Yesterday I spent the afternoon painting with Shari in Place des Armes. The square is finally in use again after a massive
re-construction project. At lunchtime, it was absolutely packed with
downtown office types enjoying the sun. A bit later we had tour groups
showing up from all over the world.
I
had an incident with a rogue gust that tipped over my easel, dumping
out my paint water. If you’re painting
often enough, I guess it’s going to happen. I supposed it’s my own
fault for taping half sheets to this tripod that’s meant for quarter.
This might have meant a trip to buy an overpriced water bottle, but
fortunately, the base of the Maisonneuve statue is a fountain! I think I
was a bit discombobulated after that . The painting turned out a little
more chaotic than I’d like.
I’ve been feeling lately that I need
to get the people and cars into the paintings. Usually I avoid cars as
much as possible. But, it is part of life as it exist in the city, and
I should be learning to paint any situation. So, this is the first pass
at handling the presence of people. Clearly I’ve simplified the crowd
into silhouettes – the lighting situation at mid-day helped with that.
This is going on my list of things to work on. I want to be able to
tackle the complexity of a street scene a little more gracefully in the
future 🙂
