Plein air, finally.

It is so much easier to use Airport codes for cities. Saves typing. Albuquerque is ABQ, Silver City is SVC, Austin is AUS, etc. I worked for Continental Airlines years ago and learned the codes. A few don't make sense, at least not at first glance. MSY is New Orleans, something about Moissant Field, the old name, now it is Louis Armstrong. Louisville, Kentucky, is SDF. ICT is Wichita, Kansas. La Paz, Mexico, is LAP and La Paz, Bolivia, is LPB. Well, we could go on and on. Your lesson for the day.

Yesterday we finally completed the plan to go near the City of Rocks and I would paint and Gene would bike. I dropped him off in Bayard and went to the highway turnoff and painted there. Gene came by and I picked him up at the rest area about four more miles down the road. He rode about 25 miles. No problems except I cracked the viewer on my digital Casio camera. Darn. It still works, but I cannot see anything in the upper left side. Not quite 1/4 of the screen is black and marked. I don't know if that will spread, we shall see. It would cost $39 to $119 for Casio to look at it, plus cost of repair. It only cost $200 so probably not worth sending it off. If it deteriorates further and quits working, I will have to buy another. I was using the tailgate of the pickup for my painting as it was very warm out. I sat on that and used the window of the camper shell for shade. I had the camera on the pickup bed and failed to put it away. It slid into the space between the gate and the bed and when I opened the tailgate looking for it, the screen was cracked. Ah, me.

Back to the rest of the story. I painted for about one and a half hours. The flats are so interesting. You can see a slag pile from the mining , or whatever they call it, in the back left, lighter color. I chose the direction to paint because of my shade problem. This is to the north. I liked the view to the east, but I can do that another day. :) I forgot a palette also, so I used the lid to my water bucket with paper towels and water to put out the paint and mixed on a plastic bag. Worked OK, but the air is so dry that I had to really rush each color. I didn't have much time to paint so this helped me to work quickly. :) I used a limited palette of 5 colors and white. Ultramarine blue, Cadmium yellow light, Naples yellow, Alizarin crimson and burnt siena.

Acrylic, Plein Air,

11 x 14 inches.

This painting is similar to my 2 - 4 - 1 painting, called Doubled Up here, that is at Peppers. That one is a pastel, 5 x 7 inches, done in the studio from a photo and memory. I may add a fence to this one to make it a little different. What do you think?




This morning I was putting away my chair from the deck and saw this bug on the screen door. It looks like a stick and one of the items from the Scavenger Hunt #48 is a bug. This is in my small Strathmore sketchbook with the regular Pilot ball point pin. The bug is about life size on my screen. About 5 minutes.