Sort of Plein Air, well.....

I had to go with Linda to Santa Maria today. She's been doing a lot of driving lately so I decided to drive her up there and take my plein air gear with me. It has been windy lately and I didn't have much time to get loaded up so I just grabbed a small painting box I had. I would paint inside the truck to avoid the wind. I used to take this box with me when I used to sit (work at for the day) the galleries. It's small, light and only lets you hold the basics. That's important because you can take way too much gear with you at times. For a quick, easy, no fuss painting I take this box and prop my canvas on the lid. One of these days I'll fix it so it holds a 9"x12" in there securely.

My plan was to paint while Linda was inside of the place she needed to go to up there. We figured she would need an hour or more so that gave me time to do a simple painting. Turns out where I parked the truck there was nothing of interest to me....the side of a house across the street, the back of a hamburger stand, an intersection and part of a parking lot. I like urban art scenes but I don't paint them very well and didn't feel like it was lesson time given the short time available to paint. Instead I used my memory and plunked this one down in a little over an hour. This was where I had to stop since I had to give her back her seat. The wind had her hair looking like it was possessed.
Linda came out before I could add detail to the trail and flowers, some shading on the mid ground so I did that once I got home. I painted this sitting in the passenger seat and using only imagination for reference. I'm still working on painting better grasses and this was a good one to work on that....also gave me more practice with the oak tree. A fun little painting, not really a plein air painting, but something constructive to pass the time while waiting for Linda. Here is the final painting.....
"Wildflowers"

9" X 12" Oil on panel