Break in the weather

“Busy Saturday”
7 x 9" watercolor

This could be a record for me. I can’t remember when I’ve gone almost two months without getting outdoors to do some plein air painting. It's been a plein air drought if there is such a thing. Since I moved to North Carolina in 2003, this has been the worst of the winters I can recall. A week ago there was a beautiful layer of snow on the ground. Just too bad the chill doesn’t lend itself to painting outdoors. My cut off temperature in the South is 50º. I realize my Minnesota friends might think this pretty wimpy, but they have a dry cold up there that doesn’t cut to the bone like the chill we have in the South. I was advised by a member from a group of painters in Putney, Vermont that body heat wraps can help tremendously. I think I’ll peruse the web and see what’s new out there in the line of body warmers. We’re not quite out of the woods. If any of you can offer helpful hints, I’d love to receive them.

I did the painting above yesterday afternoon after a long pose figure study* at Artspace in Raleigh, N.C. It felt amazingly good to sit down in the sunshine in temps that reached almost 60º. Yay! The scene is one of the corners at Woodburn and Clark Ave. in Cameron Village, Raleigh's first planned community. Cameron Village is best known now as a shopping center, and is the location of The Little Art Gallery, my gallery representation in Raleigh.

* Click Contains Nudity to see the study I did two weeks ago at the same venue. I’ll be posting the study I did yesterday as soon as I’ve taken a photo of it.