Finding the balance in shifting light

From Deck to Barn, pastel on paper 6 x 6"

On a sunny day, midday, the light paints lines across the grass as quickly as you can note them in pastel, and then they shift. 

The way I work is to get an overall impression across the page and then to measure the betweenness over and over until the whole thing feels right. That shifting light is a real challenge. And which moment to try to freeze time is always the trick. I read somewhere that you could tell the weather by Constable's skies.  My time and light is not nearly as exact and I am really interested in the colours and the shapes, not recording things accurately so much. My time is a shifting time. 

Today I enjoyed the loose way I was seeing things.  Before I began I decided to foreshorten the lawn as a compromise to composition.  Perhaps letting go of the reality helped. I chose 7-8 colours and didn't add anything even though I longed for more diversity of green.  Limiting helped me today.
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