Stump Painting

I'm still on the subject of my plein air painting workshop with Ron Rencher.

Unless you have done plein air painting it's difficult to understand how hard it is to do. It's totally different than painting in the studio from a photograph for some reason. My plein air paintings are really bad because I lack experience but they were getting a tiny bit better by the end of the week. I don't know if I will ever master plein air painting!

Above is a photo of a stump that I painted on the third day of class. Ron gave us two hours to paint a subject in the morning and then made us stop and move to another spot in the afternoon. (I'm not going to show the painting I did in the morning because I didn't get it finished and it looks awful.) It was very hot that day and I didn't want to paint in the sun without any shade because I sunburn easily. This stump was shaded by a large tree and would offer me the shade I needed so that's why I chose this subject to paint that afternoon.