One Year/100 Paintings - #31 - unfinished Plein Air painting of what I believe to be an old one room schoolhouse near the intersection of Fairview Drive and Route 94 in Hanover, PA. Painted with Golden Open Acrylics on 7 x 5 canvas board.
One Year/100 Paintings
#23 - One Year/100 Paintings - Plein Air painting with the Urban Sketchers Baltimore group using gouache and watercolor in a Moleskine landscape watercolor album. I'm very pleased with the impressionistic look of this painting though maybe the red ball in the water is a bit distracting. This was an absolutely beautiful day for painting, the weather was just cool enough for a light jacket and there was a breeze coming off of the water.
7 Paintings in 7 Days
7 Paintings in 7 Days - Create-A-Thon 2017 update. Though I haven't been specifically focusing on one creative activity for a weeklong period at a time recently I have been making lots of sketches, taking lots of Instax photos and thinking about other creative ideas.
This past week, I decided to paint 7 paintings in 7 days - 5 x 7 size mostly, with acrylics, using my own photographs as reference. Brenda and I also spent one day at Rehoboth Beach and painted outside at Cape Henlopen State Park. I really enjoy painting landscapes, and want to work toward painting them in an impressionistic style. I like painting outdoors and would love to be able to do that more often, but it's just not possible with my current daily commute. Some evenings, it was hard to pick up the brush to get started, but I think that painting daily is the way to improve, no matter whether you feel like painting or not.
I think that I would like to expand on this activity and try painting daily for 30 days, not necessarily creating 30 paintings, but that could be my goal. The key would be to work in a small size, such as 5x7, or 5x5. I also have some miniature canvases, that could be fun too.
Plein Air Painting at Sachs Bridge
On Sunday, I finally had a chance to get out and try Plein Air Watercolor Painting with a homemade watercolor field easel. I first saw the easel on one of my favorite YouTube channels, The Mind of Watercolor, and had wanted to make one for myself. I've been sketching in my small watercolor journal with photographs that I've taken for reference, but I really wanted to experience sketching out in the open after seeing it done on some of my favorite YouTube channels. I already had the materials I needed to construct the easel and I had a fairly strong and stable camera tripod to mount it on. I "borrowed" my son's no longer used camp stool to finish out my Plein Air setup and I was eager to get out there. I couldn't decide if I wanted to go out to the marina by Lake Marburg at Codorus State Park or drive over to Devil's Den at Gettysburg. On the way over to Gettysburg, I decided that maybe I would check out the Sach's covered bridge to see if there were many people there. There was no one else there when I arrived, so I walked around a bit to see what would be the best angle to capture the bridge and also not be in the way of anyone's photos while painting. After much fiddling and fussing with my supplies to get everything just so, I started sketching while also keeping a lookout for wild things in the tall grass behind me. After a while, I settled in and really started to get into the drawing and was about to start painting when the first onlooker came over to see what I working on. I will have to get used to people talking to me and watching me paint, which is not easy for me to do. One other gentlemen came over later to see what I was working on. I really only sketch and paint for my own enjoyment, with no intentions of displaying my work to sell, so it really shouldn't matter what someone else might think of my abilities. I really just want to enjoy what I'm doing now that our kids have grown and I have time to pursue my creative hobbies. It was starting to get really hot and also near lunchtime, so I decided to finish up and head home. I will say that I really enjoyed Plein Air Painting and would like to get out there again soon.