 I'm going a little out of order here and posting a painting I did about halfway through our trip, in a field near Prairie City, OR. I've been doing some work on a lot of the other paintings, fixing some issues and figuring out what is salvageable and what needs to be re-done from scratch. What I found is that only a few worked out "in the field," and the rest needed some work. For me this was most often because I couldn't see what I was painting very well, because of glare. I realized that if I had something solid behind me, like a bunch of trees or a well-placed jeep, I could see much better. Which, makes sense because it's the same thing I experience when I take photos of my paintings. When the painting is pointed towards sky (a huge source of light), there is glare on the painting. The problem is, when I find a paintable scene, there isn't always a good place to paint it from, much less a solid object to position behind me. As if plein air painting wasn't hard enough!
-Carol |
I fell in love with this spot because of the cliffs in the background. Unfortunately there was a big gnarly sage bush in the foreground. Normally I love sage but this one was just plain ugly. So I decided to take it out of the painting. It worked just fine until I got to the ground. There were a bunch of little rocks lying around, and various patches of dead grass, so I did the best I could trying to "edit" it all into a better design. I feel like I get a little better at this every time, but editing certainly doesn't come naturally to me. Just another one of the many challenges of plein air!!!
