Plein Air Day Paintings and Photos

Regina Burchett and I made it to McKinney Roughs for a plein air painting day. I highly recommend going out and painting plein air. It is good for your eye, like sketching. You have to work quickly as the light changes so rapidly. We painted a couple of hours on each painting. The paintings have a freshness that you can't get when you paint in the studio. When you work quickly, you put down fewer strokes and use color and value to separate and define objects. You improve with practice.

We were not prepared for hiking any distance so we decided to paint right near the entrance. It is a beautiful area, but not much of a view right at the main buildings. We chose a pond to paint. I did not get a photo of our paintings in progress or of Regina's paintings at all. We were too excited about being out painting I suppose. Other than the heat today we had a good time. By noon it was about 85 degrees and warm in the protected area with only a slight breeze. The photos of the paintings are not great, I took them with the flash at home, so the colors are not quite right.


I painted across the pond to the entrance road. (Regina painted the pond itself.) It was very overcast when we started so there are not many defined shadows. The painting in real life looks more like that. Later when the sun came out the scene was more dramatic with the path in and out of sunlight. It would be fun to do again earlier in the morning or late in the evening.



This view is very nice. It was pretty cloudy to start with and then it got hot and sunny.



For my second effort, I painted the flowers close up and Regina painted the distant trees and clouds.



The yellow bells and wine cups.






During our break time we noticed this butterfly and dragon fly.