I used to be able to paint outside, back when I knew less. I would just sit down and slap paint on dry paper. And I was younger then. I could sit for hours on the ground and then, more importantly, get up again. I had no problem lugging a half-gallon of water. And I didn’t need to find a bathroom every half hour.

When I paint indoors, I take great joy in applying layer after layer of thin washes as I paint. It may take me 6–10 hours to do a single painting. Outdoors, one needs to capture the scene in one or two hours. The sun keeps moving! The shadows move. The light of the late afternoon suns grows ever redder as sunset approaches. The colors all change every few minutes as clouds come and go. The exciting glint of sun that attracted one to the scene disappears.

One summer, I visited my sister in Hingham for a painting vacation, determined to master en plein air painting. I set up to paint at the Hingham Beach. Now painting in public is hard for me. I’m rather reserved and not at all confident in my ability to paint. Fortunately no one came over to comment, but everyone else was lounging in beach chairs wearing colorful bathing suits, while I, wearing paint-stained pants, an oversized man’s shirt, hiking boots, and a dark brown R.E.I. hat, was alone on my camping stool hunched over my work. When I am with a painting group, at least I am not the only weird one.

The first day, standing on a grassy bluff at the park, my eye was drawn by some beach grass following a curving shoreline where a house perched on a small peninsula. To get the grass in my picture, I needed to be at the same level as the grass, so I went down to the beach and walked along the sand between the 12-foot-high seawall and the water. A young Asian man was fishing with two long poles anchored at the base of the wall, the lines cast well out into the water. I put out my stools and my paints and began to settle in.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” I looked up to see him right in front of me. He held his hand next to the sea wall about three feet up. “Two hours, water will be here,” he said. “You understand? Tide coming. Water here — two hours!”

“OK, I understand,” I said. I sat down and started painting furiously, trying to keep an eye on the water as I lost myself in the scene. Soon I had to move a few things back from the water’s edge, then a few more. I decided I’d better pack up — it takes a while. As I headed back to the beach, I realized that the water had already reached the wall in several places. I was glad I had worn my hiking boots and that the bottom of my pack was leather as I waded through an inch or two of water. And I was glad he had warned me. I never finished that painting.

My next day at the beach, I set up on the grass under a tree. As I painted, the breeze freshened. It was a hot day and the air felt good. Just as I applied a thick wash of color to show the curving sand, a gust of wind flicked my unsecured paper off my lap. I stiffly rose and set chase, capturing it just as it flipped face down into the loose dry sand. My sandy beach was now really sandy! I sighed and used the remains of my painting water to wash off the sand. I now had only 2 inches of water in my water cup – the last of my drinking water. I was thirsty, but the muse insisted I continue. I did what I could with the little water I had, but decided the sky would have to wait until I had clean water. Another painting never finished.

I did two or three paintings a day that week, all unsuccessful. That fall I took a class in which we used an easel with the paper slanted up, a whole new technique for me. That class was in late September in 40-degree weather, a whole other challenge for this hothouse flower. I bought fingerless wool gloves and wore all my long underwear, but I still had to leave class early several times to avoid hyperthermia. Not much painting success there either.

Perhaps I will try again this year. I have a friend who is trying to convince me that plein air painting is “wonderful.” So far, my only “wonder” is why I keep trying to paint outside when painting inside is so much more comfortable.