My First Blog!

I was out plein air painting last week with several fellow enthusiasts when my artist friend Lydia Host asked each of us for the URL of our websites or blogs so she could create a link from her blog. Lydia is an amazingly disciplined and skilled artist, who has created a blog to display her "painting a day" series. She completes a painting each day (usually 6"x 6" in oil). We all tune in to her blog regularly to become inspired and hope some of her energy and discipline will wear off onto us. At any rate, she shamed me into creating my first blog - so here we begin.

My fellow plein air painters on last Thursday included Lydia, Missy Patrick, and Thayer Dodd. We painted on the Mobile River waterfront, capturing big ships, barges, tour cruise boats, loading docks and cranes. Others that could not make it that day were Jami Buck and Gail Bramer.

Missy Patrick and I started this group up a few weeks ago - it is really a resurrection of a group Missy was involved with a few years ago. We are hoping to include other interested artists as well. This is the perfect time of year for plein air painting in the deep Gulf south since the temperatures are cooler, the air is drier, and the fall light is so clear. So far we have painted wetlands on the Mobile Bay causeway, rural farm scenes in Baldwin County, marinas and wetlands at McNally Park along Mobile Bay, and the Mobile River Harbor waterfront. More to come...

Here's a few photos of us plein air painting over the past few weeks, and a couple of my early attempts at plein air painting.