This is a Learning Journey

Initially my goal was to focus on sea and sky, and in particular, skies. For years I painted with watercolours mainly because I was confident with the media. To be fair, when I started Plein Air painting I was pretty much an accomplished studio watercolour painter. I thought the transition to Plein Air would be easy for me. For the most part it was.

Although my first attempt with water mixable oils was another story altogether. I was attempting to paint in a high altitude desert in Wyoming. I certainly didn’t know my materials and certainly was unprepared for the dry mountain air. I created a few of the biggest messes you will never see! I was served a big slice of humble pie and went back to watercolours for a few years.

Oogled and Googled

My current Plein Air set up – I love this set up!

After a few years of painting plein air, I decided to step back. I had attended a number of Plein Air Conventions by this time and touched most of the available gear at the trade shows. Oogled the tools of the trade and Googled everything I could possibly think of.

I made a few decisions as to what I would purchase and it turns out I made quite a few expensive mistakes. Spent scads of money on gear that was either too heavy, too awkward or that I just didn’t love. Unfortunately this was all too easy to mess up and spend.

So many questions to answer

And you know, you really do not have to get all caught up in the trappings. Once I realized this I was able to decide what I was really looking for in equipment. Before spending another cent I decided that t was time for me to regroup and ask myself some serious questions. Pretty basic really, but do I actually enjoy this endeavour? At any level? What was I trying to do? What were my pain points and were they a deal breaker? And what was I looking for in my gear?

Feel the change. Be the change!

Around this time I started back at life drawing and this is significant. Drawing from life was a game changer for me. Almost immediately I felt improvement with all my work. It was then that I realized that painting from life outside will do the same for me! Only in colour! I could literally feel all my work improving.

Dale Cook at work with her pastel kit.

And most important of all The most important part of my Plein Air Journey was when Dale Cook and I started painting outside together. And we painted in almost all weather and racked up many, many miles on our cars exploring New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

I cannot really express how important it is to have a friend like Dale to art adventure with. Priceless. I am blessed. We studied the work of landscape painters via Zoom through the dark Covid times. We talked art constantly, about colour theory, about exploring different mediums and we laughed a lot!

But still, I really wanted to understand what it was I was hoping to accomplish. And it came down to one thing.

First I wanted to get competent. Confident and competent are interchangeable here but both worlds are equally important. Yes, I could render a tree. If I actually thought about it for a minute before I dove straight in the way to approach it would come to me.

I was actually starting to get a bit competent and not just fumbling my way through the process!

These were both painted at Hammond River in the same year only a few months apart.

Anyway, I worked comfortably in this zone for far too long. Sure I wanted to improve but it was not happening. I was stalled. Mind you not all my work to this point would wind up in the fire pit. A lot of it was pretty dang good (so I thought)! Then it hit me, if I intended to maintain my energies in Plein Air and get satisfaction from the process – I needed not just to improve but to get good. This is a very personal part of my journey. We each have to define what this actually means to ourselves. Change of focus I needed to shift my focus to getting good. Now was the time to focus on improving. This thinking made something happen in me.

Now I am more conscious…more planful of how I approach my work. I’m investing more time upfront. Really looking at the potential scene. Being deliberate at this initial stage by making decisions on composition, values and paint colours. Not trying to paint everything that I saw in front of me. Then mixing the paint for the larger masses before I jumped in and start working.

I started to understand some of the issues that were holding me back, such as I was unable to get my dark values dark. How to make a fine line, you know the details that I love. And why is brown so hard? This upfront work had another benefit – it made me more efficient. With a plan in mind I am able to start painting with confidence.

I know this is stating the obvious but before this I would jump right in and hope for the best, mixing my paint as I went along. This approach was wrong for so many reasons. The most important one? Preparing for the changing light and maintaining colour harmony. Remember my first goal – get competent? Sure I had successes and often produced work that I was happy with.

But I still felt something was lacking… A few times when I was painting out there, for whatever reason I started painting intuitively. I stopped thinking and worrying. I want to capture the “feel” of the scene and not be quite as precious. It could have been changing weather, bugs, limited time, rapidly changing conditions or whatever, I didn’t initially recognize the shift as it happened – but rather after the fact it was how I felt about my work. And had fun feeling the movement within the scene. Then I was hooked This started for me last year.

See the improvement?

These two images were painted in the same month only one year apart. I think the improvement is impressive.

Lessons learned:

Lose the gessod boards – brightness (blinding in the sun), smoothness (like painting on plastic wrap) and varnish beading up and not sticking (oh NO!).
As difficult as this was to do, I had to ditch the Raw Umber and Paynes grey
Along with a few other pre-mixed colours including yellowish green
Magenta is a primary colour and important to be included on my palette
Work bigger – I think smaller sized confines your composition making the painting either too tight, not close enough or both
BIG BIG BIG lesson: All about sunscreen. Not quite the words I wanted to hear this fall but I discovered some questionable spots on my nose. Turns out they were considered to be pre-cancerous cells. Thankfully there is a treatment and now the rest is preventative.
Big brimmed hats are only 50% effective in blocking the effects of the sun. Anytime the UV index is over 3 – must wear sunscreen!!!