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Monday, May 3, 2010

100 plein air paintings in 100 days - #3

#3 - "Bend in the Bow"
Original Oil 6x8'

10/04/10 (3:30 pm)

This was the second painting done on April 10th, I moved about 50 feet ahead of where I painted yesterday's post. Still lots of ice on the river, which I loved - but it was freeeeezing! (You'd never know it by watching Lily, who kept wandering around in the river collecting rocks - one of her top 10 favorite things).  


The huge challenge with this study was painting on such a bright platform and looking into the sun. The umbrella helped tremendously, but it was still next to impossible to see color on my palette and panel accurately, and a lot of my mixing was done from knowledge of my colors and my best guess at proportions. I have since figured out that in these situations it helps to set up your easel so that it has a dark background behind it if at all possible. Also, the umbrella shown here is black underneath which is often an asset, but when painting in extremely bright conditions I now use a white one which lets a lot more light in and decreases the extremes of contrast from the scene to my painting area.

7 comments:

  1. Good day painting Liz. Both of these turned out great in spite of the colour "blindness" and freezing cold. Only 97 more to go..you're almost there...ha!

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  2. It's fantastic Liz! Love your water.

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  3. Brave soul to paint while so cold! All three of your paintings are really great, despite your color trouble, You'd never know that you had problems. Good luck with the remaining 97 - looking forward to seeing them! :-)

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  4. Wow, what a scene and a beautiful painting! My favorite so far (but I like them all...). Thanks for the tips on umbrella color and putting something black behind the easel. Can you recommend your umberalla and whatever clamp you are using?

    Your Lily has a nice life. I'll bet she wishes she was going heli-painting with you.

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  5. Happy to recommend my umbrella, it is AWESOME!! This comes from trying ones that weren't. It is sold by www.bestbrella.com. $100 for the whole kit including umbrella. It has a terrific clamping system, super strong, really easy to set up and make adjustments, and pretty rock solid in wind. LOVE IT!

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  6. I am really enjoying your challenge so far! So weird to see ice and snow when we are having a heat wave and thunderstorms here in PA. Can't wait to see what you do next.

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  7. Beautiful painting...looking forward to the series. Your brave soul BRRRRR!

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