Prospecting

Winter colors- ©Theresa Grillo Laird- oil 16x26
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This painting and the one below were painted on site over a period over several days/weeks. Final adjustments were made in the studio. In fact, I didn't stop adjusting Golden Hour until last month and I started it early last fall. 
Working 90% on site and 10% in the studio is the most satisfying way for me to paint. But sometimes I'll just go out information gathering. I call it "prospecting". I never know what I'm going to find but I'm pretty sure I'll come up with something worth the time and effort.
Winter Colors is finished but it's given me the idea for a variant that I'm excited to try.

Golden Hour © Theresa Grillo Laird - 24x48 oil
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Prospecting can do the same thing for you. You can try out an idea, a view or a palette, or just explore for whatever you might find. The next three three canvas pages are examples of this kind of information gathering.

In this late day quick sketch, I was trying for the shapes and colors of a fast moving cloud bank and the reflection of it on the Gulf water.

More of the play same here. The top left was for colors and the shape of the surf and the value of sky to sea. I had beach foliage in the sand but it was so distracting that I couldn't focus on the point of the exercise so I scraped it out. On the bottom left, I used used Phalo blue instead of Ultramarine to see if it captured the Pensacola colors any better. It did, but if I used that blue, I'd need to be sure that I wanted the harder effect that resulted.The bottom right was for shapes and colors within the clouds. I saw when I finished that I've got to be careful about the cloud values creating a stormy rather than late day effect. The top right had better sky-cloud-water values, though that's hard to see in this photo.

This last one was painted at sunset as a bank of storm clouds approached from the west. The dark clouds made the top surface of the waves an almost pea green color. Very interesting effect! Sunset colors lighting up breaks in the clouds were equally interesting. Within 20 minutes, a steady rain was falling on me and the canvas. The rain didn't stop a group of teen aged surfers who came by as I painted. They tore into the water challenging the waves and thunder with such total abandon and enjoyment, that I took that spirit away with me too as an added bonus for the days offerings.