WELCOME FALL!

~SOLD~

Well, if it doesn't stop raining, we will be floating away here in the midwest!

Maybe the sun will come out today, like it did last Sunday?

While driving down to Niles, I caught some pictures out our car window at 45 miles per hour and I painted this gouache from one of those photos.

It is approx 12 x 16 on Arches 140 lb paper. Enjoy, fall is so short here, blink and it will be winter soon.....BURRRR....not looking forward to it.

Learning something every Plein Air Session

Today I spent my morning at the Raven Glen Forest Preserve in Antioch, IL. It was a beautiful day and I am so happy that the weather cleared up for our plein air group meeting.

I took many photos of the area for later reference and after having a difficult session out there in the cold crisp morning I realized that taking a "cheap" paper to work on was not a good idea. The water was saturating the surface and making it warp out so bad that I was having a hard time getting the painting to look like anything. Then I tried a few smaller pieces with no luck and tore them up. Lastly, I folded the cheap paper and mounted it to my board and used very little water. It worked but my painting was not what I wanted in the sense of depth and color darkness, so it was a good lesson for me today.

After going home and sorting through the 75 pictures I shot, I ended up painting this scene on some good Arches 300 lb paper 12 x 16 size. I call it "Light from the east".

I LOVE TO PLEIN AIR!!!

Today I was able to attend my plein air session at the Reed-Turner Nature Center in Long Grove, IL. What a beautiful place! There are lots of trees with their leaves turning orange, red and yellow and densely grown foliage to look at. What a treat to be able to have no rain and clouds that were spectacular all morning long to paint. Here is the painting that I did from the session. It is 7 x 10 gouache on hot press. Gouache is becoming one of my favorite paint mediums, next to pastels. With the plein air though, its easy to transport my watercolors and gouache, so I concentrate on those mediums when plein airing.