Plein Air

Dressed as a bag lady, with paint splattered overalls, checkered painting shirt, and loaded down with my box easel, wooden stool, backpack and four canvases, I landed in a corner of Sharon Woods for my plein air painting day. Arriving at 9 AM, the light was ideal, though I had snapped pictures the day before just in case. Setting up shop, I had a handful of people comment, "Lovely day for painting." "Great view." as I starting pushing paint around on the canvas. Interestingly enough it took me a bit to get grounded in painting this morning as I did not prep my canvases the way I usually do--meaning, I left my acrylics at home and had blank white with which to work. It was humorous to me how much I was struggling to find my groove with this simple skippage of routine. For a time, I set the canvas down and pulled out a prescription bottle that still had some gesso/acrylic mix in it from an old painting (prescription bottles make for good portable storage), and I covered the extra three canvases left for the day. By the time I was finished with that, and one pep talk, I regrounded myself and began making progress. You can see the little set up I established. It is quite impressive the number of people that enjoy stopping and talking to you. A very different painting experience for me. I had one gentleman, a portrait artist from India, join me in consultation towards the end to try and help me discover why the right side seemed so successful while the left was just struggling. We came to a decent enough conclusion though I still think something's off. One woman, a Mississippian, told me of her pursuit of becoming an artist that led to her painting a large mural on her wall in Arkansas of the Louisiana Bayou. The majority of the people however were just very complimentary, one guy even told me, "I'm on lap four, and you're making great progress!" And I had another gentleman come back to tell me I should go up a ways because it was so lovely, he almost cried. He had a Yankees hat on, but otherwise I believed him ;) Time flew right by and I enjoyed some applesauce and wheat thins while sitting in the grass, absorbing the fine fall day.