I participated in the Opus Outdoor Painting Challenge in Langley again this year, it’s so much fun! you get 4 hours to paint a scene from somewhere inside your designated painting “zone” for the Opus location you choose to sign up at.
The weather wasn’t that brilliant, it didn’t rain luckily, although we felt a couple of little drops throughout the day, it stayed dry but it was chilly! Luckily I had brought a quilt with me to keep warm while working.
We set up at Sendall Gardens in Langley again, it’s such a pretty park with lots of scenes to paint, plus, artist’s tip– there are public washrooms, very important when you’re out there for 4 hours!
I chose this view, of a peaceful bench and pretty flowery trees.
Quite a few people set up in the park, and we even spotted a bride and wedding party coming for photos, who wasn’t too thrilled that there were painters all over the place getting in the way of the pretty photo backdrops! ;D
I didn’t take an early on progress pictures because this thing looked bad, the usual “ugly” phase that all paintings go through, but here’s a partway progress shot: (and thank you to the lovely Opus photog who offered to re-take my pic with my piece after I had made more progress!)
And the finished piece!
We headed back and I got my piece submitted for judging.
There’s a 2 hour wait between finish time and when they award prizes and do draw prizes, so we putzed around, got some juice, went to a mall and wandered around, then headed back.
I didn’t win a judges prize but I was the lucky winner of this lovely set of Tombow drawing goodies as a draw prize, yay!
We snuck out a bit early as we knew we had these two sweet faces waiting for us patiently at home, likely by now crossing their legs for a pee break. And they sure were!
Then later, this tweet appeared on my phone!
A mention by CBC News BC, how cool is that!
All in all always a fun day and it’s lovely to sit outside, listen to the birds, and paint, I highly recommend it!
Hooray Cynthia! Congrats.