Plein Air Blog

Summer Wind Patterns

2013-05-09T03:43:00Z

As we all start getting ready to step outside our studios and paint outdoors or create studio landscape painting based on our experiences in nature, I wanted to explain the design elements that I put together for this particular painting, Summer Wind Patterns . Summer Wind Patterns by Robert Reynolds, transparent watercolor painting on rag paper. The location for the painting is the California High Sierra and the lake is known as Silver Lake. Over the years, I conducted many, many outdoor watercolor...(read more)

From Nature's Tinest Creatures to Her Broadest Feats

2013-05-02T03:04:00Z

The patterns of nature inspire our artwork. One of the most fascinating recent discoveries is the intimate relationship between the patterns found in nature's tiniest creations to the patterns found in her broadest, most sweeping productions. The apparent chaos of nature can now be understood in terms of repeating patterns which can be mathematically described. There seems to be an interconnectedness in the patterns and rhythms of all of nature. A photograph of frost. Scientists have applied...(read more)

Painting the Brightness of Sunlit Snow

2013-04-25T03:44:00Z

The large snow storms that graced our area this winter gave us opportunities to study the unique light, colors and shadows that only snow cover provides. Painting snow presents many challenges to the plein air painter--the least of which is the cold. The primary difficulty is the intense light reflected by the snow. This causes us to squint down, and in so doing we darken the entire scene before us somewhat. This is fine when painting the lights, but it gets very troublesome as we peer into the shadow...(read more)

A Passion for Gardens

2013-04-18T03:19:00Z

We are not alone as artists in our passion for gardens. We follow in the footsteps of several rather impressive artists throughout history. Our personal gardens are designed for plein air painting and inspire us in every season. But this year, we have an opportunity to paint and teach in gardens that dwarf our own -- on the remarkable grounds of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. These will be the first plein air painting workshops ever offered in Longwood Gardens. We will have the...(read more)

Long Live the Explorer

2013-03-19T03:46:00Z

The last two centuries, in particular, witnessed the final great explorations of the surface of the planet by scientists, geographers, and surveyors. In those pre-photography days, and for a while after, artists were an integral part of any expedition. Often these artists were also trained naturalists, or even doctors, performing double-duty as members of the team. Artists could render what words could not, and the men who funded these expeditions understood that the public responded with great interest...(read more)

Stairways to Heaven

2013-03-05T04:56:00Z

"Of the original phenomena, light is the most enthralling." - Leonardo da Vinci Crepuscular rays are those wonderful beams of light we see at the beginning or end of the day that appear to radiate from the single point of the sun and stream through gaps in the clouds or between other objects. Their name comes from the Latin word "crepusculum", meaning twilight, and refers to their most common occurrences during the hours around dawn and dusk. They have long been sources of inspiration...(read more)

Painting Fog and Mist

2013-02-26T04:41:00Z

Recently, we received a good question from a reader about how to paint one of our favorite landscape subjects--fog and mist. To understand how to paint light effects, it can be helpful to have a basic understanding of why things work the way they do. Light starts with the sun. As it penetrates our thin shell of atmosphere, it is diffused, or broken into different wavelengths. We perceive the result of this diffusion as the general color of sunlight. The sky is not really a blue substance but sunlight...(read more)

Black and Blue and an Indigo Bunting

2013-02-14T04:08:00Z

When is blue not blue? Ask any Indigo Bunting and they will tell you, "When it is black!" This is because the feathers of the diminutive Indigo Bunting are not actually blue, they are black, and only appear blue to us when they are in direct sunlight. Their feathers are structured of materials that refract, or bend sunlight in such a way that only the bright blue light spectrum is reflected back to our eyes. When the bird is in shadow or indirect light, we see the true feather color and...(read more)

Ever Hear of the Purkinje Effect?

2013-01-29T04:13:00Z

Have you ever noticed when you are plein air painting how the colors of objects look so radically different in the very low light just before dawn or twilight? Take a red rose, for instance. We know that the flower's petals are bright red against the green of the leaves in daylight. But, take a look at dusk and you will see that suddenly the contrast is reversed, with the red flower petals now appearing a dark red or dark warm gray, and the leaves appearing relatively bright. Moon Walk by John...(read more)

Power to the Pencil

2013-01-24T04:10:00Z

With so much interest in plein air painting these days, it's easy to overlook how important drawing skills can be to the landscape painting artist. Fundamentally, drawing is both a way of seeing and a way of knowing a subject. If you can draw it, then you own it. It is in your visual library and can be recalled when needed. But the act and art of drawing goes much deeper than a mere recording process. For the artist, drawing is how we know the world. It is an expression of life and evidence of...(read more)

Dark Shadows

2013-01-22T04:30:00Z

Why go to the trouble of painting from life when our cameras can take such great pictures? Digital cameras have gotten so good at taking properly exposed, beautiful photos that they can fool us into thinking that they are also accurate. To be sure, the technology packed into even an inexpensive camera is incredibly powerful, but that technology comes with a big bias toward the "pleasing" side of things. Pleasing the greatest number of people may be a good marketing strategy for camera makers...(read more)

It's Not Because I'm Lazy

2012-12-06T04:15:00Z

You’re in a beautiful plein air painting location, you whip out your camera and take photograph after photograph – it's essential to have lots of references for landscape painting, you know. Then you dig out your sketchbook, pencils, and paints and set about covering page after page of your sketchbook. The relentless pursuit of information. The drive to be sure you’ve got enough (never mind how intangible that measurement is). The fear that the moment will be lost, forever....(read more)

Into the Arctic: The Plan

2012-11-20T04:39:00Z

Zooming in and out of the Canadian North like a hummingbird on a flower, my mouse was beginning to heat up. An armchair explorer’s best friend, Google Earth was helping me understand the massive scale of the Arctic ( here's my video all about it ). Trying to figure out where to plan my plein air painting journeys in this huge landscape was making my head start to spin. The few photos posted on the interactive globe were helping me to visualize what I might encounter up there, though in...(read more)

Can't Get No Satisfaction?

2012-11-15T05:10:00Z

We travel frequently to paint en plein air in new locations and sometimes teach workshops in those new environments as well. One of our favorite locations is northern New Mexico--the Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch area. Each day while we are there, we plan our schedule to paint in the best light—about two or three hours of plein air painting the early morning light, followed by a long mid-day break, and then another four hours in the late afternoon into evening, for those golden sunset moments. Chimney...(read more)

See the Forest NOT the Trees

2012-11-08T16:48:00Z

"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky." - Khalil Gibran Perhaps the biggest challenge for those of us who paint from life is to see and understand what is right before our eyes. This may sound simple, but it is anything but, and it takes unrelenting practice to get good at it. Why this is so has partly to do with the way our brains are wired, partly to do with our visual biases, and partly to do with the sheer complexity of the world. Learning to see the world in terms of...(read more)