Outdoor Painting

"Last Light, Cardrona Valley", Oil on Canvasboard, 10x8"

Thank God for the internet is all I can say...
The weather forcast for today was 'morning mist, sunny all day'. When I woke up the morning mist turned out to be a solid gray cloud cover. Okay I thought, maybe they have different mist down here - mist that looks like gray cloud everywhere. So I waited for it to lift like it did yesterday, tended to emails and pottered around the house. By 2pm I was getting kind of figety seeing my painting time slipping away. Surely they can't be this wrong about the weather!?

So I looked up a few webcams for the surrounding ski fields. Low and behold - sunny, sunny, and sunny. I just needed to get higher! So I jumped in the truck and header for the Crown Range - the fastest way up. I only drove about 20km before the oppressive cloud began to break up, treating me to beautiful spotlight effects everywhere I looked across the valley. I was so happy to see the sun again I didn't take any chances on missing out - I jumped out at the first likely spot and set up fast. By that time I only had about 2.5 hours left before the sun ducked behind the mountains so it was just enough time to get this little painting done. The painting changed about 3 times as the light revealed ever more exciting effects. Usually I try to stick with the original plan, but as the sun got lower the colours and contrast looked so much more powerful to me that I couldn't resist the urge to change it all.

So I learned two valuable lessons today - that I can change a painting on the fly without destroying it, and that I shouldn't sit around waiting for the sun to find me - I should get out and find the sun.

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