View of Marsh Creek Lake

Today we had our first lovely, sunny, warm spring day.  It's the kind that makes you not want to be inside, but to walk all over listening for robins and looking for buds on the trees, flowers coming up and grass turning that bright yellow-green.  Okay, maybe that's just me since I've been listening to The Secret Garden audiobook every evening with my kids.  Needless to say, it's a great day for plein air painting!

As usual I'm always on the lookout for things to learn while painting, especially in plein-air.  Today I noticed 2 things: 1) having the canvas toned made a BIG difference in my ability to sketch out the main shapes and values, and 2) always be predicting what the light will be doing.  The water when I got set up was a perfect reflection of the hill and trees in front of it.  But by the time I got half way through painting it, the sun had risen behind me and turned it bluer.  And then 2 geese swam past right through the reflective line of trees and made a streak of blue water in their wake so it was hard to finish what I had originally started.  Still, with paint on my hands and not a cloud in the sky, I wasn't going to complain about a little thing like that.