Urban Sketchers Winnipeg: Kildonan Park in its fall splendor

Diane and Shirley got out plein-air painting again. The leaves are falling fast and who knows how long the weather is going to hold to allow us to paint outside comfortably. We met at the witches' hut in Kildonan Park. This is a place we painted last fall so it was interesting to come back to a repeat location. There were less leaves on the trees and the weather was colder. The high this day was 10 degrees centrigrade.

I chose to paint over an old failed painting which worked very well for me. This kind of scene is very difficult to paint due to the complexity of it and it's easy to get lost in it as Diane experienced. I think the key to not losing your way is to do your big shape drawing and value study and then block those major shapes on your painting so that you have your roadmap to work within. After that, it's all about continuing to squint and look at your scene continuously.

My failed painting provided a really good underpainting due to the colors that were in it. I found that half the painting was greens and half the painting was more greyed colors so I oriented the canvas so that the greens were in the upper half under my fall foliage and the greyed colors were under the water in the scene. What worked really well is how much faster the painting worked up when you started with a fully painted canvas board. I am a real fan of an underpainting or a toned support; particularly for plein-air painting where you have limited time. Our whole session was approximately two hours from start to finish.

The only negative thing today was my new brush washer that I bought in Denver "broke". At some point I looked at the lid and the seal had popped out of the lid. I tried to fit it back in but the darn thing had expanded so much that it was not possible to do this. I think this must just be a defective one. I sent an email to the art store in Denver to see what they can do for me. I had only used the thing twice and since it's for plein-air painting, a sealed brush washer is absolutely essential.

Diane and I have agreed to meet at the Forks this coming Wednesday; this time we will bring pen and ink plus watercolor to see what we can do with this popular urban scape.