It rained for the plein air group’s outing yesterday, deterring the less intrepid (ha!) painters. Three of us were silly enough to go anyway. I went just to see if I could paint in the rain. I have no idea why the other two artists persisted. It seems like anyone with any experience would have stayed home to paint in the comfort of their studio or perhaps just gone to the movies.
I parked my pickup where I could sit under the hatchback, and set up for the morning. My shelter was less than perfect, with drips coming through the seam of the hatch on either side of me. I caught one steady drip in an extra paint-thinner bowl, emptying it frequently, and I put a towel under the other drip.
The subject? My nemesis, more boats! The agreed upon location (nobody asked me) was Fisherman’s Boatyard, in Freeport, Florida. Shapes, I told myself, you are just painting shapes. It doesn’t matter what the shapes are, it’s just shapes. Except the shapes probably ought to look a little bit like boats. The colors were dimmed by the cloudy skies, and the boat-shapes were sharp against the trees on the other side of the creek.
I painted for 2½ hours before the chill crept up from my freezing wet feet into all of my bones. My painting was unfinished when I stopped, lacking the top of the tree line, the standards supporting the boats, and the catamaran’s mast wires. So I took a few shots with my iPhone to help me remember what the scene looked like, to finish it in my studio.
The three of us met for a country lunch at the local restaurant. It was a good 40 minutes and two cups of hot tea before I was warm again.
One of the other artists mentioned that she didn’t care for blogs, that she felt that people don’t have time to read a blog, and it would be a better use of an artist’s time to paint instead of blogging. I considered her opinion, and realized that the primary reason I blog is because I want to preserve my own feelings and thoughts about the process. If others enjoy it, fine, but as long as I offer the option to bypass the blog and go straight to my galleries, then hopefully I can please most everyone.
Below are a few photographs from this weekend’s jaunt in one of our coastal dune lake state parks, Camp Helen. I faded and increased the contrast on the first three and I increased the saturation and the detail on the fourth one. Click on photo for larger image.
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Most of my images and paintings are available for purchase. Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot