Friday, 25 May 2012

Plein Air Painting!!! :)))



    Today I was able to enjoy the first half of a birthday gift that my loving hubby gave me - a day at a Kim Rempel Plien Air Painting Class!  Woo-hooo!! 
   
    The Good Earth in Beamsville hosts Kim's classes and their grounds are beautiful!!  There are so-o-o many lovely little vignettes around the property and their gardens, WOW!!   Not only is it a lovely treat to be able to paint anywhere on the property but part way through your day of painting you get to sit down in their refreshing bistro and enjoy a beautiful gourmet lunch and decandent dessert - YUM!!   Now anyone who knows me knows there are two things I love: ART and GOOD FOOD!!  ~ I tell you these classes were made for me!!  

    The above photograph is the vignette that I chose to paint at Good Earth today.  I have admired that split-rail fence ever since I laid eyes on it at my first-ever plien air painting class back in July 2011 - all silvery in the sunlight and the rhododendrons in full bloom - simply inspiring!! 

    But I've always been intimidated by layers and layers of green foliage - I love looking at it but painting it is something else altogether! I pondered it for a few moments and then that split-rail fence starting calling out to me so I decided to leap in with both feet, set up my easel and have a go at it!! 

This is my painting about an hour in - just before lunch break...

...and by the end of the day it looked like this:
"Nicolette's Garden"
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 16x20"

    You can see I took some artistic license in a few areas. In particular I swapped out the background foliage for a blue sky - if I were to paint the same vignette again tomorrow I would do the same thing -
I ♥ blue skies!

    A wonderful and inspiring day!!  I'm feeling very blessed!!
    ♥ Cath- 

2 comments:

Kim Rempel said...

Catharine - It's so beautiful!! You really did justice to it : ) Great painting today (+ you are always such a ray of sunshine ; )

Rachael said...

Love it! I like to think I have some creativity to me, but seriously, I could not paint like that if my life depended on it! I suppose classes would help me, but wow. You have more talent in your baby finger than I have in my whole arm! Beautiful painting. I think this would also make a lovely photo for a card (hint hint) :)