Plein air at Elk Rock Island

I practiced painting water today at Elk Rock Island with my friend, Celeste Bergin.

Water presents a lot of challenges for a painter and today had the added challenge of shifting flotsam on the water's surface.

That, and the ducks who disturbed the reflections by splashing and making ripples while doing their duck dance.

Oh, and my subject, the fisherman, kept walking away.

Sigh.

I was happy to use my newly cleaned pastel box today. It took about two hours yesterday to take everything out of the box, vacuum all of the dust off the foam inserts, clean the pastels with corn meal and put it all away again. Wow! Everything looked so bright and pretty when I was done. The dust accumulation in the box had made everything look brownish gray. It was kind of fun to discover what color was beneath the dusty outside every time I made a stroke, but the clean box and clean pastels were a joy to use today.

There are so many excuses to not get out there and paint. Today it was nice to just go and do it. Even better to go with a friend.

Rainy Gardens

It seems that there is always an excuse to avoid painting. Today the excuse was rain. It would have been so easy to stay home and drink a cup of coffee instead of driving to a park to paint.

Today, I didn't take the easy road. I went to the park. And got a little wet. And painted a little painting. Watercolor. Isn't that appropriate for a rainy day?

I have the sneaking suspicion that if I stop looking for (or inventing) excuses for myself, and simply paint no matter what, I will become a better artist.