Hot Air, Plein Air

Despite the hot, hot weather I’ve been able to get out and paint a few times since the trip to Scotland.  It’s nice to actually have some sunshine to work with.  Here are a few of the paintings:

This one was painted with our Central Ohio Plein Air (COPA) group at Slate Run Historical Farm.  The farm has so many scenes to choose from.   I liked the darkness inside the barn contrasted with the sunlight hitting the hayloft near the doorway.

This painting was done at one of the ponds at the new Ariel Park in Mount Vernon.  It was a  beautiful day only spoiled by a drone that kept buzzing around us.  I chose the view because I liked the little island in the water and wanted to see how well I could differentiate the middle ground trees from those in the background. It was almost time for our COPA critique.  Then I spotted the scene below.

The sky is was created with just the underpainting and a few small touches.  I didn’t finish it because we were headed to the little Greek restaurant on the square for lunch.  The next day I finished up the pastel painting, toning down the golden grass and adding details.

While I was on a roll I painted this one from my Mom’s porch looking at her flowers.  I downplayed the stone wall in the back and substituted grass for a set of concrete steps on the left.

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Since I began using pastels, my oil painting gear hadn’t been out of the house.  So I went to nearby Blacklick Woods MetroPark to get back into brushstroke mode.  Here are two paintings I did on different days.

They both needed a few touch-ups back at home in the air conditioning.  Even though I thought I’d differentiated values, the second one was so dark when I got it indoors that I had to bring up the light, warm colors quite a bit.

I learned a lesson from the painting below that I did at Stratford Ecological Farm with the COPA group.  It was the hottest and most humid of days.  I walked around a bit to choose a site where I could stand in the shade and decided to paint the barn (cliche, I know).  It was massive and I liked the way that you could see through to the sunlit foliage beyond.  I hadn’t put a sketchbook in my oil painting kit and I was too hot and lazy to walk back to the car to get one, so I figured I could skip the thumbnail stage.  Had I done that I might not have ended up with a barn that took up 75% of the painting.  The farm dog came over, looked at it, and left a 3D critique on the ground.  Oh, well, I had fun spattering the paint to create the gravel.

This last painting is my favorite.  It was done in oils with COPA in the Community Garden at Franklin Park.  I loved the little path into the garden and I’m a sucker for flowers, especially when everything else is so green.

So I’m off to Paint Historic Wheeling this week and hope to create some good paintings despite the heat!