prefer the look of this semi-imaginary scene over what was actually there.

Spring Field of Flowers and Trees, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3437)

World Inspired Landscapes: Iran version 3

 

The first versions of the Iran painting were not quite hitting the mark so I made a few adjustments to the colours and composition. Switching from portrait to landscape format allowed for elongation of the mountain ranges and more depth. I omitted most colours and softened the blue to balance all of the intense orange and magenta. Finally, I applied decorative brush strokes to suggest trees and interesting patterns. The paints include rose red (PV19 M Graham), bismuth yellow (PY184 Schmincke), pyrol orange (PO73 Winsor and Newton), cobalt blue (PB28 Holbein), and a combo of warm yellow ochre (PY43) and iridescent moonstone, love the name, (PW20) both from Daniel Smith. Version 3 hits the blazing colors that I was going for, the colour scheme was inspired by the famous Endless Summer movie poster.
 

World Inspired Landscapes: Iran, version 3, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, April 2023 (No. 3599a)

Auto Shop Sun Behind Trees, thoughts on Renoir

 

Joe and Ralph Auto has been the subject of many paintings now, owing to its very close proximity to our condo. Of all artists, I have made the most number of paintings of Joe and Ralph's auto shop! For my birthday, the students gave me a coffee table book on Renoir, the great French master from the late 19^th and early 20^th century. He was of course an oil painter but also dabbled in pastel, watercolour and sculptures. Most of his work was portrait and figures, with a decent number of landscapes, some of which were painted along side of Monet. One thing that stood out was that Renoir used a lot of dark/light contrast using flake white (lead white) and bitumen black (carbon black). He used dark mixtures of ultramarine, viridian and alizarin as Monet did at the time. Renoir juxtaposed dark/light contrast with high chroma (intense) highlights and plenty of tinted pastel colours (coloured grey). Somehow he got it all to work together to great effect. I was thinking about these ideas when I made this painting. It is a little different than I usually do, it has a heavy base of grey, dark black, and pops of high chroma colours. On top, there is an airy, pastely depiction of the evening sky and soaring trees. Just a hint of yellow-green on the left horizon depicts the budding leaves and Spring season.

Auto Shop Sun Behind Trees, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3436b)

Afternoon and Evening in Verdun

Cilei and I  had a belated birthday dinner in Verdun with Cilene and Fritz. She went down early and I rode down with my paint supplies and made this painting after my haircut in Mile End. Labelle park is a little park off of Lasalle Boulevard where it meets Atwater Avenue. The trees were just starting to put out leaf buds and the beginnings of leaves. In the background there is a new modern looking condo with black walls and green windows, and off to the right are some of the water works buildings. The trees and leaves were painted over top of the rest of the painting after it had mostly dried.

Labelle Park Bench, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3435b)

The restaurant, a Hindu-style Indian restaurant called Bombay, was about a 20 minute walk down Wellington street. Every time we go down there, there seems to be more restaurants and cafes. During the 20 minute walk we must have seen close to a hundred restaurants, cafes, and little boutique stores. It was really hopping. After dinner I rode back to NDG on my bike, and finally stopped to attempt a painting of the Hydro Quebec station on Lasalle Boulevard. The sun usually sets behind it, creating an eerie looking scene completed with the tall trees in silhouette. It was a hard painting to do. In retrospect I would have shown more sky and less cars. The sky had a crescent moon and bright star that was probably some planet or another.

Verdun Powerplant at Dusk, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3433b)