Daily painting 14: 14/01/2019 The Thames towards Ham

Original oil painting on primed card 6x4"

I've made it to two weeks.  I'll be honest, the last two days before this one were a struggle.  The only time I could find to paint was after the kids had gone to bed - and I was pretty exhausted.  I think that shows in yesterday's painting of a russet apple in particular - I made a mistake with the drawing which I'm itching to go back and fix.  Maybe I can squeeze that in tomorrow.

Today I took advantage of the sunny morning and headed down to the river Thames, not far from where I did my last plein air painting. Looking across the river towards Ham (Ham House is just to the left of this scene) the sun was not long risen, and dazzlingly bright. I hope I've managed to capture a sense of that in my painting. I'm not especially pleased with the composition - I think I need to walk a bit further along the river to get to a bend so that the opposite bank doesn't make a horizontal line across the picture.

I'm a bit of a newcomer to plein air painting, but I have to say I've enjoyed every minute so far.  Its been my dream for many many years to paint landscapes straight from life so  I'm really happy that I'm finally managing to do it -although I've still got a lot to learn.
I've been following Marc Dalessio's blog for a a long time, and have picked up some great tips from there and his youtube channel where he very generously shares videos of some of his demonstrations.  Also, I highly recommend the book  'Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting' to anyone wanting to give this type of painting a go.