Tag sky

Plein Air today

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8 x 8 ins, Oil on Linen Panel

I painted this from my front porch this afternoon, an exhilarating experience. It was a crisp, clear, windy December day. My focus was the large maple tree in the middle of the front lawn, and the way the nearly-setting sun was lighting it, although by the time I finished (an hour later) the light had pretty much gone from the tree.

I took a lot of artistic license with the view and completely removed the houses across the street (their complexity and presence did not add to my ideas about the tree), so this is not actually the view from our porch, but my ideas about the tree and the light this afternoon. I loved doing it.

Plein Air in PA III

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Oil on canvas panel, 9 x 12 ins

Our third Plein Air class was in the middle of very quiet Amish countryside, near New Wilmington, PA. The three of us stood within in a fairly small area but all chose different views, so came away with three totally different paintings.

I liked these big trees overshadowing the farmhouse buildings, with the big barn a little closer to me. There were numerous Amish buggies coming and going, and horses being used to plow the fields, so almost the only noise was of horses’ hooves. Altogether a very peaceful three hours of painting.

Skies

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Because we have temporarily moved (over the past month) to Western Pennsylvania (until Thanksgiving), I’ve become behind on the posts of paintings that I’d planned. I’m going to try to catch up a bit!

These are all small (6 x 8 ins) sky paintings on canvas. I painted them earlier in the year, all from photographs I’d taken. I was experimenting with ‘feeling’ the color and trying to achieve that sky ‘glow’. These are more abstract than subjects I usually paint, and the freedom with shapes and colors was invigorating.