You’d have to be crazy to complain about the weather in Atlanta. With the rest of the country buried in snow it was 70 here on Saturday and warm enough to paint outside all weekend.
I returned in earnest to the Air Park near Dobbins AFB . I discovered this collection of planes while out searching for
a spot last weekend. Most have something to do with the air base or Lockheed Martin who has a plant just North of the runway. After another meeting with my tax accountant I got over about noon and set up in front of this 50’s vintage F-84 Tunderstreak. It’s a beauty and just speaks early jet aviation with it’s center line intake, coke bottle fuselage and sharply swept wings. I found it hard to keep the all important proportions correct—almost like drawing the figure. I kept a lot of the fence post and telephone wires in as part of the composition. Not a plane picture, more a portrait. I’m a huge aviation enthusiast, have been since I was a little boy so of course I enjoyed this and hope to do a few more.
Sunday I decided to stay close and did this view of the creek that winds around my neighborhood. I started early in the morning and did a few thumbs of the view from both sides of the bridge that crosses it. The sun never 
quite made it out so I concentrated on the reflections and light through the trees instead of shadows. Although everyone likes this for the water it’s the trees that took up most of my time and after taking this about an hour past it’s prime I ended up wiping them off and repainting them. After all this time I still find that the hardest thing in plein air is knowing when to stop.
