Thursday’s plein air painting was at Donna Beverly’s  home.  Donna’s home is as colorful as her acrylic paintings, perched on a hilltop surrounded by firs, with a high-fenced garden.

Mark’s critique pointed out that once again, I have managed to cram two paintings into one: the top could be about the firs, the bottom could be about the bachelor buttons.  But both parts are about edges – the edge of the field was luminous gold, the edges of the trees were sharply defined, the edges of the flowers were translucent and difficult to capture.  I used my Pitt brush ben to pick out my favorite edges, and a bit of colored pencil to texture the watercolor washes.  Back at home, using a bit of Photoshop magic, I tried his suggestion and split out the flowers, then added the “poster edges” effect.  Better composition, that’s for sure.

As one participant put it, “It’s summer now.  You can smell the dry earth.  The damp is gone.”  Shortly after we arrived, a doe and her two spotted fawns raced across the field and into the welcoming darkness under the firs.  At that point it was too hot to sit in the sun to paint.  Within an hour, we needed a sweatshirt to be comfortable in the shade.  But even after dark, no bugs – no mosquitoes, no gnats, no ants.  Ah, Oregon… golden summer days, cool nights.