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Making small colour notes/quick sketches is an easy way to go plein air. I only need a piece of paper I clamp to a support (a pastel paper pad), and a handful of small bits of pastels, and I'm ready to sketch. This is different from painting a finished painting outdoors, which would require more equipment, like the easel, more pastels, a parasol, a stool, hat, water, knife to sharpen pastel pencils, etc. That can be quite a bit of stuff to tote around. A strict plein air painter does that, and finishes the painting on location, but when time or inclination doesn't allow for it, the easy way works very well. I'm a slow painter, so while I can catch the essentials in colour notations, it would be hard for me to take a work to full completion in the time-window of normally 60 to 90 minutes a plein air painter has before having to start a new painting because the light has changed too much. Some effects last only for a couple of minutes: Monet painted one of the paintings in his Poplar series in the 7 minutes the light was just right as the sun set. He had to return to the spot for several days in a row, and just hope a cloud wouldn't sail up at those crucial minutes.

Making sketches that are colour notations will also tell me if the scene is worth wile the time spent on a full painting. Sometimes what seemed perfect isn't, and sometimes what seemed not so exciting will make a good painting. 

Try it!

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I am painting, too, smaller paintings for a future project. What that is will be revealed at the end of summer. But my larger paintings will appear here as soon as they're off the easel.

This summer, I plan to paint several plein air paintings, weather permitting, which will appear here too.

That's what I thought of when painting this. I wouldn't actually fish, I'd sit in the boat, letting it rock me very gently, and think of the beauty of the world, until it lulled my thoughts into nothing, and I'd just be. 

My thanks to Merethe Torbergsen, who provided the reference photo I used as inspiration for this painting, which I painted while remembering being rowed out by my grandfather, a long time ago, in a place like this in another part of the north.

A larger version of the painting is found here.

This painting, Hanging Out, is a celebration of spring and new life. These cherry trees are in the middle of downtown Stockholm, right in the asphalt jungle in a park that is really an open square. Lots of people hang out there, hence the title.