Day 9: Change of Pace

Rain had been promised for the next two days, and yesterday morning started with light spitting among the falling leaves and acorns. Nonetheless, I headed down the trail with a small painting kit in my backpack, a chair slung to it and a water bucket in hand. Didn't get too far (1/2 mile maybe) before I found what I was hunting, a nice pair of leggy rhododendrons facing each other and entangled across opposite banks of a dry creek bed. These twisted characters are all over the Lacawac property, in large and small clusters, all sporting only the briefest greenery near their tops. I'm told that the deer graze the leaves, giving the uniform appearance. With a quick sketch in  paint done and the spitting heavier, I headed back to the studio. The 8x8" panel became a slower-paced piece than what I have been doing, with a finer, smaller brush and tighter lines. The greenery didn't interest me at all, just the twisting trunks and branches. Though the day was grey, and the woods generally grey-green, I rendered the two characters in a fairly monochrome but bright palette. I joked on social media that I thought of the exercise as cross training, which is actually quite true. Bringing it all in tighter just prior to opening back up into a large canvas has worked well for me in the past. In any case, I like the resulting study well enough, and as luck would have it I dreamt the larger piece last night which I'll start today.

Yesterday afternoon found me on the phone and computer for a few hours, attending to general bookkeeping issues back home and creating an invoice for the big painting sale. About 6 months ago I signed up for a Square account, so requesting and receiving payments has been very easy.

This morning found me up early, shopping for tomorrow's visitor's meals, starting a beef stew, doing laundry, and attending to this blog. Off now to the studio.

The sheathed knife was my nod to anything can happen on the trail,

but in the end I only used it to scrape dry paint off a tube, and to

cut rope for lashing the chair to the back. Useful enough for one day!