Heat Wave

Yesterday afternoon I went out around 5 pm to paint hoping that it would be slightly cooler as I got everything set up. Never again will I feed myself that illusion. It was unbelievably hot. This location is out in one of the cattle pastures back home. The cattle were back in the woods and wouldn't come out for me to paint. Truthfully I can not blame them.

The fence line brings back a lot of memories for me. Where the tree's shadow is cast is where we used to have an outdoor calf feeder back when I used to show cattle. I remember plenty of days when the heard would hang out under that tree while the calves ate. We would just walk up through them and they didn't even bother getting up.  Where the fence line disappears over the hill is where the pasture connects to another. When we would run them across pastures it looked like a stampede in an old western with all the dust stirring and the cows balling.

After painting this I realized how many places there are to paint back home. I think I could spend the rest of my life painting those fields and pastures and never paint the same thing twice. Also painting outside in that environment gave me an idea of things that I need to do next time I go to a real paint out. My pastels are not in any order nor do I have enough values to paint  larger scenes. I am still keeping my pastels in the boxes they came in. They were never in order based on values and when I'm painting it takes me far to long to get the right value that I want. This coming week I am going to organize my materials and that should keep me from making mistakes that are from a simple lack of planning. After ruining multiple paintings by poor value choices this is the next step I have to make.