Day 24 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Sunset on Lake Arlington - by George De Chiara

Sunset on Lake Arlington 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just one cent! I love painting outdoors when I can. While I can handle heat most of the time, I do have my limits. Here in Texas it's been 100+ degrees everyday now for more day's than I care to count. The last time I went out in that kind of heat, I was literally wiping the sweat from my eyes every other brush stroke. For a good sunset though, I'll put up with these conditions. Unfortunately, we don't always get very exciting sunsets. For most of the summer, the clouds burn off before the sun sets, leaving us with a blinding, mostly colorless sunset. So when the mood hits to paint one, I have to spend days watching the clouds for one that I think will be good. Many times it looks promising right before dinner, so I quickly eat, pack up my painting supplies, kiss my wife and little girl goodnight, and dash off to try to catch the last light of the day. Sometimes I get out the door and take one look at the sky and know the clouds have burned off; other times it looks more promising, so I head out. I have three or four spots that I like to go to for these types of paintings. All of them involve water since I like to catch the reflection while I'm at it. When I headed out for this painting, I thought we where going to have some good clouds with lots of color, but as soon as I got to my spot on Lake Arlington and took a look, I was staring into a blinding sun with almost no clouds.  There was nothing to catch any color or block the sun. I figured I had two choices - I could go home without a painting or stay where I was and make the best of it. I choose the latter, and while it was hard on the eyes trying to look out on the lake long enough to paint it, I'm happy I stuck with it. In order to paint this, I had to glance at the horizon for just a second or two and then look away. Otherwise I would see sun spots when I tried to mix my colors and paint. To see more of my paintings and all of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge Paintings visit my web site here.