Plein air ending 2009

Dec 31st, and Jan 1st are national holiday in Thailand. So today my plein air/sketching friends got together and we roamed another area along Chao Praya River to celebrating our end of year 2009 sketching. We had a great fun, this time there were seven people in our group in the morning with two new friends: an eye doctor & a furniture designer. One more member joined later in the afternoon. I was very lucky today as one of the young friend, Khun Nest, an architecture student had helped carried my painting bag. He kindly told me that he know I have already been carrying a six-month baby. So my outdoor painting trip, which involved quite some walking had went much more comfortable than I expected. I truly thankful for his kindness.

We gathered around 8:30 and had some breakfast at Taksin bridge along Chao Praya river, then we started our day at Bang-Rak Chinese Shrine I got one painting done before one of senior shrine care taker arrived with a negative message to our painting group.... May be only in Thailand.. that location care takers do not welcome painters. A similar thing had happened to our group before at the other Chinese shrine. Around 10:30 we walked along Charoenkrung road to the near by Yannawa Thai temple. This time things went smoothly and around 12:30 we had a group lunch at the near by chicken-rice food shop. It is simple but great, especially, I never have any painting friends who would go paint out with me in Thailand for years until this year that I got to know them. I love my Wetcanvas friends but the face-to-face interaction with other artist friends do enrich my painting experience tremendously. Later in the after noon, we got in the express boat for a short hop to Kalawar church to end the painting day at around 3:30 pm. I had a great fun and could not think of a better way to spend the last day of 2009.

Happy New Year 2010 -- May 2010 be a better painting year for you !!!.