After a hiatus for the July 4^th weekend (which I spent in the studio making some real progress on a new colored pencil piece), we painted during the morning at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington D.C. We’d gone there in the 2007 plein air season, and I remember producing a spectacularly awful painting. This year I attempted to paint the same view (or very close to it) with the exact same results. So at least I’m consistent. One useful outcome, though: I have decided to stick with the surface I like best, the Kitty Wallis paper. I’ve been experimenting with a variety of other pastel surfaces, but I keep finding it difficult to achieve the outcomes I want, and last Friday was my tipping point. So that’s at least one lesson I’ve managed to learn. Otherwise, it was a very pleasant experience. The grounds are beautiful, consisting of many large lotus and water lily ponds side-by-side, other flowering gardens, and a long wooden boardwalk that allows you to venture out over the river marshes for a closer view of the flora there. There were quite a lot of us who turned up to paint, and I think there was some general agreement that while perhaps it is not the best place on the planet for plein air painting, it is a wonderful source for floral subjects, especially lotus flowers, water lilies, and other aquatic plants not encountered elsewhere. I took loads of photos, as did everyone else: I suspect there’ll be a lot of lotus flower paintings appearing at future Maryland Pastel Society shows…