Painting with new friends

I had a great day painting yesterday with Auckland based artist, Murray Stuart, and his wife Pat. I met Murray when I was painting Arkles bay ( lucky sod lives there!) and invited him to join me painting if he ever ventured south to the Waikato .  It turns out, he does.
Yesterday was the day we agreed he would skip babysitting his grandson and escape to the country and paint. I was holding out for some great weather, but the day was bleakly grey and quite devoid of any good light ( thanks ,fog) until the afternoon. We drove to Ohaupo, parked on the school grounds overlooking the vista facing west and just then, the sun started to warm the clouds and fog, and we saw our opportunity.

Murray is an accomplished painter in all mediums, and he chose to paint in watercolours which was well suited to the atmospheric conditions.
I did my usual throw oil paint at the canvas thing.

Jovial Murray..his cap has his name written on it, splattered with "paint"

My effort.....see the blue sky? It was not there when I started!

Painting and chatting alongside...very convivial.

This is how it looked when we arrived, all atmospheric and overcast

But the light started to arrive.......

By the time I left, the valley was flooded with the late afternoon sun which had broken through the cloud and fog and was doing it's damnedest to make up for lost time!

I will attempt a studio painting from yesterday's painting but all in all, a great time! Thanks to my childminders and Murray and Pat.