Saturday, May 29, 2010

OLd Forge

The Bridge
McCaulley Mountain
Bald Mountain, Second Lake, Old Forge, New York

I was invited to spend three days in Old Forge this week with a good friend. I got to paint twice, which was a real treat. Both days it was high 80's and blue sky, perfect for painting. The bugs were very interested in what I was doing, so I was glad to have good bug repellent from Bert's Bees. I am experimenting with using a colored ground on these paintings. You can see the pink coming through. I like it much better than the white of the canvas board. This time I learned a few things: don't forget your umbrella, find a good bug spray, and bring a drop cloth. The drop cloth was good for protecting surfaces I set up on, but it also covered the tall grass where I set up to paint "The Bridge". This kept the bugs from crawling up my legs, which is very distracting!

Green Lakes

This was the first plein air outing that wasn't in my backyard. A few weeks ago I met another artist interested in painting outside so our first outing was to Green Lakes State Park. What started out as a nice, crisp, spring morning turned into a freezing, blustery day very quickly. We both were determined to get at least one painting done, so I choose a very simple view and painted as fast as I could. It was so cold. I learned you need to paint what changes fastest, which in this case was the water. I had planned to put in these beautiful dark reflections in the foreground water - but the wind kicked up and they disappeared. I also learned that a paper palette can blow away!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

TLC really works!


I just wanted to post today and say I have not fallen off the planet into the abyss of not painting. I have been taking some great drawing classes and trying to get back into figure drawing after 25 years. Nothing worth posting just yet. I have also been spending a lot of time getting my garden into shape before everything is over run and the ground turns to a solid rock. I hope to do a lot of painting studies as soon as I finish catching up. One more week I think. The weather is holding and we are getting enough rain to make it some what easy (it's all relative) to pull out the enormous weeds. I wish the flowers would grow big and the weeds would stay small. Anyway I love my garden and this time of years it needs it's TLC to get a good start. I also have three beautiful new raised 4' x 8' veggie beds filled with organic compost, vermiculite and peat moss. Now I just need to find some worms and add them to the mix. I hope to buy my plants this weekend and start hardening them off for planting in a week or two. I did start some heirloom seeds inside but they are looking pretty punk and may not survive. We'll see. I'll post pictures soon. PS 6/25 - here's the results of the TLC