On day #2 in Georgia, we gathered at a former plantation to begin painting with Laurel. There were 7 students, from Texas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Central California. (Yep, I think of Central California as a separate place from the rest of the state.)
The Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation is a State Historic Site, where rice was grown, and then after Emancipation, the “enterprising siblings of the fifth generation. . . resolved to start a dairy rather than sell their family home”. (Taken from the official handout at the park).
We wandered around doing sketches to get the feel of how to start, and then Laurel demonstrated for us. We followed her lead one step at a time while she circulated among us, offering tips, helps and suggestions for improving our paintings. The most important thing seemed to be setting up in the shade! Yup, humid and buggy, although I was never aware of getting bitten until I was scratching like a mangy dog at bites I didn’t know had happened.
We drove back on a closed road to the main plantation house area.
What is this cool little building?! Oh. It is the bathrooms. The white stuff at the base is old oyster shells – go figure.
Look at those oaks! Look at that house!
Look at that moss!
Weird cluster of short palms was a common site, ‘though not as common as the sprawling oaks.
The marsh is out there. I wonder if the rice was planted in the marsh. My new friend Cathy is in the foreground, doing her sketches.
Oh wow, I want to see inside the house and inside the buildings and know what they were all used for. And what a dramatic sky!
The oaks were stunning.
This is Laurel’s set-up for plein air painting. She is very efficient and paints “all the time”, in her words. One of the many reasons I chose her for my instructor is that she also works from the double primary palette: 2 blues, 2 yellows, 2 reds and white.
She showed and explained.
We copied. This is my borrowed beast of a french easel with wobbly legs.
Hmmm, this is an ugly beginning, but all of my oil paintings begin ugly so I was not alarmed.
We paused for lunch under the oaks. (There’s my red backpack at the base of my beast of an easel. Trail Guy gave it to me for Christmas in 1986.)
Cathy from Georgia, with Bill from Georgia in the background.
Peggy from Texas
Judy from Oklahoma
You can see we are all painting the same scene, which is in front of us, but simplified and refined by Laurel. Real life is too full for a little 2-D canvas, particularly in this style of simplified shapes.
That’s all for this painting. Weird for me, but it measured up just fine to Laurel’s and the other participants.
Meanwhile, back at home, Scout and her kitties were just fine.
This was a long post. Tomorrow I’ll show you what I saw after the painting session was finished.
