Monthly Retrospective: March 2024

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We pause our coverage of Plein Airpril to take a look back at March.

If I thought February was a light month for me, March was even lighter, as I became distracted with a bunch of stressful life stuff. I often find that painting is the first thing to go when I’m overwhelmed, which is a shame since it helps me to de-stress. I’m hoping that the consistent, low lift of Plein Airpril will help me to get back into it.

In March, I painted 12 paintings:

  • 3 Canada National Parks, but 2 were the same park
  • 3 birds, including one very sketchy pigeon
  • 4 #bluesandbrownsonly (not counting the junco which I also did with the blues & browns palette)
  • 2 skies (1 #skieswithjt, 1 misc)

The Paintings

Click on the painting to open the full version in a new tab.

Georgian Bay Islands National Park – Beausoleil Island Sunset. March 1, 2024. Reference photo from Voyageur Tripper.
Dark-eyed junco, with blues & browns palette. March 2, 2024.
Georgian Bay Islands National Park. March 6, 2024. Reference photo by Willy Waterton, Parks Canada, via National Geographic.
#skieswithjt week 41. March 7, 2024.
Common Grackle. Arches CP. March 10, 2024. Reference photo from Houston Audublog.
Illecillewaet Glacier, Glacier National Park, Canada. Saunders CP. March 13, 2024. Reference photo from Summit Daily.
Pink pigeon sketch from Toronto, waterbrush & micron on Moleskine Watercolor Album. March 24, 2024.
#bluesandbrownsonly week 3 (dandelion), on Etchr Perfect Sketchbook. March 26, 2024.
#bluesandbrownsonly week 4 (peaches), on Arches CP. March 26, 2024.
#bluesandbrowns week 5, coastal landscape. March 26, 2024.
#bluesandbrowns week 6, henge. March 29, 2024.
Sunset through my window. March 29, 2024.

Technically I also painted the first day of PleinAirpril on March 31, but I’ll save that one for the April round-up!

Photo to Painting: Sunset through my window

As I don’t have enough Photo to Paintings this month for a separate post, here’s a quick Photo to Painting reflection on that final sunset. Although I began painting it when actually looking at the sunset through my window, I snapped a pic because I knew it would take me longer to paint than the colors lasted.

Sunset through my window reference. March 29, 2024, 7:17 PM.
Sunset through my window. March 29, 2024.

I was mindful that I wanted to keep the sky color light, since I always make it too dark to try to sell the idea of nightfall coming; actually, the color of the sky remains light blue for a good long time, even as the increasing difficulty of seeing the foreground makes it clear there’s less light in the world.

I used a combination of DS Quin Red (PV19) and DV Quin Red (PR209) to make the pink color, which in context I think looks really bright – no need for Opus here! And my good ol buddy Naples Yellow Deep is the yellow. I surprised myself by turning to Cerulean Blue for the sky, since I usually like smoother colors – I’m not entirely happy with the granulation, but it was easier to softly dab into little corners than a Phthalo would be. When I use Phthalos, I always end up with unintended gray blends at the cloud edges.

Here’s a pic of the sunset I took a few minutes earlier. Sometime I’d like to paint this sort of gentler, pre-sunset color scheme.

Before sunset through my window. March 29, 2024, 7:07 PM.