Finally a Nice Day for Plein Air

We've been having rotten weather on Saturdays for plein air. Finally the weather has shifted. I took today off work to make it a 4 day weekend, so I asked my friend Donna if she wanted to paint this morning.

We headed to Inniswood Metro park but never made it out of the parking lot! This view caught our eye:

Donna was smart, and setup in the shade under the trees in the middle of the parking lot. I decided to work out of the back of my car much closer. I didn't think the sun would be THAT hot.... ha. Here's a few process shots. I was test driving a new little tinkering project for a lightweight pastel painting surface:

I got this far and finally had to retreat to the shade with Donna.

We both got to the point where we were going to noodle around too much with details, so we decided to head out for lunch. Here's a shot of both our setups. It's an odd angle, so mine is not as tiny as it looks here.... My tinkering project needed tweaked so I modified it this afternoon and will give the new model a spin tomorrow.

 Here's how my painting turned out. I was just using NuPastels today as an experiment which led to the bold colors. A bit out of my normal palette.