Painting a Nocturne - or at least, trying to paint a nocturne
Did you know acrylic paint refuses to dry in 40°F?
I learned that fun fact during my (first, failed) nocturne of the Eagle Plein Air Festival
If you haven’t heard, I have a cute little 8 month old crawling around the house, and so I don’t wander far from home without her (especially at night). During the festival, we are challenged to paint something outdoors between dusk and dawn without any studio time. I drove around my neighborhood at night and felt pretty uninspired by our bland looking street lights, and so I drove to the older subdivision across the street and found the prettiest tree/streetlight combo right at the entrance.
The light reminded me of a Lemax Christmas Village street lamp, and I really liked the twisted shape of the tree trunk just to the left of it.
I took the image home, cropped it, turned it B&W, and did a quick value sketch of it (be warned - drawing is not my strong suit) Aaannd then I did an ultra fast color-study painting of it in my sketch book so I could feel confident when I went out to paint it later in the week.
Pretty okay, huh?
~ The Next Night ~
I tucked my chunky baby into bed, pulled on my snow pants and long puffy coat and loaded up my supplies to walk down and across the street.
Wooow did I feel silly sitting on a street corner in the dark painting a street lamp 😅 I was also really hoping no one would call the cops on me for being a weirdo.
I sketched out my shapes and got to work.
But my flipping paint wouldn’t stick to itself or dry! I generally paint wet-on-dry (don’t come at me, oil painters. My brain works best this way) and so things were getting muddy quick.
Worse than that though, I figured I’d be able to see just fine by the light of the moon and the street light. HA. Nope.
Another fun fact about painting in the dark - it doesn’t matter what color you have mixed on your pallet, it looks brown in the dark.
Being the problem solver (and frozen shell of myself) that I am, I pulled out my phone flashlight and tried to make due with that. (spoiler alert: it wasn’t great, and my phone died real fast)
Soooooo I packed that ugly painting up and hiked it back to my warm home to try again the next night 🤷♀️
(please note: it would take an obscene amount of money for you to convince me to sell you this atrocity.)