Price’s Feed Mill
18×24″
Acrylic on masonite
©2015 Lucinda Howe
NFS: Soon to be gessoed over

You win some; you lose some.

Last Saturday I went out to Gilbert (South Carolina) with the plein air group to paint at Price’s Country Store. My goal for the day was to get a good start on painting on an 18 by 24 inch board. That’s larger than I usually use. It’s 4 times larger surface area than my normal 9 by 12 inch size. I like painting big because it allows more freedom for varied brushwork, but it’s also a challenge because it requires bigger brushes and more paint. I need to make a good drawing, paint fast, and not get bogged down in the details.

After wandering around and taking some photos, I set up my easel with a view of the activity around Price’s Feed Mill. I was attracted by a big old tree and the shadow it cast on the sunny side of the building. At first I started to make a vertical composition then decided to include the edge of a silo to give depth to the composition.

I painted in the darks and lights first, then filled in the middle values. I varied the brush sizes to get large strokes following the curve of the silo, choppy strokes on the pallets, curvy strokes on the tree branches and flat areas on the building and roof.

In the end, I almost finished the piece and thought that I would do only small tweaks when I got home. However, I was not happy with the result. As I critiqued my own piece, I thought that the silo on the right side was too big and boring. Also the straight-on view of the building might have been better at an angle.   And the color scheme… was not really a color scheme. I missed a good opportunity to capture the busy Saturday morning activity of the store and mill by not including any of the people, tractors, pickup trucks, goats, and emus.

Anyway, I don’t think this is one of my better pieces. There may be some things I could do to improve it, but I think I’ll call it a learning experience and move on. The oil painters call this type of painting a “scraper”. With acrylics, it’s a “gesso over”.

So what lesson did I learn?

I learned:

• It’s physically possible to complete an 18×24” piece in a plein air outing. Good to know!
• Larger size makes it all the more important to get the composition right. It would have been a good idea to do some thumbnail drawings at the beginning. How many times do I have to retake this lesson?
• Figure out the color scheme and stick with it.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I encourage plein air painting for several reasons. Sometimes I have fun and make a good painting. Other times, I make a scaper. Either way, I learn something and hope to do better next time.