Painting from a Study

In the background, there's a smaller, 16 x 20, view of early morning sun streaming through the trees at Great Falls that I painted a few years ago.  It's a painting that embodies a lot of what I love -- a combination of abstraction and a view of reality, a lot of color and a feeling of intense sunlight.  I've been meaning to use it as a study for a larger painting, but haven't had the time.  This morning, I found that time (let's just say that there's only one short downstroke of type between A and P. .. I missed that my intended 10 AM departure is actually at 10 PM, a 12 hour "find" of studio painting time).

I've spent time l looking at how other artists have used studies painted plein air to create larger studio works (and I did that for my Washington monument painting I did in late winter).  Already, I can see how the color is cleaner since I'm in the studio and have more time to mix paint, I have more clean brushes on hand and I have a much bigger range of paints than I usually bring on when I'm out.  The larger painting is 30 x 40.  I think it's going to end up in my September show.

One thing you might be wondering about -- what's the thing resting on the easel tray below the painting?  It's a level and I'm finding that I'm looking to it a lot to make sure that my paintings are being painted squarely.