"Rex Beach" -- 12x16" plein air field study -- oil on canvas -- Margie Guyot

Yesterday morning two friends and I drove over to meet other painters in an orchard. But nobody was there. Luckily, my friend Jerry had his cell phone and called a contact number. Turns out the orchard was going to spray their cherries, so our location was suddenly changed to Rex Beach. Right down the road from where I live. Rex Beach is right on Lake Michigan, south of Charlevoix.

Rex Beach is great for painting sunsets, but during mid-day I think the light is too flat and it's rather uninteresting to paint (to me, at least). It took me quite a while to finally decide what view to paint. I nearly wiped this out. The tough thing about paint this was that the sand and grass in the foreground is very bleached-out by the sun. So to be true to what's in front of us, we have to paint it looking rather bleached-out. What I loved most about this view is the distant bank of trees and the sparkle of the water.