The Perth Plein Air Painters spent last Thursday morning painting in the delightful, peaceful gardens of St Paul's in Beaconsfield. While clouds hid the sun for the morning, the dull light seemed to magnify the colors of the stonework. Given one of my plein air goals over the next 12 months is to get better at painting buildings (after avoiding them whenever I could), I turned away from the attractive huge eucalyptus tree in the garden and decided to try the little old church at the back. This was my first use of a T-Square (I cannot draw a vertical line to save my life!) and it worked a treat! It took me 90 mins to get a respectable charcoal outline so I didn't quite get finished by noon. So this is a studio-completed plein air. I added the lights on the stonework, and corrected a major mistake I had made in the roof line. I am really pleased with the outcome - the first time a plein air painting of a building has not gone straight in the bin.Being very frugal with water, my garden is full of drought-tolerant native plants so different shades of green are dominant. Every spring, I plant tubs of petunias, my one ode to garden color. This year the flowers have been thick and beautiful - just calling out to be painted.In September, the Pastel Society was invited to the grounds of Government House to paint over the morning. It was a beautiful sunny spring day and, as I so often do, I ignored the historic buildings to paint the lilac arbor down the bottom of the garden.I decided to catch up my blog as I haven't posted much in a while and have some paintings that are such good memories of my travels this year that needed to be added - even if some weeks later!
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