Painting with a pal

Yesterday, my friend Sandra Pearce came down to Salem and we scoped out a spot for her to demo when she does a paint out for the Watercolor Society of Oregon fall convention in October.

We had listed Minto Brown as the site, but we hadn’t yet nailed down the specifics. The specifics needed to include not just a great view, but access to potties, parking, out-of-the-way painting spots, and other important features.

After a little hiking around, we settled a spot and got down to producing a sample for the demo. Well, Sandra produced  a sample, I just painted a spot I had been wanting to paint for a while.

unfinished – “Frolicking Field”

I don’t think this is done. The background trees need a few tweaks and I think the foreground needs some dark touches.

I wish I could show you Sandra’s piece. She painted the same view (literally) but it is SO different. She chose a completely different composition and focus.

I told Sandra she only had an hour to paint, because I would want lunch. So we dashed through our paintings and headed to Konditorei (my go-to restaurant).

Next we headed out to Red Hawk Winery for the day’s Paint the Town event.

Wow, what a view. There were so many possibilities. You could even see a bend in the river. I initially was interested in the gathering clouds on the horizon.

unfinished – “Gathering Clouds”

I LOVE the way the sky turned out, but the lower area needs some work.

I couldn’t go any further on site with this, so I tried another painting, though I kept it as simple as possible because were were running out of time (the winery was closing).

unfinished – “Haying Trails”

I hope you can tell what interested me here. I still have some values to work on.

The rest of my weekend was all about prepping for the upcoming workshop with Ruth Buchanan (1 more spot left…) She had a great article in “Artists Network” this week that even mentions our workshop! I’m really excited about the workshop, but as she is also staying with me, I’ve done a lot of house cleaning to get read (can’t let anyone know I’m a slob).

Only four more days!