Today my plein air painting group went on another excursion, this time to the beautiful property of a fellow artist who lives out past Carp. Her land had a wonderful arrangement of large bedrock, barns, and small ponds, around which she had planted a beautiful garden of irises, hostas, shrubs, and grasses to bring out the beauty of the landscape.
She encouraged the group to walk throughout her property to select a scene to paint, so I settled in front of one pond where I could see a hint of blue sky reflected on it, with the three barns appearing in the background.
For this occasion I had selected a much larger canvas than my previous. I don’t know the exact measurements but it is probably something like 18 x 20. It was definitely challenging to paint on this much larger canvas, and I barely finished before the cut-off time of noon. But in the end, I’m happy with how it came out.
As before, I first mixed several of the colours I would need, but this time I didn’t try to mix all of them, because I found at the previous session that some of the colours had started to dry by the time I got to them. So this time I just did a few at a time, and some other colours I just mixed on the fly. This worked better for me.
After doing these plein air painting sessions a few times now, I realize my current paint easel is not cutting it, because I have no platform on which I can lay my supplies. So everything gets left on the ground, and I’m constantly bending over to switch brushes, clean my brushes, get more paint, etc. Definitely not ideal. I will have to bite the bullet and invest in a better easel that has a platform.
Amanda Bennett Art 