Montreal: The New Drawing Spots

By the end of the second week after Chicago, some great things are happening.

I will say I was getting pretty tired by this time. All the days up early and out late with our guests. All the travelling.

But at the same time, two weeks of painting every day is an incredible opportunity.

A lot of the watercolor process is unconscious.

The pigment-to-water ratio, the timing of when paper is wet vs. damp vs. dry.

These things are all done ‘by eye’.

As well, your sense of proportions, and how you simplify – it all becomes a little more instinctive.

I feel like these ones at the end of the week are making better use of interlocking shapes.

Most of these houses are just on the street near our home in Montreal. But this last one is a bit of an outlier.

We headed out to the Marguerite D’Youville bird sanctuary in Chateauguay – for a change of pace from all the architectural drawing.

This is the view from a small dock, looking out over a flooded field of dead trees and scrubby brush.

I was after the feeling of dark water underneath a skin of pale duck weed.

I think it’s usually much greener out here, but for whatever reason, this year it seemed to be a wheat-grass sort of color.

This park is a terrific place for bird watching. We saw herons, egrets and eagles, along with the usual songbirds. My favorite being hummingbirds that come to the feeding stations. And, if you come when it opens at 9AM, you’ll see plenty of deer. There’s also a chance for fox, raccoons, and marmots.