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.

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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.

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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. IMG_3141 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.

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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 whIMG_3138ere 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.  IIMG_3143 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!