Plein Air - Green Valley Nursery

For our second plein air outing, the Annual Margaret Walters Paint Out group met at the Green Valley Nursery; a beautiful sum of land featuring elegant greenery. I arrived a bit later than I had anticipated, but still had more than enough time to snap some great photos and do a 20 minute plein air study.

The whole sight was lush with floral arrangements and waterbeds. But what I ended up finding the most intriguing  avoided nature almost all together. As I shied away from my fellow artists,  I found myself wondering edge-word. Almost suddenly, I was greeted by a crumpled up car leaning against the opposite side of the property's stream. It is odd how natural I felt the twisted metal rested there. I am told that it was arranged here to maintain the structure of the riverbed and to keep the cliff edge from falling in.

I took an array of reference shots of the old fella before resuming my survey of the area. Finally, I settled on a withered hen house, said to be the oldest building on the property. It was such fun conducting a study with semi-new medium. I used gouache this time around and had a lot of fun experimenting with layering and shadow coloration!

20 minute gauche study

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