The morning was cloudy and overcast with a cold breeze blowing.As I set up by Needler's Mill just off Distillery Road in Millbrook near Needler's Pond it started to drizzle.
Since we couldn't prime the canvases with a base coat of acrylic before signing in that is what I had to do to my first canvas.
It started to rain a little harder and since it was getting wetter instead of being able to dry, I set it under the table out of the rain and primed a second canvas.
By this time my first canvas had dried and with alizarin crimson I blocked in the trunk and branches of the northern white cedar tree, the bench and the tops of the background trees.
Using mixes of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna I put in the grey sky.A darker mix of the same colours was used for the tree.
Raw Sienna, ultramarine blue and burnt sienna were used for the grasses and the grass in shadow beneath the tree.
Then I put a little bit of titanium white onto the bench for the high lit areas.
By this time with the amount of rain on the canvas I could not get a thicker layer of paint on the canvas so I decided that I would go for lunch and hope that the rain would slow down or stop.
When I returned it had gotten colder and the wind had picked up, but I wanted to do more on the painting and I lightened the sky with a little ultramarine blue and white.Next I added mixes of raw sienna and Hansa yellow to the sky colour for the background trees, the grass areas and the grasses in the shadowed areas.
By this time my fingers were numb and it was time to go home and warm up. I would return early in the morning and continue to work on this painting.
I arrived around 7:00a.m., which was shortly after sunrise and set up in my spot on a picnic table.
With titanium white I added some highlights to the bench before starting on the foliage of the tree.Next I put in a few markers of raw sienna and burnt sienna for the areas where the old growth was turning brown with age and a few of the new growth of bright green with a mix of Hansa yellow and cerulean blue.
Then I finished the bench before I ran out of time and then went back to the foliage of the cedar tree using various mixtures of raw sienna, burnt sienna, Hansa yellow, ultramarine blue and cerulean blue.
Although I didn't get the painting totally finished, but when considering the conditions of the first day, I am pleased with the results and I will post this painting again at a later date once it has been completed.
