Spent the week in Quebec City. On a drive out of the City and up the St. Lawrence, the clouds were magnificent. At one point a storm was brewing. I took dozens of photographs. I like the drama of this view with the huge storm cloud encroaching on the land. Today I blocked in the composition and cloud forms. Worked fast, wet and loose. This session took about 15 minutes. My goal is to develop the values without including a great deal of detail, hard contrast, etc. 11" x 14"

I went back to increase the contrast in the reds. At the end I was disappointed to see I had gotten too tight and illustrative. I loosened the background a lot. Need to do one more session to loosen the piece some more.

Worked in values and contrasts to create depth and form. Trying to see if pushing the dark values is preferrable to pushing for lighter reds which can result in loss of intensity.

Blocked in color and shapes. Some values added to distinguish shapes.

I saw some beautiful little paintings of flowers this week in The Provincetown Art Musuem. Each one was about the size of a tarot card. They were very painterly with an encaustic-like surface. So, it made me think I should do some quick studies of our flowers. I am starting with the zinnia, which I love. Today I drew in the shape and set the composition. This is larger than the PTown paintings, 5" x 7"

The color here is deceptive because it was photographed in a different light. The finished piece is little different from session 3. I refined some of the details and diminished the contrast of the dew drops.

Continued to work the light source out. My in-house critic says the rain drops look like warts.