This last weekend it finally got cold here and as a result I spent most of the weekend inside. My one foray was to Mountain Park on Saturday for this 12 x12″. I’ve been inspired by the wonderful clouds that have been in the area for the last few weeks and decided to push the landscape down and give the clouds center stage, My thought was to go to the lake get a long vista across the water. Unfortunately is was brutally cold with a good stiff wind off the water. I can take the temperature but when the wind blew it was misery!
I loaded up my rock bag with the largest stone I could find but this still blew over into the dirt about two hours in. I finished it sitting on a picnic table knifing out the dirt and dead grass. Did some extensive repainting at home too so this one really can’t be called plein air.
I started the weekend Friday with a view out my studio window that I’ve painted a dozen times before. Three very large trees full of English ivy that I should chop off—but never get around to. The light changes very quickly on them with a dramatic shadow cast by the house so I actually worked on this over Saturday and Sunday also. It’s a bit controlled because I was inside and at one point even scraped it down and repainted it keeping the redish scraped background. Painting ivy covered anything is a chore.
The last view is a small —6 x12″ panorama of the view from my kitchen table. It’s lovely at sunset and I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time. I may take this a bit further now that I have the simplification worked out. It reminds me of 1850 luminist views of the North East. I love that stuff.
