It has been a week of plein air painting. I feel like it could’ve gone better, but I just so happened to get sick right at the beginning of this competition. Going forward, I think there are a few things I would change.

First, I will definitely use a fast-drying medium if I do another challenge. This is only for the sake of simplified transportation. I had two gallery-wrapped canvases that were wet all over that were impossible to move without getting paint on me. So here I was, loading up my truck, already covered in paint, and my dog jumped on top of one of these wet paintings! Ugh. The damage could’ve been worse… but there were claw marks across one of my paintings and my dog was covered in oil paint. I ran inside and quickly repainted the painting as best I could and washed the dog. I don’t think anyone will notice in the end, but it was crazy stressful for me.

My second mistake was using gallery-wrapped canvas. It was nice to paint on and looks good, but having the edges covered in wet paint really sucked. I did use a fast-drying medium to paint the edges, but they’ll still take a day or two to dry to the touch. I don’t know how they’re going to hang them for the competition. It was a massive pain in the ass to put hanging hardware on the back.

It wasn’t all bad though, I actually enjoyed painting outside and for the most part, I like all of the paintings I finished. While dropping off my paintings for the competition, I got a sneak peek at the competition. Yikes! I really need to practice more if I want to eventually win anything. The competition is really good this year.