Edinburg paint out

 Yesterday I failed to post anything so today I am showing two of the plein air paintings from the Edinburg paint out. Last night was spent going through all my hard pastels and breaking down the large pieces to manageable sizes, thinning duplicates, and rearranging them. The two paintings shown here were the last two that I did today. This wasn't a great day but I've had far worse painting outside. This morning it was extremely foggy. The check-in was at 8 but sunrise was at 7 so I got there at 6. There was no sunrise. All the street lights went off and it got lighter, but I still couldn't see anything that wasn't directly in front of me. After I made it home and was cleaning up a lightbulb went off. Break down everything into as few of shapes as possible. The paintings that im not showing are from a creek and instead of breaking everything down to as few as shapes as possible I tried to paint everything that I saw. That is almost impossible with pastels at the size I'm painting. These last two were out in the open on farmground and I'm not sure if it was me starting to come into it or painting these scenes often that made me do it, but I followed that advice. For now on the mantra will be followed and we will see what that does to my work.