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I’ve been painting outside a couple times this spring before the weather turned cold and rainy again. In this post you can see the results of those exercises. Mostly they are attempts at capturing that radiant but glaring quality of spring light.

The young beech trees (like above) keep their fall leaves until the new growth comes out; their yellowy parchment color is really brittle and bleached in the intense and otherwise leafless light. And the forsythia (below) glows from within, while contrasting with a deeply vibrant sky. It was a delight to be out!

These paintings are small, measuring 6″x8″ and done on archival panel in oil paint. They take about two hours to do. When the weather cooperates, my goal is to do one such practice painting out on location per week. Unfortunately now it is cold and rainy when I was hoping to paint the blooming crab apple trees…

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