Arboretum in January

One of the paint-out groups I'm in had our quarterly planning meeting last week.  We all get together and suggest locations where we'd like to paint.  We always meet at the local Arboretum which has a nice cafe and patio.  Then we paint after our meeting and gather again for lunch, and to share our artwork.  After our last meeting in the fall, I painted The Roofers in gouache.  Several other plein air paint-out pieces at the Arboretum can be found in my Label section on the right.   

It was such a nice "summer-y" day in January for us painters.  We are having unusually warm weather here.  I always feel short on time after our planning meeting and our "deadline" to be back at the cafe.  I checked out several of my close-by favorite areas but nothing appealed to me.  Nothing looked like a "painting".  There's a lovely greenhouse section that is great for photos but I haven't figured out how to paint it yet.  I just went back to the cafe area since it's up some stairs and has a nice view.  Wow, the afternoon sun shining through and back-lighting some trees looked like a neat subject to try.  There's a walkway with people passing by too.  I ended up with a fun gouache piece.  As usual we shared the patio with some preening peacocks. 

5 x 7 gouache