Back Outside

This morning I went back outside to paint and this was my first attempt back at the easel. I walked around for quite a while trying to decide what to paint. All I had to paint on was old grounds that needed to be cleaned so I set up shop and wiped it down with turpentine to remove a good portion of the old pastel. While this the ground was drying I started doing value sketches of a few scenes around me and couldn't come up with anything I liked. After finally saying enough doodling around I went to get the dry sanded paper and then this group of trees caught my eye. They stood there with the light so bright on the trunks casting shadows to their sides that I couldn't paint anything until that was captured. This painting measured 12x18 which is about as large as I've painted plein air. This is going to be one of my standard sizes because you can get more detail in than the small paintings I'm used to.