Night Painting Mission Inn Festival of Lights

Festival of Lights 2009 by Terry d. Chacon
(9 x 12 palate knife plein air painting in oil)

Wed. afternoon we gathered up our night time painting gear and off to the Mission Inn Festival of Lights for a night time painting session. This is becoming a tradition for our group, Plein Air Artists of Riverside. PAAR! Last year I really wanted to paint the horse drawn carriages so Pat and I set up around the back side of the magnificent Mission Inn. Mission Inn Hotel - Riverside California (press on the link to read more about this National Historic building in downtown Riverside, CA.)

We arrived early enough to sketch our scenes onto the canvas, then to wait for the darkness to appear and over 350 million lights to light up the Mission Inn. It is incredible to watch the light move into darkness and the fabulous light display develop right in front of you. I knew I wanted to paint the horses but they were no where to be found during my set up time. They started arriving around 6 pm so I decided to quickly add one in moving across in front of me while I painted.

After painting we took a walk to find our friend Geeta who was painting on the other side of the building. This place was just packed and very difficult to walk around. All the restaurants in the immediate area had 1 1/2 hours wait time. There were children in large groups, ice skaters at the ice rink, carolers lined the streets, cars jammed (they really do need some sort of police control for the cars), vendors with gingerbread cookies and hot chocolate, popcorn and all sorts of delights to keep you comforted as you walked the streets of Riverside and took in this glorious event. We decided to walk to a local Mexican Restaurant as finding another parking space would have been difficult. After our meal we treated ourselves to gingerbread cookies and hot chocolate before calling it a night. What a great evening and the weather was fabulous. I am hoping to go back this coming Sunday if our beautiful weather holds.

Stay tuned for another painting from the wonderful Mission Inn Festival of Lights. The Festival of Lights at the Historic Mission Inn in Riverside

Terry and PAAR group painting Mission Inn before dark in 2008. Hopefully I can get some photos for 2009.........

Until next time, ENJOY THE ART! Terry d. Chacon



Notes and prints from all of my Mission Inn paintings are available. You can look back to last year in Dec. to see the paintings from last year.