Thursday, December 20, 2007

Point of Rocks, step 1

The Plein Air Painting/Sketch


point of rocks
the plein air painting


point of rocks reference
a reference photo


I had never investigated the Potomac River at Point of Rocks as a painting site before, and there was a lot to absorb. I parked close to the river and found myself looking almost directly into the sun. After checking out a number of possibilities, I settled on the vibrant "yellow" tree whose tips were illuminated by the slowly sinking sun behind the hills as my center of interest.

For nearly two hours I fought the bugs. Dummy me, forgot the bug spray! Several of the little critters ended their lives trapped in the wet paint on my canvas. They really like the yellow!

It was a neat place to paint (aside from the bugs) with a train going by at least every 20 minutes. Nice sound effects!

You can see I eliminated one of the "islands" and shortened the distance between the "yellow" tree and the island. Otherwise I was fairly faithful to the scene.

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