Plein air painting tips

The other day Misti posed a few really good questions in my comments section about plein air painting. So I thought I'd share her questions and expand on my response below.

 "I have been wanting to do some plein air work but am sort of afraid of diving in. I think it is the whole finished product I am afraid of as well as the time. How long do you spend working on a painting and what do you do with light changes? or do you choose a specific time when you will have the most time?Thanks!"

Thanks for your comment. As I said in my previous response, I can really empathize with your concerns. It's common to want to feel a sense of accomplishment when you put forth such effort. When I first started painting en plein air, a lot of my studies went straight from easel to the trash heap! It can take some time to really develop a process that works well enough to capture that fleeting light and elusive feeling that inspired you to paint it in the first place.

A few thoughts and suggestions:

• To battle with that ever-changing light, it helps if you make a decision about the light you want to paint, and commit to that even if the light changes and the clouds roll in. This is very challenging, as you have to get your main color and shadow notes down pretty quickly to commit to that idea.
• Due to its rectangular format, a  photograph will already provide a composition for your painting. When you're painting on location it can be a little overwhelming because the scene before you is so expansive and it can be difficult to translate all of that 3-D information onto a small rectangular 2 dimensional plane. 
• To help with this, it is a very good idea to do a little planning even before you start your painting. I like to bring a small sketchbook with me and make some very quick thumbnail pencil sketches before I commit to a particular composition. In this way I can determine where to place my center of interest and how to frame my scene. 
• In regards to "how long," two hours has been the maximum amount of time that I've been able to paint at one sitting on location, and even then that can be pushing it. Any longer and the light has changed too drastically and it just causes you confusion. Better to come back to the scene at the same time again the next day and finish up.
• If a return visit on a subsequent day isn't possible, another option is to take a photo when you start and when you end and use these references to make a few finishing touches to your painting. The danger here is that once you get back to the studio you can lose the information and freshness you've captured on location if you overwork it too much away from the source.
• A better option may be to work small. This is particularly true if you are just beginning to paint on location. Working on small canvases allows you to more easily cover your canvas in the limited time frame. You may feel less overwhelmed and less worried about possible "failure" (though in reality, any time spent learning is never a failure, regardless of the finished product!)
• As for the time of day, mornings and evenings offer the most interesting light and shadow. By noon all of the light is pretty flat and shadows have disappeared, so this is least appealing to me. I find the mornings a little easier than the evenings, simply because the light doesn't change quite so quickly. However, there is nothing so seductive as that beautiful golden evening light. And if you really want to do some turbo-charged painting, try painting a sunset!
• Most importantly, go about it with an open mind and with no expectations other than that you are showing up to learn and to experience. With persistence your studies will get stronger, and the benefit you have gained from the experience will pay off big time for you in your studio work as well. At least, that is what I have found in my own work.

And with those thoughts on plein air painting, I am off for a week to do a little of my own. We're off to the beach and I'd be surprised if blogging will be an option. Have a great Labor Day Weekend everyone and I'll be back to posting when I return!

Luminous landscape painting: Beneath the Haze

This is a new painting I've done as part of a series of works I am calling the Luminous Landscape. It is of a most unusual evening sky I saw while painting an adjacent view on location on Tilghman Island. It had been an incredibly hazy, humid day, and when I set up to paint en plein air, the sky was covered in a heavy haze. But as the day started approaching sunset, I saw the sun doing its best to burn through that haze. The effect produced a diffused comet-like trail of light across the upper part of the sky, and a bands of clearing closer down to the horizon. I really enjoyed the abstract qualities of this scene.

"Beneath the Haze" Oil on Canvas 40" x 30" ©Jennifer Young

I painted this larger painting in my studio on a gallery wrapped canvas with a deep 1.5" stretcher with painted edges, so it will be ready to hang without the need of a frame. Here is a side view:

My plein air demo featured on EmptyEasel.com!

Just a quick note of announcement to say that my plein air painting demonstration is being featured today over at Empty Easel.com.  Thanks so much to Dan for the feature! I've referred tothis site before, and I'll say it again...If you haven't yet visited this content-rich website, I highly recommend a visit. Empty Easel has a lot of great articles, tips and features especially useful to the artist.  His section on selling art online  is unlike anything I've seen elsewhere. Dan takes a serious and in-depth look at different online venues, with side-by-side comparisons of features, costs, ease of use, etc. Lots of data to mull over here and elsewhere on the site. Check it out!

Mini taboret, palette and art caddy

I made mention the other day about my home made mini taboret that I devised (with the help of my husband's handiwork!)  Here it is:

I use this as my color mixing palette and as a holder for a few of my essentials- my oil paints, any medium, paint thinner and paper towels, etc. The main structure is actually this laundry caddy, that is meant to slide in between a washing machine and drier.

The goal in my search for the perfect cart was to find something ready made that I could use directly in front of my easel as a palette area to mix my paints.

I figured if I didn't want to bend over or reach out too far to get to my canvas, I'd like something no more than 12 inches deep, and at the right height so that I could comfortably mix my paints without having to stoop.  I also wanted something on wheels, so that I could roll the cart to the side if I were painting a very large painting.

What I came up with was this art caddy. The caddy required minimal assembly and was only around 8 or 9 inches deep. I'm not a tall person, but still the cart wasn't quite tall enough for me. This is where the handiwork came in. My husband told me to determine how much higher I'd need the top to be in order to comfortably mix my paints. Once this was determined, he built up the height by engineering a little insert cut from two by fours. Then he attached a 12"deep x 36" long board (a shelf left over from an old IKEA bookcase) on top of his insert. Sitting atop this board, I have3 12x12" ceramic tiles. This is my paint mixing area. The tiles are backed with velcro so that if I get very vigorous with my mixing they won't slide around.  I'm not great with cleaning my palette thoroughly, but the great thing is these tiles are cheap and easily found at any Lowe's or Home Depot. If they get too dirty then it is easy enough and inexpensive enough to change them out.  A very handy person could probably easily construct the whole caddy from scratch, but being short on time and patience, this cart works for me! And was far cheaper than anything I had looked at that was comercially produced.

Care needs to be taken when moving the cart. In other words, you can't whip it around very quickly as it is slightly top heavy. This is mostly remedied by putting heavy things (like cans of thinner) on the bottom shelf.  I used a simple bungee cord strung from one side handle to the other to hold my paper towels, and the baskets are ones I found at the dollar store. 

A taller person might require a taller cart (I'm 5'4 1/2" tall) so you'd really need to measure everything to make sure this is the solution for you. There are also expensive easels that actually have tiles along the front part of the easel, and this is another option if you want a complete system. However, I rather like having the cart/palette separate as it is a little more flexible for me to have something that is freestanding.

Watercolor/Pen & Ink Sketches: The Jefferson Hotel

Since my studio is right down the street from the beautiful and historically significant 5 star Jefferson Hotel, I thought I'd sketch a couple of the more famous views. This is the view of the belltowers from S. Adams street:

According to the Jefferson Hotel website, Lewis Ginter "commissioned Carrere and Hastings, a renowned architectural firm from New York. The firm designed the Fifth Avenue Public Library and Henry Frick House (later the Frick Museum) in New York, as well as portions of the Commonwealth Club in Richmond."

Along with the hotel's gorgeous grand staircase, (which supposedly inspired the one used on the set of Scarlett's famous staircase face-plant in the film Gone With the Wind,) another significant interior space is the Palm Court in the hotel's upper lobby. Central to this space is a life-size marble statue of Thomas Jefferson by Edward V. Valentine, interpreted with liberal artistic license by yours truly below: