Last Monday, I was delighted to get out plein air painting for the first time this year.

This time I did not take my pastels or my gouache (my two usual favorites for painting the landscape outside)– they struck me as too slow and careful.  Instead, I made a kit of a limited few acrylic colors, some water soluble inktense pencils, some water soluble artgraf graphite, and some large brushes with a jar of water.

My mission was to quickly get down some impressions for playing with later. Will I collage them? Will they become finished work? We’ll see. But in the process, I loved being out looking, breathing the fresh air– full of the promise of spring– even though I was there wearing my smock over my winter coat.

Gosh, my most immediate take away is that I need to do exactly this more often: pick a simple, limited set of tools and materials, and get out there.  Let it rip quickly, loosely grabbing impressions, textures, vignettes, gestural lines. Do lots and do it fast, then decide later how I’ll use them.

The motive was seeing, as well as the experience of translating that to paper without even trying at all for it be literal.  This in turn makes these works free, with spontaneously energetic marks, so even though they were done with low stakes and abbreviated attention, I kind of like them.

Since Monday, I’ve been looking at these through view finders, considering cropping them or collaging them into each other. In the meantime, before I rip them into pieces for repurposing, I thought I’d post a couple here. Just even having them propped around the studio makes me feel all over again that uncompromisingly invigorating air.

Also, since people have been asking a lot about my “process” lately, I’ve added a new tag (“process” see below the post) that I’ll start adding content to going forward.