Night Painting the Harvest Moon, Core Creek Park

I went out to the park right before sunset to wait for the harvest moon to rise. I used two  8x10  reused (gessoed over) panels.

In the first sketch I still had a little bit of light left in the landscape where you could just make out colors. My concern though was capturing the values of the scene the best I could.

                                                                                          

                                                                                             

For the second sketch I went around to a different part of the park that would give me a view of  some water and the moons reflection.

As you can see in the picture I had my Mighty Bright light clamped on to my easel giving me enough light to see with.

Now I have some reference material to use for studio paintings that I have confidence in. I had taken photos too but they were useless, they just don't capture what the eyes really see.

Still Life Ice Tea and Lemon

Ice Tea and Lemon 5"x7" oil

I painted this during one of the the heat waves we had this year, I found it in one of the drying racks which are just dish racks, but work perfectly for keeping wet paintings separated. I have one rack for small paintings 5x7 to 8x10 and another for larger paintings 11x14 and up.

This started out as a practice piece to see if I could capture the barely recognizable tea bags sitting in the ice tea, then I became interested in the shadow and reflected light from the tea. I think I painted the lemon 3 or 4 times before it looked like a lemon.

The reason I found it is I periodically go thru paintings after they have been out of sight for a while and when I see them with fresh eyes the mistakes seem to stand out. I'll try to repaint them, if that doesn't work they get the gesso treatment. The paintings not good enough get coats of grey gesso made by mixing some black with the gesso, now I have panels ready for outdoor sketching, these plein air sketches  capture the essence of the scene when painting on location. Recycling the panels like this also  helps save money on buying panels for sketching.

Early Morning at the Lake

Maria Fishing 8x10 oil

This was from the same morning as the last post, I had just finished photographing the tree and as I was walking by I looked over to see how Maria was doing and noticed the way the light was hitting her from the left side making her stand out from the background.
I try to be inconspicuous when getting reference photos, sometimes it works and sometimes.......

I wonder if she knew what I was doing?