I was itching to do another quick landscape painting and I had a bit a time before we went to the gym if I hurried. So I packed my pochade box in my bag and headed out. It was obviously too rainy to sit under a tree or something so I thought, “why don’t I just sit in my car and paint?”
That is exactly what I did, at the spur of the moment I saw a random parking lot with a possible view. Pulled in, parked at a random space and pulled out my pochade box and paints.
If I hadn’t removed solvents from my painting routine years ago I couldn’t have done this. The car was a very small space and I kept the windows down a bit, some rain got in, no big deal it will dry. I just didn’t want any of the paint fumes to get bad. Luckly it was fine.
The painting went well, and the sheet of rain on the windshield actually helped with blurring out the scene a bit so I could focus on bigger shapes. The key is to let the windshield fill up with rain so its a solid sheet. A mass of droplets are way too confusing to look through. Another neat thing I figured out is that the air vents are great brush holders.
One thing I noticed when I got the painting home is how flat the left part of the purple tree line is. Then after looking at my photo of the painting in the car I realized that I was looking at the painting the whole time with glare all over it. The glare was obscuring most of the features that I had painted. I have to remember to move the painting around more, or move my head, to move the glare out of places so I can work further. I think in this instance the glare tricked me into thinking there was more detail in that spot then there actually was.
The glare
In the car
