First Rains

Painted this morning from under a bridge. The light was not the greatest but watercolor and rain are not a good combination, so we stayed dry under the bridge. The plein air painting was done at a remote site on the University campus. There were 7 of us braving this first rainfall of the season. The steady drizzle and brought some leaves down. I decided to use only 3 primaries to paint the scene. I figured on using greys, so mixed raw sienna, permanent rose and manganese blue. These combinations provided all the colors that were needed. One issue though is that my paper (Arches 140 cold press) stayed wet and the paint always diluted out and made it difficult to get edges. There was no way to dry it while painting.