This week's plein air: From Fairview High

From Fairview High, watercolor, 8x22

This week, early on a fairly overcast morning, our Boulder plein air group met at the parking lot of Fairview High School in south Boulder, for its views of Lake Viele, and of the Flatiron mountains towering over the town. I decided to focus on the lake and its surroundings, and used a panoramic format to capture the scene. This was a compounded challenge: It's only the second time I've painted in this format, I don't usually paint this much green, I had to work with a very amorphous subject, and I had to bring all of those aspects to a decent conclusion in just over an hour. In the end, it was a very good experience, to step out of my comfort zone and find a solution to the puzzles posed by the subject; and a fringe benefit is that the little painting has a nice feel to it too.