Late Evening on Bay Street

30x48 oil on canvas

When painting city scenes at night, it seems there are no rules for warm and cool colours. With daylight, a warm light creates cool shadows. In cool light, shadows are warm and light areas are cool. Its hard to follow these rules in a city at night. There are many types of city lights: incandescent, flourescent, mercury vapor, sodium, Led, etc. Each one has its own colour. I find more and more lights that create a green hue, which of course adds a green hue to everything around it. ( not a good mix with the warmer yellow lights). Green traffic lights are more turquoise now rather than green. I suppose the rules apply, but it seems much more complicated.

These street lights are warm, creating warm colours on the surrounding buildings. The iron fence in the foregroundis from the National Club.

Thanks to John Tavares for the use of this photo reference.