Round Barn View from Hauser Winery, a Plein Air Painting by Amy Lindenberger

As you can probably tell, this plein air piece is the same view as the one in the miniature I posted yesterday. This piece is a bit bigger than that one -- probably about 6" x 8". (It shows up a little too contrasty, at least on my computer screen, but you get the general idea.) It definitely met the criteria I had set up for myself: work quickly, totally on-site, skip the detail. I'm still learning to handle the materials, but I'm having a lot of fun!

http://www.civilwarfineart.com/

http://www.amylindenberger.com/

Also! After having gotten a little practice at this "blogging" thing courtesy of DPP, I decided to turn my "Drawing Board" page on my Civil War Fine Art website -- a page I was using to show the things I am currently working on from my primary series, which I call Beyond the Battlefield -- into a blog of my own. So, while there's not too much on there just yet, I invite you all to stop by http://amylindenberger.blogspot.com/, when you have a chance.

Round Barn View from Hauser Winery - a Colored Pencil Miniature by Amy Lindenberger

I was interested to read Linda Young's post the other day about her experiments using illustration board. Like most artists, I have my preferred scale, methods of working and working surfaces. Fearing that I was getting into too much of a rut, in 2008 I began setting up a variety of challenges for myself. Since most of my work is very research-oriented and labor intensive, I decided I needed to learn to do the opposite: work on-site and very quickly. So I was thrilled when the opportunity arose to try my hand at plein air painting with a group during the Gettysburg Fringe Festival. I've also been working on using different surfaces. While I normally work on museum board, I've recently done a few colored pencil pieces on Gessobord and Aquabord -- both surfaces are quite rough and a real struggle for me. A third challenge was to change my scale; I normally work very large -- even 16" x 20" is very small for me. So after reading about some artists who focus on painting miniatures, I decided I'd try my hand at that. This piece measures about 3" x 4 1/2". I worked from a photo I had taken when I was out at the Hauser Winery for this past summer's Gettysburg Fringe Festival Plein Air event. Tomorrow I'll post the plein air version I did of the same scene (IF I can find the file, that is!)