Plein Air painting: Elm park

I tried.. well, let me rephrase, started my first ever plein air painting today. I am only saying started because I hope to go back tomorrow and finish it plein-air.

But for today, I am only barely done blocking.

First of all, I did not go there at 10:00 am as I had decided previously. I started for the park at 2:30 pm.
By the time I got my green tea frappe and set up, it must have already been 3:30. But hey, the days have gotten longer and there is a lot of bright light all the way till 7 pm now a days. So no harm done there.

However, only after I started setting up did I realize a few of the main challenges.
1. I need a table or some sort of heigher surface to put my paints and water. Since I did not bring a table with me. I had to set up near a park bench. Which means I could not choose the view.
2. There are way too many trees and poles and sleeping people and baracaded things in between the view I wanted.
3. No matter how much I sprayed the canvas and the palette with water, the paint kept on drying on the palette (despite of it being a Sta-wet palette), or worse, the brush.
4. It is really hard to draw defined shape of a bridge free hand with just paintbrush. I got so frustrated, that I just decided against the full bridge and chose a different composition.
5. And finally, its hard to get correct colors mixed in bright outdoor ever changing light.

Despite all these issues, I have to say, I had a great time. Lot of nice people stopped by and cheered me on. The nicest were the kids. Some wanted to paint with me, others wanted to talk and tell mw what they like to do and all were super excited to see it. Now how can you not get excited when you hear "I am coming back to see the finished version" from a 10 year old,  with her younger sister chiming in "I am definitely coming back"!! :)

So I am going back tomorrow to see what the finished version looks like.

Day 1

Day 2

You can see how dramatically different the light on the two days was... Firstly because the first day I was there int he evening... the second day I was there in the morning! And secondly, the cloud cover was simply different..
When I was done with the second day, as I was trying to stay true to the colors I saw, it just started looking like a blob of green in the back.Also the little tree on the right had some weird dimensions and so did the one one the left.

So, I used some more of the dark green to reshape the trees and glazed the background trees with matte pthelo blue glaze. I like the way the bridge turned out. I am still not a fan of the left tree and the foreground grass.. it looks very different in style than the rest of the painting. But I guess, I don't mind the overall effect. And, I have learnt how a photograph does not do justice to what an eye sees. I can't go literal with the paint colors, but I have to pump them up quite a bit to get the feeling I got while viewing the scene.

Update: July 31, 2013

This painting sat there this whole time while I have been trying to decide what I do not like about it.

I  darkened the ground in the back. which though helped bringing the front trees to the front a bit, still felt off.. 

Finally I decided that I do not like the water and I do not like the grass on either sides of the front pathway either. I covered the water with more mossy dark green and started covering up the grass with bushes.

I need to add more branches at the bottom of the left green tree so it does not look so horizontal and add light effect similar to the main tree to the other foreground trees.