Day 17

Whiteface Mountain
Green Mountains
Stowe, VT
6" x 6"

I just eeked Day 17 in. Today was a travel day to VT. These days are always the longest. I had the best intentions of getting early to paint before I left, but that didn't happen. I had painted two paintings one day so thought today would be the day that I broke that one out, but after dinner I went out onto the deck and did a new painting for the day. The light was changing so quickly. It ended up being a gorgeous sunset but when I began there was blue skies and cirrus clouds and sunlight on the treetops. The sun quickly went behind some clouds and then behind the mountains so the light in my painting changed a few times. The trees are no longer the deep greens that they were my last visit the transition is just beginning and there is a hint of brown and olive green in some of the trees now. I may miss peak here this year but I do hope to do several different paintings from this spot documenting the turning of the leaves.

I recently found this Pochade box that was my father's. I have been painting 6x6's and carrying my backpack and french easel, waybtoo much stuff for the small paintings. I really wanted to take advantage of painting the small size by trying to carry as little as possible. I'm trying to get used to the new set up but it is so much quicker to get going with this set up. I am used to the disposable paper pallets so the wooden palette is taking a little bit of getting used to. What I like the most is using command strips to adhere my panel to a larger panel. This way it is easy to paint all of the surface to the edges and it is easy to carry afterwards without getting finger prints on the final painting.