Sycamore Land Trust Paint Out

I was painting today at the Sycamore Land Trust Paint Out "Art for all Seasons" at the The Touch the Earth Preserve.

It was a pretty nice place and a beautiful day. As it turned out it was rather a windy day as well.

This has been the longest lasting Spring that I can remember. It's mostly a matter of not getting hot. It seems that often - a normal Spring around here lasts a week at most. The leaves start to bud out and then it gets up to the 80's or so and that brings the leaves out. I always really liked the stage where the leaves are starting to come out and there are many shades of light greens and such. It's also the time of redbuds and dogwoods. It's been great to have this state of nature continue a little while.

Anyway - I went to the paint out. I didn't see anyone else out there painting. I did talk to the lady who lives across the street and saw her lady slippers and such. She showed me the pawpaws in bloom at the SLT property.

I settled on painting in the open field. In the morning I liked the view toward the cedars - which were practically in silhouette with the white-budded bushes (autumn olive?) in front and a few Springy looking trees scattered around in the background.

It went pretty well - I managed to catch the painting more than once as it nearly blew over in wind gusts.

After that one was done - it took about 3 hours - I decided to paint another one since I was out there. I was painting fairly small - 18x24". So I went back and took the opposite view - toward the hill. This time I got the easel anchored better - got through the whole painting - and then as I was trying to position it to take to the car - a wind gust blew it over on my head (fortunately I had a hat on). So I had to try to fix it. I ended up fixing it up a bit more after I got home.