I left my camera in the truck yesterday so I’m late with pictures of this weekends’s plein air work but I only had Sunday— so only two to show. I was inspired by two small monographs written by Carl Judson. He’s the guy who designs and manufactures the Guerrilla pochade boxes so popular now. I like mine a lot, even though I’ve knocked the crap out of it. He’s a retired rancher from out West and started doing plein air about 20 years ago. Not what you would call a classically trained painter but his work in interesting in its subject matter than tends to be a bit edgy — as in different, not full of edges. He paints the back of buildings, signs, culverts… and odd but interesting long views that tend to flatten out and be more abstract. So I was inspired by this and did a little off subject matter painting for my sec
ond one on Sunday. I had to force myself to do it but to my surprise this came out better than expected. And interesting too. I think it helps to get away from traditional subject matter some times— it make it less important and relaxes your brain, also there are some intriguing compositional opportunities.
The one up top is a 11″ x14″, so a bit bigger than usual, but I’ve been breaking out of the 9 x 12″ lately. It was painted at Lake Garret in Mountain Park, one of my favorite spots. The other “Last Day at the Pool” is a view of the community pool. The Dodge Caravan was not there to start and I was prepared to paint about a half dozen trash cans but a family pulled in while I was setting up and I thought it was actually better with the van. So I painted it in first thinking that on a cool day the kids might bail out rather quickly, sure enough about an hour in they packed up and left. I also added a few figures, what’s a pool without some people in bathing suits?