Studies/sketches

I went landscape painting this afternoon with a friend in Cambridge. The weather was odd for landscape painting, as it was rather hazy, and the light bright but not consistent. But it's good to be painting landscapes again fairly regularly, as it's been awhile and I definitely feel out of practice.

Here is my study of the end of the Weeks bridge:

And here's a sketch of a pond I did the other day:

Weekend on the beach

I spent this weekend with friends on Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod. It was sunny and warm and about as near perfect as a few days can be. The Cape part I spent in the company of friend and fellow painter, Christie Stewart, and this morning we got up early and walked to a lovely little pond and set up our easels on the beach.

My set up

(Here you can see me working very hard, clearly laying in front of my easel, feet up):

Here's the study of the lovely little pond (which I jumped into as soon as I cleaned up my paints):

I find painting still water with reflections particularly hard, because it's so easy to make it look cheesy. I also find it particularly hard to paint big clumps of trees where the individual silhouettes of the trees are not visible. So, brilliantly, with this painting, I set myself up with a subject I find doubly tricky. But for a study, I do not think it so terrible in the end.

Scrolls, continued

Day Two:

Scrolls

I started a new piece today. The bits on the left are broken scrolls from violins and a cello, I realize they're not quite obvious yet. Here she is:

Day one:

Kiddie studies

A couple studies of children for paintings-to-be (pardon the weird shadows on the paper):