Plein Air Paintings
Feb 20, 2020
en plein air
/ˌɒ̃ plɛn ˈɛː/
adverb
(chiefly with reference to painting) in the open air.
I bought my easel for ‘plein air painting’ mid last year and have taken to it like a ‘duck to water’. The photos of work you see here are painted on location – I thought when I ventured outside to paint with a massive time restraint my plein air work would become looser and far more impressionistic, but my painting method and style is well ingrained and my plein air paintings are still representative of the scene.
Typically a work painted in the studio is created over several sessions painting wet over already dried paint in a layer upon layer fashion. Painting a painting in one session relies on painting everything wet into wet, this requires a whole lot of brush control and is definitely less forgiving. Techniques like glazing that are used in a wet over dry method are out of the question painting en plein air so the works will always have a looser look and feel.
Of course it is great to get outside and paint in the open air but I think there are many more benefits. Often when I work from a photo it is tricky to simplify or decide what to leave out of the scene – if you paint the entire photo the painting can become busy and hard work to look at. Painting on location seems to automatically take care of this hurdle, perhaps its also the time restraint but when you’re standing there the obvious scene is easy to see.
I draw the scene on the canvas using a ‘sight – size’ method, ie; I treat the canvas like a window and run the corresponding lines and reference points from the actual landscape onto my canvas – then once you finish, all going well your painting fills a window like gap in the scene.
Using the same idea I can also match colour with the actual scene, I’m still exploring this idea but it seems to work. The only thing is, as light changes so do colours and sometimes the end photo is not the light that the painting was painted in. I mix all my colour from 6 or 7 tubes of paint, this is a handy skill painting on location.
So besides being addictive painting en plein air has a whole load of benefits and I’m sure I will discover more, and it is nice to meet interested people as you paint.
New work Updates. I have added some of these Plein Air Paintings to the ‘Recent and Available’ folder and some recent studio works. The plein air works are small and painted on linen adhered to Birch ply, therefore they require framing and I offer a generic but nice frame option or you can decide your own frame.
Oil Painting Class Updates. The years classes have started and there are the midweek morning and evening options happening throughout the year. There are also dual Saturday Workshops coming up and maybe a couple of weekend workshops. Contact me if you are interested in joining any of these.
Cheers, Wayne
