I was stranded, my wife had left me at the Inn… Don’t worry, it was planned. My wife goes to deception pass to do beach naturalist work and along the way she drops me off at one of the many places on the way that would be great to do landscape paintings at. We call it “stranded art”, it’s a good way to force me to do something. For today I was stranded at Captain Whidbey Inn, just north of Coupville.
I was having a very tough time seeing the painting this time and I’m sure it was due to the super bright landscape versus my canvas in shade. I think my canvas had enough light on it, but the difference in light was giving my eyes are hard time to adjust.
Here is another shot of my setup in the shade, in this photo the canvas looks black. Even the camera was having trouble adjusting to the difference in light. I felt like I was painting on a silhouette.
So I did a test. I decided to re-paint the home that was the center of interest for my first painting but this time I would put my canvas in direct sunlight. Luckily I had shade a bit in front of my easel so I could step away out of the super hot sun for respite. This worked out really well, not only could I see the colors much better but it forced me to do a few strokes then step back and evaluate.
The only issue was the angle of the easel to my subject. I was looking over my left shoulder, a full head turn to see what I needed to paint. This was something I’m not used to at all. I’m familiar with only a slight eye movement to compare my subject with the painting and the extreme angle here was a challenge.
So the drawing on this little study suffered a bit but the values and color are much closer than the first painting. Now I know why Richard Schmid prefers to paint on overcast days.
After about 2 hours of painting I was hungry so I went to the Inn and had some lunch next to the water. The burger was good but the scenery was better.
