Outside at Last

Today was my first day this spring getting outside to paint.  It was marvellous... I found a quiet spot in the sun by a creek.  It was partially cloudy out and so I would occasionally have very bright sun on the view, followed by cloud cover.  As you can see in the 2 pics below - it can sure makes a difference to your colours and values when it is cloudy vs sunny.  I attempted to get the 'sunny' view - however - I made the mistake of bringing a canvas stained with a deep orange.  I think for my Plein air painting - a lighter warm colour (grey or Sienna) would be better.

Only wildlife, other than geese overhead, was this colourful fly who sat on my easel for a few minutes, warming up.  Would be cool to paint him, but he didn't stick around long enough.

 I did two fairly quick 'sketches' - one is the general view - very thinly done with thinner and oil - so the orange really shows through too much.  The other was just a 'sketch' of the little tree in front of me.  Both I 'erased' after to reuse the board for my next time out.  I just made sure to paint the panel a light grey for next time.

Anticipation!

Well, my last blog post was about how much I looove winter.  TODAY, however I am eagerly anticipating spring because my FABULOUS Strada MICRO painting box arrived and I am planning some Plein air (outdoor) painting.  

I am pretty impressed with how small this pochade box packs down and how much lighter in weight it is.  I test drove it inside today, as the day started out as -20 with windchill.  Right now though it is warming up to above zero by tomorrow - so soon my pretty - I can take you outdoors. 

We had a pretty good snowstorm again on the weekend and it looked like spring was delayed I got several good wintry evening shots on Saturday night.  I set up the Strada box and easel indoors today and did a quick gouache study of the Orange Hall from this photo, with hopes to do an oil painting later.