Plein Air.Day 1

Plein Air Novice
I've decided to include my watercolor paintings from the first day of the 3-Day En Plein Air Workshop despite what I said a few days ago. How else can you appreciate my progress? This photo shows what I was looking at -- although I have to say that it sometimes feels that it hardly matters what I was actually looking at. Particularly when it's nature, I have some kind of emotional reaction, strong enough that when I see the photo, it's often a shock because the photo has little to do with what I'm "seeing" in my head. Perhaps, what I'm "seeing" is really what I'm feeling --which actually underscores what our teacher told us the first day: True art starts on the inside. I also feel that a shot done with a fish-eye lens might have better captured what I was doing as I kept looking at the overhead branches which do not even show in the photo.
I was having problems that first day finding something that really grabbed me; everything felt ho-hum. Ultimately, I chose this spot in the garden, in part, because I could be in the shade. I don't know how painters stay out in the sun and the heat for hours on end. In less than 15 minutes I was running for the shade!

Three Paintings
The bottom of the first painting is torn off because on the third day, I decided to use the other side of the paper for another painting. I wanted to do a squarish composition, so I tore the paper to suit that need. Also, on day three I started playing with gouache -- a totally new experience and painted over this first painting just to get a feel for how the gouache worked on paper, with different brushes, with different amounts of water. Clearly, this first painting was nothing sacred. Ditto for the second.
Promise
The third showed some promise that I might be able to break away from the negative tapes in my head and "get in the groove." .
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Cropping the piece seems to help a bit. This is not masterpiece, but the triumph is that I was working from more of a feeling place. My strategy for loosening up was to do several quick paintings and that worked for me.