Plein Air Debut

Everyone who has been a part of Karin Jurick's Different Strokes from Different Folks challenge knows Edward Burton.

I'm lucky that I live a couple of town/cities away from Edward. He was kind enough to let me know his plein air group was going to painting in my town.

[That's Edward painting a tractor]

Forrest Farm is a City Park and where there is a Farmer's Market on Saturdays. While we were there, the park employees were giving tours to a couple groups of school children.

My first attempt was looking at a clump of trees near a creek bed and the second was a tractor at the rear of one barn. They also train sheep dogs on this park land and it's so cool to see these dogs do their job out there.

The group plans to come out again next week and I'll try to join them again.

Both paintings are oil on 8x10 RayMar board.

Parakeet Pals Plein Air

I painted this while I was at my last "meet the artist" stint at the pet store.  I had no photos yet of pets to paint so I took the opportunity to paint these pals who were about 15 feet in front of me.

6x8 oil on canvasboard 

So...

No big commission from yesterday but I did get some more cat food for a 'pleine air' commission for another shop employee.  She want a painting for her daughter's birthday present in May.

She gave me two photo references.  One was in a frame with a collage of images you see a bit of on the right.  She then gave me a B&W photo of the pose she wanted to have the dogs in.  Mind you, the heads in the photo were about the size of a nickel.

Business was slow anyway because there was a Civil War reenactment occurring down the street.  She wanted a bigger canvas so I drove home (15 minute round trip) and got an 11x14 canvas board.

I then spent the remaining time I had for my "Meet the artist" event painting inside the store.  [about 2 and a half hours]

Sorry about the quality of the photo but I forgot my camera and used my phone to capture the images so I could leave the painting with her.

That was it!  I got several inquiries and we'll see if that results in anything.  HUGS! Oh, reminder.. contest ends tomorrow...