Plein Air: Lilac Bush and Road

Today, the weather was absolutely beautiful and I got to go paint at the Shelburne Museum (Vermont). They were having their lilac festival and my wife was working one of the tables.

So, I set up my easel outside of the tent where she was at. This was a pretty fun painting, actually. The point of it was to have the eyes follow the road to the lilac bush. Since the background was fairly dark, the bright flowers made for a nice contrast. The hardest part (which is always the hardest part of plein air painting) is that the background lightened as the day went along.

Overall, this painting took about 1-1/2 hours to do. It's a small 8 x 10 that I'm trying. I'm hoping that the small size forces me to focus on shapes, rather than detail.