Five Tips For The Plein Air Painter

By Diane Weintraub

Tip 1: Take Everything You Think You Might Possibly Need, and Some That You Won’t.

The first time I went out with two painting buddies I took, let’s see, maybe two and a half tons of stuff. When I got out of the car they were rolling on the ground laughing. Some friends!

My inclination was to prepare for any eventuality so I over-packed, as they say in the travel industry. The back of my car looked like I was leaving on a month-long road trip: French easel, folding chair, sketch book, sketch pad, drawing supplies out the yin-yang, camera, two gallons of water, paints and more paints, two palettes, every brush I owned, breakfast, lunch and diner, a sweater, and alternate shirt, two kinds of sun block (nose and body) and bug spray, and oh yeah, an umbrella. All that was missing was toothbrush and toothpaste and I’d be good for at least a month!

I quickly found out that you need very little to paint en plein air and the less the better. Heavy French easels have been mercifully replaced with lightweight open box pochades that can be held in hand or on lap or mounted on a lightweight tripod. Take the minimum number of paint tubes. Most plein air painters I know use just seven: cad lemon yellow, cad yellow medium, cad red (or orange), alizarin crimson, cobalt light, ultramarine, and white. That’s enough. Take two, maybe three brushes, a roll of paper towels and plastic trash bag from the grocery, and you’re done. OK, so maybe you do need water and I’ll be thinking about lunch at 9am, but that’s just me.

The sun block and bug spray can be applied at home before you leave. The less you carry in, the faster is set up and removal.

Tip 2: Don’t Worry About Where You’re Going – Just Wander the Countryside.

So by now you have to know that I’m kidding with these tip titles, right?

A girl needs a plan. Time is money when it comes to outdoor painting so you’ve got to get there fast and know where you’re going in order to allow the most time for painting.

I don’t know why they don’t, but plein air painter’s associations do not make a habit of listing favorite painting sites. Wouldn’t you love to have a list of good local locations, a handy map you could print out and take with, and a brief description and photo of each tried-and-true location? How hard would it be to do that on one of the association’s web sites?

Mostly, painters talk to each other about favorite locations (or keep it a big secret.) You can tell a lot about a plein air painter’s generosity of spirit by how closely they guard their favorite locations;) Want to know where I paint? Just email me and I’ll tell you the exact location for each of my paintings. What’s the big deal?

Tip 3: You Can Paint Anywhere at Anytime of the Day.

NOT! The whole exercise of painting on location is about the light, and light comes from the sun, obviously. So think in advance: where the sun is in the sky in relationship to the scene you’ll be painting. Ideally you want the objects you are painting to be in half-light/half-shadow. Therefore the sun needs to be at a 45-degree angle to you and the subject.

Painter’s mystique has grown around the Golden Hours, or that time just after sunrise and sunset when long shadows are cast and the light is golden (or rosy). That’s nice but you can make a good painting any time of the day when the sun is at that 45-degree angle to you and your subject.

Tip 4: There is Only One Way to Make a True Plein Air Painting, and if You Follow These Steps You’ll be a Success Right Away.

Many articles have been penned and lectures spoken about the steps needed to make a plein air painting. Most of the experts have boiled it down to a couple of easy-to-understand steps, and that’s nice for the absolute beginner. My thinking is that each artist has to make the effort to find her own way, and that takes time and sadly there’s no short cut for time.

Kevin Macherson has written a very nice beginners guide to landscape painting titled, Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light and Color, and his new book, Landscape Painting Inside and Out. I often refer my students to it. You can find it here:

http://www.kevinmacpherson.com/79/lp_746/skin_/pg_productdetail.html/sr_2

American Artist Magazine has published a compendium of their articles on landscape painting titled Landscape Highlights, and it too is worth looking at.

If you read through both of these sources you’ll find that some of the basic beginning steps are similar: decide on the composition, lay in the dark values, know where the center of interest is, and then finish up. Do this 100 times and you’ll begin to know a small something about landscape painting. Sorry, Dorothy… there is no Oz.

Tip 5: This is Serious Work: Do Not Have FUN!

If it’s not fun, why do it? Try stuff and if it falls flat, just laugh it off. Who cares?

I love to read the old timer’s writing on landscape painting such as Carlson, Henri, and Edgar Payne. They are all wonderful each in their own way and I really respect the way each has paved the road for those of us who come skipping along behind them. But they take it so seriously!

Sure I’ll be the first to say it’s kind of spiritual to be out in nature, but if it doesn’t make you happy, forget about it. Yes, it can be hard to learn something new and get any good at it. Anything worth doing is hard at first and I wish for my own students that the hard first part could somehow be delayed until they get a taste of how wonderful it is to be really good at something.

I paint landscapes because it makes me happy and when someone likes one of my paintings enough to actually put their hand in their pocket and pay for one, what could be better?

Email me and let me know how it's going for you at justpleinair@hotmail.com

Happy painting!!