Camp Hill Plein Air Festival Quick Paint

The most challenging and exciting event at the Camp Hill Plein Air Festival was the "Quick Paint" event.   Participants stood in line at Willow Park to have their substrates stamped between 9 and 10 AM.   At 10:00 AM, each painter commenced with their creation somewhere within a prescribed Camp Hill  geographic area. 

The first thing I did was to pop the stamped painting board into a one inch black frame that I had covered with blue masking tape.   I didn't want my thick juicy paint getting smeared during the framing, so I did an inner frame before starting to apply color.

I chose a beautiful old brick home with a glass conservatory that was located a couple of blocks up from Willow Park.  I stood across the street so that I would have a nice long view and be able to include enough surrounding elements.  The first step was a careful (relatively tiny) drawing in paint of the home.     I spent the largest percentage of time on its interesting rooflines and the glass conservatory.   As the center of interest, I wanted it to be realistic and accurate.  Each panel of conservatory glass was reflecting something different and I improvised a bit to balance other color masses.  

Quick Paint Entry Ready for Judging

Once I had the home done, I picked up my palette knife and buttered on my cool transparent darks letting the streaky colors mix on the surface.     The skies were partly cloudy and the trees, shrubs and lawn were spring green to the max!     Again I scooped the color with the palette knife and spread it onto the surface in wide thick strokes.    When the 11:45 alarm sounded, I still hadn't applied the final color on the home or the foreground shrubbery. (I didn't mention yet that I had set alarms on my phone for 10:00 AM (start), 11:00 AM (halfway point), 11:45 (finish-up), 12:00 Noon (frame).) With 15 minutes to go, a slight sensation of panic gripped me, which is really funny when I think about it now.  My husband took some videos of the progress of this painting, so I have strung them together in the following movie.

https://youtu.be/6LkXEanjwd0

At noon, I took the painting off the easel and peeled the blue masking tape off the inner frame.   This ensemble was then inserted into the wider outer frame. 
Done!... with ten minutes to spare.   I grabbed my easel and painting and headed down to the park, setting it up amid an array of fabulous quick paint works.   It was truly amazing to see the quality and freshness of works that were done in a mere 120 minutes.

This was undoubtedly the most fun I have ever had painting under a deadline.