I find the colours and shapes of the school buses very attractive.  When I saw them against the autumn colours of the trees I thought this is something to paint.  Both studies were done on location.

The interesting challenge was how to capture the sense of the bright yellow trees without actually painting millions of yellow leaves.  The beauty of plein air painting is that you need to figure out how to handle these challenges and you need to do it quickly.

It reminds me of a saying I made up when I was teaching grade 4’s.  “What do you do when you don’t know what to do – do something.”  In this case I think it worked out.