Plein air Saturday afternoon. Gallery hopping Nashville evening.

From my favorite watercolor site, Handprint:
Instead I found that commercial plastic spaghetti containers, the kind available in many kitchen supply stores, make superb brush containers (shown at right is my preference, The Click Clack. Three or four cardboard cylinders (from toilet paper or paper towels) cut to the right length will hold the brushes upright, and no bug can ever get in. Pasta containers can hold almost any brush, even the leggy Winsor & Newton Series 7 #10's.

I spent one hour pacing the house looking for my watercolor brushes. The ones I use all the time. The nice ones. They were rolled up in in a bamboo mat. I was positive I had seen them and unpacked them within the last 3 months, but I have not done any watercolor since arriving, so I was racking my brain for where I had seen them last. I was prepared to take the plein air challenge and decided to ease into it again with watercolors, my plein air medium of choice.
Finally, leaving no stone unturned, I looked under a box of contractor bags in the dining room studio. Voilá.

I grabbed my canvas tote, sketchbook, paints and mason jar of water,  and picked a nice spot I had scoped out 1.5 hours earlier. I spent about an hour outside painting a treescape. A neighbor stopped by while walking her dog and said hello. I'll shave 15 minutes off painting time for convo and maybe another 5 minutes for set-up. I prefer to sit on a blanket and paint. I have a french half easel, but I prefer the blanket. I'll tweak the painting a bit more later. The thing with watercolor is you only have a small window of working time before you make it muddy or dull from overworking it. As soon as it's about halfway dry you have to cut your losses and pull out.

I went to the downtown art crawl this evening. Parking downtown is $10. That's a bit pricey if you ask me, but I just moved from a bankrupt state, so what do I know.

Whitney Wood Bailey at The Rymer Gallery

Whitney Wood Bailey at The Rymer Gallery

Carol Es at Tinney Contemporary

Carol Es and MJP

Inside the Arcade

Live painting in the Arcade

Sound Crawl 

Ron Buffington at Twist annex, curated by Jerry Dale McFadden

Mark Bradley-Shoup at Twist annex, curated by Jerry Dale McFadden

Joseph Lupo at Twist

A masked, Beth Gilmore at Twist

Once again, I surprised myself by stepping out, seeing some friendly faces and having a pleasant time. I need to figure out the parking thing though. I got used to free and easy parking for almost 10 years. Don't harsh my mellow, Nashville. I'm also riding my motorcycle for errands now, especially grocery shopping. Not too crazy about riding at night. Much darker here, and natch, I think no one here can drive. Twice I've seen a car veer into my lane and swerve back barely avoiding a head-on collision with me. I wish cell phones could be mysteriously sucked out of people's idiot little hands while they drive. Like maybe there's a sensor built into the steering wheel that will shoot a death ray beam to a cell phone when it senses the driver loses eye contact with the road. Just think about it. I'm sure it's feasible.

Mary Addison Hackett on The Front Yard