Gibb's Farm, 9x12", oil on linen panel, by Jeffrey Smith
I just finished a fantastic plein air painting workshop sponsored by The Atelier here in Minneapolis. The workshop was taught by plein air artist, Brian Stewart. Go ahead. Click on over to his site and take a look at his work; I can wait. Welcome back.
I made a conscious effort that I was going to use this as an opportunity to learn as much as I could about another painter’s process for plein air painting.
Here are my top 5 take-away’s from Brian’s workshop
- Location, location, location. Choosing what to paint is just as-if not more important than-how you paint it.
- Compose it well. How you place that well-chosen subject on the canvas is critical to the emotion that a viewer feels or doesn’t feel when they look at your painting.
- Draw it out. Take the time to draw out your painting. This should be done simply but as accurately as possible. Use a few lines, no more than 7 or 8 if possible. Starting with nothing or–even worse, starting with something sloppy on the canvas–just means that you will be spending your time later fixing what you just put down.
- Values rule. Once the drawing has been established and you are starting out on a painting, there is nothing more important than getting your values right. “How light is the shadow side of this shape next to the light side of this other shape?” Move from shape to shape and ask yourself the question.
- Explain yourself. There reaches a point in a plein air painting where you need to stop simply putting down paint, and start describing the feeling of what you see in front of you. This is done through edges, brush strokes, color/temperature variations, and value shifts. “How can I manipulate the paint to give the viewer a better idea of what I experienced?”
What struck me while I was painting is how these ideas could be applied to almost any representational painting done from life. There is nothing radical. No secret colors or recipes for mixing up the prefect colors to use for painting the shadow side of oak trees. Just slow down, compare the parts to the whole, and paint what you see.
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Yes I find these to be important and I often forget to keep them all in mind. This list was very helpful I think I may print it out and put it in my sketchbook for the next time I go out to paint. So I won’t forget any of the hints. thanks for the help!
SAC
That’s why I love workshops. It shows you what you know, what you don’t know, and you forgot you know!
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