Plein air painting October 15, 2022
Autumn Comes Early!
The fall colors are changing super early here in Brown County this year! Usually, by mid-October the trees are still mostly green. But not this year! Already lots of golds, oranges, magentas, and vibrant reds! So I decided to head out to the forest to paint.
I preloaded my pochade with paint rather than try to carry large heavy paint tubes into the forest on my back. Back when Tara still made paper palettes, I would use a parchment paper palette in the bed of the pochade. For awhile, after they discontinued making the parchment paper palette pads, I made my own from paper I bought in rolls from the supermarket. But it was less than satisfactory so now I opt to just use the bottom of the pochade as my palette. After I finish a painting, I scrap off the excess paint and rub the rest into the bed of the pochade. The paint then dries into a neutral grey.
My backpack is loaded with my pochade, tripod, support, and other gear. I hiked out about 1 1/2 miles to the end of the ridge and set up to paint.
Set up, ready to paint! There is a lot more autumn color than this photo shows. I took my cell phone and a second tripod to videotape this painting but found the adapter for the tripod was the wrong one. I’ve got 4-5 adapters back in the studio but the cell phone tripod takes a smaller size. Drats!
The initial sketch.
Oranges, reds, and then greens. I often start with the darks and move to the lights but in this case, I wanted to block in the brightest fall colors first. Bright colors can easily be muted but are impossible to bring back the vibrant brightness once other colors are added.
Tommy is checking out the backpack. Luckily, he is starting to outgrow the puppy habit of grabbing and running with anything not nailed down.
Continuing to block in the painting. Starting to add the trees.
Now I start to add more trees and block in the sky.
And this is where I goofed. My palette consists of two blues, two reds, a cadmium red light which is really orange, a yellow, and a white. Well, I should have put out a double dose of yellow because I ran out! Since it is one of the three primary colors, there is nothing to fall back on. I wanted to add some more green to the foreground and more yellow over all but had to leave it here. The painting still turned out pretty good.
SNOW!
And then, just three days later, we got 2″ of thick snow! One of the earliest snowfalls on record! The earliest was October 15, 1989 and I remember painting the snow with orange trees underneath looking out the window of my small studio building. That was before I started to paint “en plein air”. I think we got 8″-9″ that time.
Autumn colors covered in snow.
So, that’s it for today! Super crazy busy with projects but I wanted to keep you posted about new paintings. Thanks for tuning in.
I love you!
Happy trails,
Charlene
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