Rowan Berry Red ........ Ready!

After languishing around in my studio for a couple of weeks, (rain had put an end to my painting session), followed by various domestic disasters, I finally got my stuff together and dragged my half completed painting out to finish it off!

And when I got there, the field was bare! As you can see the farmer had been so inconsiderate and taken away the hay bales I had been painting! Great! Fortunately, I had nearly completed the row of bales and had my sketch with me for reference.

In my post Pastel Demonstration to a Herd of Cows, you can see the start of "Rowan Berry Red", it is done on a vivid red background which I found great for the trees (rowan), but then found doing the greens in the field very tricky. So I faffed (love that word) around for about an hour, reaching that point when your not sure if you are finished or not! Call it fate, kismet or divine intervention, the decision was made for me.

My easel blew over twice, scattering my pastels (saved some cleaning though, because they fell on fine sand), my sketchbook wouldn't stay put and I was bitten by a horse fly. So I decided to take these subtle hints and call my painting finished!

Some paintings are a pleasure to do, some are a struggle, this was the latter. The lessons learned are twofold; never leave a couple of weeks between plein air sessions and always chose motifs that are permanent. Oh yes, there was a third lesson, when in doubt as to whether finished or not, let the "art god/goddess" decide.