December? What happend to June?

As always, December sneaks up on me. I know it is coming. I realize it will be here right after November but then BAM! Not only is it here, it flies by too. Well, December plays havoc with my schedule and I know I am not the only one it happens to. I am still working in the studio, it just gets weird in the hours around that time.
I did get to work one day on my color study. I still have a tiny bit left to do before I am ready to move on to another one. One of the variables that has made the time go wonky is the weather. The weather has been beautiful these past few days. Add that to minus tides and the fact that I now have my plein air setup all ready to go and I find my schedule getting kind of spontaneous. To catch the low tides which expose cliffs, caves, and beaches, and the lovely afternoon light, I found myself grabbing my easel and paints and heading out about 2 o'clock Friday afternoon to paint at a beach about 5 minutes up the road. I am not going to post the results of my very first plein air painting just yet. I think I will leave it for the next one. Hopefully I will have a bit more to show on that topic by then.
The bulk of my painting this week was working on oil sketches for the Sketchbook Project.
Here is a shot of one part of it.

These are sketches in oil. I am still basically a rank beginner but I must admit, I love it even more than I thought I would. Here is a close-up of one sketch which is roughly 5 X 8".

All of these were done from digital photos I took and then display on my computer screen. Not my favorite way of working which is why I am starting to go out to paint plein air. I really like working from life. The atmospheric effect of the light in this area is a bit tricky to catch. I am learning and studying so I will be improving.
I also attended the life drawing session this week. I really liked the model we had. He was tall and thin which made for rather graceful poses at times. This was my favorite one. This was a 30 minute pose and I wanted to get it as much info as possible because I liked the pose so much. Normally I hold myself back to work on gesture and proportions, angles and shapes before getting so much into tone and details.

Life drawing is a joy and one of the things I really miss from school is being able to do so much of it.
Finally, for my next color study I wanted to simplify the still life. I know my fellow students started out painting colored blocks. I finally was able to score a huge bag of cardboard blocks from the thrift store for $5. I am going to paint a few of them solid colors and use them in the next set up. Not terribly exciting but a a good exercise.

It will continue to be crazy busy for most of us in the next couple of weeks I am sure and my holidays tend to be more mellower than many folks. I will have more on the Sketchbook Project and my first plein air attempts next week.
-Renee