Thursday/Saturday:A Contrast

Thursday was a wonderful day for me. The temperatures warmed and the sun shone. I wasn't called on to make Thanksgiving dinner, so I went out looking for a spot to paint in the great outdoors. I settled on painting in Franklin near the Police Station. A  couple of buildings there seemed like I could make a decent painting from them. It wasn't any place I had longed to paint for some time, as is sometimes the case, but I needed to be closer to home, so I could get cleaned up to go for the holiday dinner at the home of a good friend. I felt the pressure of time from the start. The painting wasn't bad...but it wasn't good. However, the great part of my day was the intervals when people stopped to see what I was doing and just to chat. Many people were out walking that afternoon. A baseball game was taking place in the field nearby. It possibly was the last of the mild days we've been so blessed with in Michigan this year.  The first family that came upon me included a father, mother, and two children. The man said the house I was painting was his. His children said that isn't true, and the wife explained that they had owned the property at one time. It was a pleasant exchange, and before they left for home, the man asked, playfully, if there was a place for him in my painting. Good that I didn't include him, or he'd be in the trash with the rest of the painting. An older man (that means older than me) came along, accompanied by his pleasant looking gray bearded son. They watched me paint...the older gentleman being particularly interested, the son standing a couple of feet back, as if to be uninvolved in what his father might express. Turned out that the man's wife had been a painter of acrylics and watercolor, also a plein air painter some of the time. She just died two days before. I felt like it did him some kind of good to recall her doing what I was doing. So I was glad I was there on that day.  After a while an elderly man sporting a straw hat with a brim came along with some friends. He stopped, commented on how my painting was coming along well. He told me he paints in oils or acrylics ( don't recall which), takes classes with a woman artist and has done that for several years. He says he's the worst in the class, but likes it anyway. When I told him that I teach adult painting classes in several locations around the area, he asked my name. He recognized it. Funny how things play out sometimes...when he was newly retired he had decided that he would try painting. He enrolled in MY class in West Bloomfield at that time. I was the one who got him started painting! So funny! We shook hands, and I remembered his name when he told it to me. As he walked away, he enjoyed telling his companions that I was his first painting instructor. It made my day! No painting to show you, but a wonderful refreshing day! What more can you ask of a day painting outdoors!
Today we had a cold snap. Snow pellets abounded and a strong wind blew through me. So glad I had the peace of yesterday.