Plein Air Curacao 

I'll soon be off to participate as an invited international artist to paint in the 2015 Plein Air Curacao event.  As always, I'm getting very nervous.  I think it's a good thing to be excitedly nervous as I approach exhibits and plein air events.  It keeps me humble to know what talented plein air painters there are out there in the world and how honored I am to be a part of each event I'm juried into.  I thank the judges and the sponsors who are believing in me and in my work and the MOST FUN of these events is to get to know the people and their location.  Plein air artists are lucky, lucky people.  We get to capture beauty and history and a unique segment of time that will live forever on paper and canvas.

I ended up purchasing the "En Plein Air Pro" easel, which will soon get a workout.  I'll write a review of the easel once I've used it in the field.  The whole set fits in a small bag which can be carried as a shoulder bag or a small backpack.

You can see my page and paintings during the 2015 Plein Air Curacao event.

Building Light

Today, I was a little late into the studio. I came in around 9 am and treated myself to lunch with a long time friend at around noon. I had to ship a painting to the Rockies West National Watercolor Show in Grand Junction, CO, so I didn't really get much done today. Sometimes, I end up making several deliveries a week, not leaving much time to paint. This is so frustrating and can really confuse my creative process.

I spent today and last night working on two drawings of interior scenes, which I'm pretty excited to begin working on. I finally finished the drawings and began the painting. I hope to get two more paintings done by the end of next week...maybe.

I also worked on another painting that's almost complete. It isn't quite where I want it to be, so I stretched the paper (again), masked out the whites, re-wet the surface, and poured paint on top of the entire thing. I think I may like it now. Sometimes, it takes weeks or months to evaluate a painting, before I figure out the next step to completion....it's almost like a mathematical problem and there seem to be many ways to figure out these conundrums....