So I woke up the morning and made my way across town to participate in the Hillsboro Plein Air Plus event. I scoped out the park I planned to paint in for the day, so after getting my paintings stamped, I headed over to Rood Bridge Park and set up on the side of the lily pond.

I started my first painting of the day. I wanted to convey the tranquility and coolness of the day, as well as busy antics of the ducks cavorting around the pond. Tentative title: “Morning Abolutions”

I quickly lost the light, so I decided to switch to another view. Before I could get started, however, a friendly duck came up to check me out and have a few grains for breakfast.

One thing I liked about this area was that it is not heavily landscaped; there are weeds and native roses allowed to hip out and a variety of other interesting points.

I decided to try to capture this in my next piece, tentatively titled “In the Weeds II”; I plan to have it be similar in style to the painting that sold when I did the Johnson Creek Watershed project.

I’m pleased with how this is going, though the color on this shot isn’t great. I stopped at this stage because the light was changing and I will come back to it tomorrow.

There was a lunch break, then I moved over to an afternoon spot I had picked out a few weeks ago. They have great fences here, and I thought a bright colorful painting could incorporate it.

I was hoping to get more done here, but unfortunately I had an accident while I was waiting for it to dry and ended up sore and dirty. I really wanted to at least see the next stage of the event, which was a figurative quick draw, so I packed up and made my way across the park to the area the models had set up.

Unfortunately, this didn’t strike any artistic inspiration, so I went over to the duck pond and admired the ducks there.

This area has an interesting shelter, so I decided to do a little architecture piece.

While the drawing on this is acceptable (and again the color isn’t coming up right on the camera I’m doing), at this point I recognized that I was getting tired. I saw sore from my accident, tired, and pretty windblown. So I decided to pack up and head home. I’ll go back tomorrow and try to finish these paintings. It’s my goal to turn in at least one for judging.

Finn and Willie were glad to see me… in a very mellow way, of course.