My family made it back to Washington for our summer vacation after not being able to make it last year. Most years, we travel to visit family and I bring along my paints to plein air paint. I consider this a working vacation! I can’t go many days or weeks without doing art anyways… I used a 9×12 pochade box and a homemade wet painting box to bring the collection back home safely. I ended up creating 13 oil paintings in a variety of sizes, although most are matching the 9×12 painting box. I prefer Holbein’s Aqua Duo water soluble oil paints for traveling because of the ease to clean up, plus the mineral spirits can get smelly or messy in the family rig. The weather was pleasant most of the time, we did experience some warmer days in the mid to upper 80’s, but most of the time it was mild in the mid 70’s. Highlights for me were painting during the morning hours along the Columbia River with fog hugging the hills. I also wanted to paint a variety of subjects to “branch” out from the usual for me. “Old Bikes” and “Ruth’s Garden” are examples of painting different subjects. The plein air painting vacation to the Pacific Northwest was enjoyable (I try to forget about the road trip part…. haha).
Here is the collection of paintings created (I left out the 13th piece that was edited out as an unsuccessful attempt):
