'the half hour painter'

Some years ago my sister gave me a book called 'The Half-Hour Painter' by Alwyn Crawshaw. I used to struggle with the idea of plein air painting because it seemed uncomfortable and difficult to set up and then it seemed to take an interminable amount of time to get much done, and I don't have a great attention span. In his book Mr Crawshaw demonstrates how to work ''half hour exercises" and talks about making decisions about composition, light and so on. In short he made it seem possible to paint a picture in the open air in half an hour, and I decided that I could cope with anything for half an hour. I have done many of these quick sketches now and find it enjoyable and very good for my art practise. A bit like the sketching equivalent of the 'daily pages' that Julia Cameron suggests in her book The Artist's Way


Here is todays 'half hour' sketch. These flowers, gymea lilies, are spectacular and native to the greater Sydney sandstone escarpment area.