The Tales of a Tag-Along • Part 4 • Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2010

Day 4

Many artists go their entire careers without ever experiencing the rush of painting from life out in the elements. A sheltered studio is the only environment to harbor their creative process.

How sad that is.

Sometime before 6am Sunday morning Jeanne Young and I brave the wind and dark to find the setting of our next plein air paintings. A small overlook in the mountains above Mosier, Oregon proved to be the perfect spot.

Below is Jeanne setting up her easel.

This is the scene I chose to paint. Just gorgeous!

Here is the scene just a few minutes later. Yeah, my painting ended up as just a color study as things were moving far too quickly to fully develop. But what a blast racing the sun!

Packed up our gear and headed farther east and across the Columbia River to the Dalles Mountain Ranch in Washington.

So beautiful!

And here we are…

These photos do not even remotely convey the amount of wind that was gusting and wreaking havoc on anyone whose easel was not in a sheltered location. Some artists even painted from the safety of their vehicles.

So many scenes that demanded to be painted, better snap a pic for later…

If it weren’t for the wind this pond is probably where I would have painted from…

But instead I chose this one..

With all the beautiful golden yellow tones that surrounded me I couldn’t help but use purple as the color for my under-painting. The color opposites worked beautifully together. Here it is at the under-painting stage…

Here is a video of the setting…

After being sufficiently harassed by the wind we retreated to lower elevations for the last painting of the day. Marshal’s Vineyard seemed to be just the ticket.

This is another sight that these two Alaskans aren’t use to. Could spend a whole week just in this vineyard!

Unfortunately we only had an hour or so to paint these clusters before the sunlight faded.

After 4 days of running on sunlight and Red Bull my body is finally starting to feel the strain.

We head back to base camp to recharge the batteries.

This being a Plein Air artist gig is hard work!

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Tags: Artist, Karen Whitworth, Oil, Oregon, Painting, Plein Air, Whitworth Gallery, Wildflower