Linwood 2017 in the Rearview

I have been neglecting this blog lately and I tell myself it’s because I’m painting so much. Good excuse, right?

The highlight of my painting year is our annual Central Ohio Plein Air retreat at Linwood Park, organized by the super-organized painter, Nancy Vance.  We all look forward to it, but at the same time we know it’s signaling the end of summer. So it’s a happy time but, for me, a little melancholy.

It’s also a good benchmark to measure your progress as a painter from year to year. The 2015 version of the bridge was painted in the morning light and I remember struggling for quite a long time with it. In 2017 I was there in the afternoon and able to choose the view pretty quickly. I blocked it in and caught some highlights and reflections in the water that made it a much better painting.

Vermillion River Bridge 2017 in pastel

Vermillion River Bridge 2015 – oil

Although the residents of Linwood Park are happy to have us come, most aren’t interested in buying paintings.  The lady who lives across from the lodge expressed an interest in this little 8×10.  If I were a skilled sales person I would closed the sale and pocketed a check.  Instead I told her about the sale scheduled for Saturday (where she bought a painting from one of the other painters).  The upside is that I got to keep the painting!

As the sale was going on I painted one of the nearby cottages.  My idea of a cottage is a lot smaller than this, but I guess they’ve added on over the years.  I really wanted to catch the shadows on the sunlit side.  Although it was much admired by browsers coming to the sale, there were no offers so it’ll grace my wet paint shelf for a while. I took it down a few days ago, ran it through my self critique process and touched it up a bit.

Now it’s time to soak up those last few days of good painting weather and look forward to next year’s retreat. Thanks, Nancy, for making this wonderful experience possible.