Last Day of Plein Air Festival

Today is the last day for the painting display in the big tent at Santini Plaza.  The art is beautiful and all the artists had a great time participating in the event.  Many ideas for making next year's even better are going through our heads.

George and I are exhausted from being at the tent for about 5 days running.  I painted on Tuesday and Wednesday last week and had those two paintings to display.  I was lucky to have that time to paint.  Both were pastels done on prepared board and framed with glass and spacers to look similar to the oils.  Nice comments but no prize.  I had fun though  and that is why I paint.

My raffle donation was very popular and won by Jo List, a local woman who sang at the gala.  I think she was very happy and left many others disappointed that they did not win it.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Bowditch and Paint the Beach

Tomorrow our competition starts with the first artist's check-in.  We are all nervous and excited for the painting to begin.  Almost 50 artists will be painting around town this week which should be a treat for visitors to the area.  Kathryn and I will begin at the beach on Tuesday. 

Interesting to observe, the painting titled "Bowditch Morning" and "Beach Branches" are from almost the same location on Bowditch Beach Park.  The branches at the left of the latest on are the same branches in the earlier view.  The beach as you can see has been renourished remarkably and is wide and beautiful.

A Painting Day

Wednesday was a beautiful day for painting out doors.  The newly restored beach shone in the early morning sun and we artists settled in to capture it's beauty with our paints.  This is not an easy task with the wind blowing, ants crawling and mosquitoes biting.  A few sprays of OFF helped and we perservered until lunch.  The art created this morning was awsome with all of us turning in a beautiful work for critique.  Many of us are practicing for the Paint the Beach competition next week and we could all see the race is on!!  Our show next Friday shoud be beautiful based on the samples I saw today.

This is a pastel done on prepared board.

Do you call this a studio?

Spent a busy week with some painting and some meetings.  Studio, if you can call it that, is backed up with work to finish or frame.  I think this one is frameable....

Wednesday Painting

Wednesday morning I painted with the Outdoor group at the Beach Elementary School.  We had fun talking to the students as they wandered around watching us paint.  They asked lots of questions about our equipment and paints and why we did what we did.  Hard to keep the kindergartners out of the paint though!  The next day I went back to help the art teacher with the fifth graders when they painted "plein air".  They will display their work at the festival in November.

All the artists were practicing plein air for the competition.  After painting I decided I'd use my pastels instead of oil painting my entry!!

My raffle donation......

Meg wanted a painting from our Experimental Group so I donated this painting titled "Rounding the Mark" to the raffle.  Paint the Beach Raffle benefits the art association and tickets are $2. each or 6 for $10.  We have six nice  paintings .

Painting Around.......

Pilgrim Haven Bluff, Mi, pastel

Wa-Ke-Na Preserve, Mi , pastel

Fort Myers Beach, Fl, oil