Bike Painting

I was sitting at my computer looking through my photo references this afternoon, while watching some youtube videos of people painting outside. Nothing was striking my fancy and I was starting to wonder if I just wasn’t into painting today. Then I started thinking that maybe I just wasn’t interested in painting indoors today. And over the past few years one of my secondary goals has been optimizing my oil painting kit to fit on my bike. So I figured I’d give it a test run and see what worked and what could use further refinement. I loaded all my painting stuff onto my bike, forgot paper towel and had to turn around and come back real quick, and biked down to the river on campus. I must’ve cruised around for a good 45 minutes looking for just the right scene to paint. Meandering down a dirt road along side a cornfield, I noticed a leaf trapped in a spider web, hanging a few feet above the ground and spinning. Nearby a corn cob was sitting torn open on one of the field barriers, an offering to the squirrels and raccoons.

I stopped by the University farm to see if the goats and sheep were doing anything fun. They were all huddled under their shelters hiding from the sun, or out in the middle of the field where I couldn’t see them well enough to paint them. I moved on to the river proper, to a spot that I have often liked painting in the past. The river is usually low at this time of year, and this year is even more so, as we haven’t gotten a lot of rain this summer. Half the river was an exposed sand bar, and everything smelled a bit fish-y. At my feet, some shells peeked through the mud and leaves.

I turned the other direction to a scene I’ve painted several times before, shrugged, and got to painting. It wasn’t going to be my best painting and the composition is a bit uninspired, but the colors were lovely, I was shaded from the sun and a breeze was skipping it’s way back and forth down the river. This was as good a place as any. And it was just a lovely hour or so painting on the river. It didn’t have to be perfect, or different, or new. I was outside with a brush in one hand and a palette in the other. The water striders were keeping me company, the mosquitoes were few and far between and the clouds were present but still letting the sun illuminate my scene.

Here’s hoping I get the chance to do more plein air painting this year. The bike kit worked out pretty well, and now that the summer is over and fall is starting to appear in big and small ways, landscape painting should be bearable and interesting.

-ZR