Leaving the camera at home

This summer I decided to leave my camera behind while on painting excursions, leaving only sketching as an option for recording the experiences. I did this for a week on Monhegan Island, a week in Stonington, Maine, and several day trips. Some sketches were more detailed, but here's an example of thumbnails I did on location in Stonington. Doing sketches really makes one look carefully at the landscape. While only recording the essentials, and doing some serious simplifying, one can set up the structure of a painting, while totally absorb the experience of the place.... color, atmosphere, light, temperature. The painting above the thumbnails was done later, in the studio, directly from the sketch on the right.