A woman who works with her hands is a laborer.
A woman who works with her hands and her head is a craftsman.
A woman who works with her hands and her head and her heart is an artist.

― St. Francis of Assisi

(...posted on the wall of the classroom where I just started taking a painting workshop! :)

9 - bad

My third and final entry for the Finger Lakes Plein Air Festival - my least favorite because I think it became over-worked and ugh, the colors are way too garish. (the colors were tricky to pin down, as evidenced by the variation in the photos below) And the location was a total mosquito haven - got my ankles all bit up!

One of my biggest lessons during this experience: I must graduate to larger canvasses!


coffee before I started (just after sunrise, though the lighting here doesn't look like it) - put my camera w self-timer on the ledge of that sign:

this photo shows the most accurate representation of the lighting at first:


It started out being a fun setting: a parking spot along Rt. 21 with a view of an inlet to the West River (just south of Canandaigua Lake). When I first pulled in, a family of geese (2 adults; 2 young ones) stayed very still (first photo taken through car windshield). As soon as I got out of the car they quickly & efficiently made their way to the water, plunked in one by one, and swam away. For a few moments their trail remained, creating sort of a curtain opening in the green duckweed covering the water's surface.

8 - good

My second painting for the Finger Lakes Plein Air Festival.

This was sort of an act of bravery for wimpy me - I stood on the sidewalk amidst the boxes of flowers. Joseph's had closed but people walked, bicycled and drove right past where I stood.

It was early evening, approx. 7:30pm when I started - so I had to paint quickly before the light disappeared, which ended up being a really good exercise for me. I like this one the best of the three I painted during the festival weekend.





(you can see how tiny my canvas is relative to the baldes of grass)

But guess what? At the final exhibition this painting sold!!!
My first piece of work to sell - WooHoo!!! :D

7 - good

My first painting for the Finger Lakes Plein Air Festival!



For this view, I stood near the intersection of Sunnyside & Cayward Cross in the Middlesex Valley:

I talked to the homeowner across the road (to make sure it was okay to stand on his property) - He told me he thought the different colored stripes in the field were wheat, barley and hay

At one point two deer playfully hopped across the field I was painting :)

4 - good

(in my friend Jodi's back yard)

I've been wanting to paint shadows in the grass so today was my first attempt. Half-way through I was disheartened: felt like once again I'd taken on too much with this composition, trying to cram it all onto a tiny canvas with a big gloppy brush. But I didn't have any good excuse to quit (like rain or other time constraints...) so I kept at it and actually ended up pleased with how it came out.
• wish I'd shown leafy branches of the foreground tree instead of only it's brown trunk and branches
• the maple tree behind it (left, mid-ground) was difficult to define as it's own entity
• a little less sky and more definition to the shady wooded area in the background

Overall, it has much room for improvement - but I'm happy I stuck it out.



Towards the end of the 2.5 hours I was painting, the moving sun cast a shadow from my wide-brimmed straw hat that introduced more pretty dappled patterns to my canvas and paint palette:

3 - bad

(our back pond, behind the barn)

Lots I'm not happy with here:
• Probably over-ambitious to attempt this panorama - esp on a tiny canvas, without delicate enough brushes (must get brave and try larger canvases!)
• Needs more work - this was done in less than an hour, so it's not finished - but it suddenly started to look & feel like rain so I packed up my stuff (it never did rain)

2 - good

crabapple tree (?) in field near former Widmer's Winery in Naples, NY - for my first time back at this in months, I'm okay with how it came out

Okay, not a great show here... But as of today, I was officially accepted to participate in the First Annual Finger Lakes Plein Air Competition - hooray!!! So it's time to jump back in and really get serious about pursuing this passion -
Henceforth on this blog: the good, the bad & the ugly...