Thursday, October 31, 2013

EARLY MORNING ON A HOOD RIVER RANCH, Pacific Northwest Plein Air Competition, Day 2

Morning Aspen Shadows, oil on panel, 16 x 12
(This painting isn't as dark as it appears in this photo.)

August 31.  At the private residence where we've been invited to paint for the day, it's already warm, and the dry grasses glow in the low-angle sunlight.  Shadows on the barns are changing fast, and the house is already emerging into sunlight from its protective grove of trees.  As I make my way across the field, I hear a burbling sound, brief, but repeating.  Behind a group of pines is a spring, surging with bubbles, then subsiding.  Spreading water trails across the field, evident in green swathes of grass.  I round the spring and set up in the shade of some aspen.  Everything here depends on the chance location of water.