This the season

It's the paint-out season again. Or, at least the ones I go to tend to be the last half of summer. There are several coming up: Mineral Point WI August 5-8, Marceline, MO August 29, Amana IA September 4-6 and Louisiana, MO September 12. This past weekend I was in Corning, a small town in western Iowa, whose claim to fame is being the birthplace of Johnny Carson. Their plein air event is piggybacked with a BBQ cook-off, a car show and runner's event. I was pleasantly surprised to snag first place. Part of the fun at these things is taking on unfamiliar subject matter - like trying new restaurants out of town. My first picture (and the one that won) was a statue of Jesus outside their Catholic Church. I was headed down the street towards something more "likely" and caught a flash of red orange on the terra cotta roof and lime green on the sunlit lawn next to the backlit statue surrounded by fuscia colored flowers. Color heaven! The lighting was caused by the rising sun slicing between the bell tower and the sanctuary. The beautiful wedge of red orange lasted about 15 minutes tops, so I drew in the wedge shape and put a spot of the color on it serve as a reminder.

Here it is almost done (above) and in the show (below). Hanging above it is John Evans' pastel which took second.

That afternoon I did this more typical subject.

There was a heat index of 109 that day and a windstorm with horizontal lightning that evening, though none of the heavy rain the east end of the state got.
Here are the artists and a shot of the pieces in the final show.