Sun against your back

This morning I wasn't planning on going outside and painting. It was sprinkling off and on so it seemed like a good day to stay inside and get work done. It started to clear up so I got a hold of Donna Shortt to see if she was going to be out painting. She was looking to get out once the rain let up so we met up at a fellow painter's place in whiteland which is only a few minutes drive. At first I thought it was in the town but it went from urban to rural in less than a mile. It was really nice being out of the city to paint. When we got there it started sprinkling so we looked around for some good places to paint. Thankfully the rain didn't last long so we set up and got to painting. When we started there was a lot of overcast and it felt amazing. It was cool, there was a breeze and no direct sunlight. That changed about 30 minutes after setting up. It went from wonderful to feeling like the sun was sitting on your shoulders. The thing that always gets me when setting up in overcast is that I don't get behind a tree or in the shade somewhere. When that light shines on your paper or canvas it gets hard to tell what value you are laying down. A month ago I finally went through my palette and arranged all my colors by value so that helps combat getting values that are wildly off.

This was the second painting that I set up, the first never had its under painting dry. For anyone that does under paintings using mineral spirits or turpentine, I would suggest that you never use turpenoid natural for plein air. The turpenoid natural is thicker and when put on it made some interesting runs down the paper, but it set in the sun for 3 hours and didn't dry. If you are going to do an under painting and set it away to work on the next day turpenoid natural might be something that you look at, just don't try it when you want to get down to business. When it does dry I will try and paint it from memory using one of my value sketches. Unfortunately I forgot my camera at the house today so I wont be able to use that to help me. Who knows that could be a good thing with helping me re-invent the scene using only my drawings and imagination.