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I have recently returned from a trip to Italy.  I have learned to pack VERY lightly with respect to clothing items, in order to make way for my painting apparatus.  The handy half-French easel you see in this shot folds up to fit in my suitcase.  The tubes of paint don't take up too much room, but as all traveling painters know, they are very heavy.  I usually run up against the weight limits for checked luggage before I run out of room in the suitcase!  But it is all worth it for the thrill of painting on location, in front of vistas I have never seen before.  In this shot, I am painting a small fishing village that drops precipitously down to the sea.  I was drawn to the shadows at this time of day.  They seemed to angle downward, just like the village houses angled downward to the shore. 

Recently I blogged about painting a still life in my new studio, under a combination of artifical and natural light.  I promised an update when I painted a similar subject using only natural light--and here it is.  I composed the set up for this painting in the morning, on a table top next to my big west-facing window.  The illumination was exclusively frm the indirect morning sunlight.  The overall color palette in this painting is much cooler than in the painting using artifical (incandescent bulb) light.  I like the fact that I could see more colors in the shadow areas using natural light than I could under stronger artifical light.  This may become my preferred method of illumination for still life paintings!  

Someone (whose name I cannot remember at the moment) famously said the following about plein air painters: "A good painter decides first what he wants to paint.  A great painter decides first where he wants to stand."  I am not a "great", but I must say that I am quite often more satisfied with my paintings when I have chosen a comfortable place to stand.  Perhaps physical comfort frees up the brain to focus on the creative work, rather than on the basic necessities of dealing with the heat, mosquitoes, sun, etc.  This little painting was done on location in the village of Beze, France.  I had spent the morning sweating and suffering in a hot, glary location--because I was drawn to a certain motif that could not be captured from a better spot.  Thie morning painting was not a success.  In the afternoon I gave in to my desire for comfort, and found a shady spot, protected from the wind, where I could see this scene.  I was much more satisfied with the afternoon's effort than with the morning effort.  Lesson Learned.