Tuesday, October 11, 2011

En plein air.

The weather here in Philly has been wonderfully, gorgeously, truly beautifully amazing lately… so where better to paint and draw than outside in this beautiful weather, right? Right ON!

I've been obsessed with this one tree on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, not far from the lovely Fisher Fine Arts library. It's a fantastic tree, really, very shapely, really, for lack of a better word. Here are a couple of sketches I've done of this tree - a painting will have to come soon:


There's this beautiful church here in Fishtown, on Girard Avenue - it's a Presbyterian church, I believe, but it has the most unusual dome atop the church, with a very distinctive shape which can be seen from a great distance away. It's lovely, and I've begun trying to capture it:


In addition to these sketches I’ve done on my own, I also participated in the first of this year’s painting sessions to benefit the Camphill Special School (see my blog post on the 2010 show here). A group of artists is invited out to paint on the grounds of the school and the school’s working farm out in Phoenixville, PA, with the end result being a show of the painter’s work, with proceeds benefitting the School. It was a great day, with a ton of artists including Joe Sweeney, Richard Ranck, Alex Tyng, Alyce Grunt, Kerry Dunn, Patrick King, Garth Herrick, Charles Newman, David Lee and many others whose names I did not catch (oops). Here are some of the painting sketches I came up with from the day; I’m hoping to go back for more painting later in the year: