Wine at Soda City
12×12″
Acrylic on gallery wrap canvas
©2015 Lucinda Howe

Soda City Farmer’s Market on Main Street is open 9am-1pm on Saturdays.  It’s growing bigger every week.  There’s a variety of farm produce, crafts, yoga, and prepared food.  The About Face plein air group gathered to paint there on September 19, 2015.

I selected a spot across from Mercer House Estate Winery where I was attracted by the contrast of the white tent against the dark background of the building and trees.  It was not very busy there near the intersection of Main and Taylor early in the morning.  I think most people went to the coffee tent first.   But it wasn’t long before people and dogs filled up the street and people were stopping for the wine tasting.

Mercer House Estate Winery at Soda City market, Columbia, SC

I started my painting on a red canvas, as usual,  and made a simple line drawing. Then I applied acrylic paints in vivid colors to capture the action of the market.

Mercer House Estate Winery at Soda City market, Columbia, SC

The colors and smells and movement were almost overwhelming and hard to capture on canvas.  I narrowed my scene down to one tent, but another artist, Alice Marcel, put lots of tents and people in her painting.

Alice Marcel captures the color and activity in her painting.

When we finished at 11:30, we had a dozen paintings set up for critique.  As a group we observe and analyze each piece, make suggestions for improvement, and encourage one another to keep painting.  To me the critique is the most valuable part of plein air day because I always learn something from the other artists.  On this day, I came home and made a few minor adjustments to my painting from critique comments and the result is Wine at Soda City at the top of this post.

Paintings ready for critique