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Sounds mysterious and threatening, right? No worries! It's just that when Liz Haywood-Sullivan began to create pastel drawings, she was dismayed with the range of dark colors available. "Rich, dark pastels were hard to find," she says. "Most of the time the darks just weren't dark...
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The Oil Paintings of Margaret Bowland I was first introduced to the paintings of Margaret Bowland in 2009, when one of her portrait paintings won the People's Choice Award in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, DC. I was uncomfortable...
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Artists who step outside their studios take a leap of faith. When you determine that you are ready to create a plein air painting , you take a chance with lighting, composition, color, and time. All of these are variables that you need to contend with to get your outdoor painting right. Artist Robin...
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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...
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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...
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Perhaps the toughest skill that the artist painting outside must learn is the ability to judge values accurately, and then mix them in paint. The reason that this skill requires so much practice to get right is because our eyes and brains are constantly adjusting to the light, kind of like a video camera...
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Those of us in the fine art industry know that artists and art galleries have had a long-standing love/hate relationship. Artists love the fact that galleries market and sell works of art, but they hate the fact that the better galleries keep 40% or 50% of every sale. Then along came the Internet, and...
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When walking through a landscape looking for that magical spot that compels you to stop to sketch or put up your plein air easel, don't forget to look behind you (and not for muggers, but the view!). Stop regularly, turn around and consider the view in a direction other than what's been straight...
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Yes, you read that right! I've heard of extreme sports and extreme makeovers, but extreme outdoor painting ? This is a first for me. But when plein air artist Cory Trepanier told me that he had made a trek to paint the far reaches of the Canadian Arctic--a land of icebergs and permafrost and tundra...
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In plein air we attempt a form of direct translation. In the studio, we may recall our observations of nature, but are freer to be inventive with color. Night Passage by Mitchell Albala, 2006, oil painting on panel, 20 x 20. It's September and the plein air painting season is drawing to a close ...
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"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." --Vincent Van Gogh Moonrise Road by John Hulsey, plein air painting. Plein air painting at night in bright moonlight is great fun and a wonderful learning experience for the outdoor painting artist. With nocturnes...
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We enjoyed the recent plein air blog of artist Marion Boddy-Evans and agree with her sentiments. We have been outdoor painting for over forty years each (before the "plein air" phrase became ubiquitous) and have always felt that the value in painting outside on location was the total immersion...
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The light of summer is a powerful and extreme thing. Getting effects of extreme darks and stark, searing lights is not something every painter can do. There's an acuteness of vision that must come into play to see the color that resides in the light as well. When I look at the work of pastel painting...
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When plein air painting , one of the most enjoyable and facile medias I've found to work with has to be watercolors. Hands down. The supplies are minimal, you can paint quickly and move from place to place making sketches of what catches your interest, and the paintings dry so quickly that there's...
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Some artists, you love what they draw. But with every landscape drawing of Georges Seurat, it is the way that he draws that makes all the difference. Take any of his sketches and chances are it is fairly simple in composition. There are very few elements in the drawings and usually they all add up to...