Thursday, June 30, 2016

En Plein Air: Mother, Child, and Dog (Oil, 9 x 12)



It was pretty cool this morning. I pulled my kit to the Forest Park. There was a corner in the park where dog lovers gather together on a daily basis. They were pretty much acquainted with each other, so they would usually stand there and have a casual chat while letting their dogs play and be friends with each other, too. When I arrived there, someone from the group hollered to me friendly, "Hey, you are back! Welcome back." I responded appreciatively with a smile even though I didn't know her name. I remembered I painted them last summer and they might know I was a snowbird. So I told myself why not paint them.

When I opened my brush box, "Holy shit!" There were only a few brushes in it. All my favorite brushes were not there. Now I recalled that my son and his wife came to see us and I forgot to wash the brushes before I went to bed. They were still soaked in the soapy water at home. With only a few brushes, I decided to paint a group of figures using the dog lovers as my subjects. By the time, I finished processing the background with paper towel, they moved out of the shade and came into the sun. That totally changed my plan because I wanted to paint them like silhouettes against a bright background. Fortunately, a mother with her baby in a stroller and a dog sat nearby on a bench. I switched to paint them instead. It took about 45 minutes and I liked the effect. Gosh, in art, less is more again! I think among all the paintings I have done, the ones I like best are often those which I did either in a situation of being pressed for time or something unexpected happened. Strange, isn't it?



In the afternoon, I needed to check in and out books, so I went to the Forest Hills Public Library. After I was done with checking out books, I grabbed two sketches at the reading area.

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