Oh, wow, it’s been a month since I last posted. How time flies!

Recently, I decided to put my brushes away and just bring a palette knife with me to my plein air painting sessions. It’s sometimes challenging to get the detail of the shapes, but I seem to be figuring it out. I enjoy how immediate this method is. It stops me from belaboring the details, as I don’t have any brushes with me. And that’s what I’m going for- more expressive paintings.

My first attempt was at Van Dusen Gardens, where we had a meetup event with the Vancouver En Plein Air Painters. I found a quiet corner with a hidden bench near the second fountain on Livingstone Lake. Such a beautiful day.

I love how textured the paint gets when applying it with a palette knife.

My second attempt was at the George Pearson Urban Garden one evening in August.

I like how loose and lively this painting turned out.

My third attempt at painting with just a palette knife was at a combined event with the Vancouver Urban Sketchers and the Vancouver Plein Air Painters at Killarney Lake on Bowen Island. What a fun day that was!

I decided to begin with a yellow ochre ground and then start by painting the background. Because I was painting with wet oil paints, I decided to scrape a bit of the background off before applying my two foreground cedar trees.

Learning to make different kinds of marks with the palette knife.

I usually find that a two or three hour session just isn’t quite long enough to complete everything in a painting. It’s always good to step back from a painting and come back to it a bit later. I’d like to go over the whole painting and look for places where I need to add more dark paint to create more depth. Just as I was running out of time on the day of painting this, I added more blue to the lake. nice, but now I’d like to make some of it greener, the way it was, as it’s a reflection of the green hillside along the shore. A bit of tweaking still to do.

Those were three good painting experiences. I’ll tweak this last one a bit, and do more paintings soon.

Bye for now!

Maryan