Before You Go Out

INTRODUCTION

Painting en Plein Air

You’ve found your spot and set up your easel. But before putting brush to canvas, you take a moment. The sun shines brightly over the hilltops, the trees move gently in the breeze, and the fragrance of the surrounding meadow rises to greet you. Your senses waken to the beauty of the world. Now, with great pleasure, you turn to your easel and begin. This is why you paint en plein air.

Why Paint Outdoors?

Many of us might agree that painting in the studio is so much easier! You can paint in the studio any time of day, regardless of what’s happening outside your window. Weather that would strike fear in the heart of the postman causes you no concern. Plus, you can start up a pot of coffee, put on your favorite music, check your e-mail now and then, take a nap, monitor the laundry—well, you get the picture.

But without the outdoor experience, your paintings will always lack a convincing sense of sunlight and natural color harmonies. Plus, paintings made “in the wild” possess a wonderful, exciting energy that those made from photos just don’t have. And if you’re a landscape painter, don’t you just love being immersed in your subject matter? I do.

Stephen Quiller, Autumn Above Goose Creek, 2014, watercolor and gouache, 18" x 25". Plein air. Private collection. Kim Lordier, California Chaparral and Oak, 2019, pastel, 8" x 8". Plein air. Collection of the artist.

Many of us work in the studio from photos, but even though cameras have come a long way in recent years, you still can’t beat the human eye for sensitivity. I can see more colors and more shades of light and dark than my point-and-shoot pocket camera or smartphone. And, unlike a camera, my brain can interpret those colors and values in many ways—artistic and creative ways. But perhaps most important, thanks to my binocular vision, I can see depth and form clearly. Cameras flatten a scene into a two-dimensional image. After years of painting outdoors, I’ve trained my eyes to give me more information than any photo possibly can.

This book is here to help you with the outdoor experience and get the most from it. If you’ve never painted outdoors before, you’ll learn the basics—and as you become more skilled, the book will, in a sense, grow with you. Reread it, and you’ll always find some new piece of advice to help you along. If, on the other hand, you’re already an outdoor painter, you’ll find plenty here, too. Each of the contributors to this book is a master in his or her field and eager to share wisdom with you. They are your mentors, and they will help you find your own special path.

Margaret Larlham on location at Skiathos, Greece.

CHAPTER 1

BEFORE YOU GO OUT

On a beautiful day, it’s so tempting to just grab the gear and head out. But this isn’t really the best way to go about it. You need to be prepared so you can do your best painting and get the most out of the experience.

I’ll never forget the student who, after dinner, sat relaxing in a comfortable chair on the lawn at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Ghost Ranch, made famous by Georgia O’Keeffe, offers the painter gorgeous, colorful cliffs and hills, and even more gorgeous sunsets. As the sun went down, the student suddenly decided to paint the sunset. Of course, she was unprepared, and by the time she had set up her gear and put brush to canvas, the beautiful evening light had vanished. This chapter will help you prepare for your outing and avoid such disappointments.

DEMONSTRATION EARLY AUTUMN BY GHOST LAKE

watercolor and gouache | STEPHEN QUILLER

Stephen offers thoughts on how he chooses a subject and how he uses color to emphasize mood.

Materials

Sketching Large sketchbook, at least 9 �" x 16" Gel pen Surface 300-lb cold-press watercolor paper, at least 19" x 28" Brushes Watermedia flats, ¾"–2" Rounds, #7–#24 Drawing 2B drawing pencil Watercolor Paints Cadmium Yellow Light Cadmium Yellow Medium Naples Yellow Cadmium Red Orange Cadmium Orange Permanent Orange Quinacridone Rose Magenta Ultramarine Blue Cobalt Violet Cobalt Blue Deep Cerulean Blue Phthalo Green Gouache Paints Titanium White Naples Yellow Cadmium Yellow Light Cadmium Yellow Medium Blue-Violet Ultramarine Blue Cadmium Orange

1. The Scene

I feel that to put my heart into a painting, I must be inspired by the landscape. I truly feel that the best subjects find me rather than me searching for them. I’ve been to this place before and was planning to come back to spend the day working on some close-up patterns of backlit aspens. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted this vista and loved the composition. Distant fires in Colorado had drifted smoke into our valley. This pushed the sky into a soft yellow and created simple layers of blue values in the mountain ranges. The value contrast between the foreground hills and the strong color notes of the aspen told me I had to paint this.

2. Making a Working Sketch

After a short time meditating and visualizing the subject, I made a quick working sketch. I focused on the spatial relationships and the geometry as well as the rhythm and the beat of the composition. It also told me the best format to use, an extended horizontal. This sketch is 9 ½" x 16", made with a gel pen.

Calvin Liang, Catalina Island, 2010, oil on canvas, 20" x 30". Studio. Private collection.

CHAPTER 3

DESIGNING YOUR PAINTING EFFECTIVELY

Designing in the field must be simple and intuitive, but it also depends on your goals. If you plan to create a finished work on site, design is essential. Design has two purposes: to clarify and reinforce the idea behind the painting and to make a satisfying experience for viewers. If your goal is to explore a subject, gather reference material, or work on a problem not relating to design, then designing isn’t necessary. Still, I always feel more satisfied with even a quick sketch if I make some attempt at design.

4. Washing with Alcohol to Create a Monochromatic Underpainting

Using a small brush and 91% isopropyl alcohol, I washed over this initial layer of pastel, creating a monochromatic value study that will be used as an underpainting.

6. Creating Greens

Using blues in different values and temperatures, along with a few violets, I began to create the leafy areas of the trees and to place some cool shadows on the ground. I worked yellow over the existing blue in the sunlit grass to the left to create a feeling of green without actually using green. This layering has more energy and character than if I simply chose a green right out of the palette.

5. Varying the Color

Once the underpainting dried, I chose several light-value pastels, including pinks and yellows, using them to mark areas where the light hit the ground plane and other objects in the scene.

7. Pushing the Green Concept

I added warm yellows and golds on top of the blues in the trees and bushes, pushing the concept of the feeling of green further by working with value and intensity. I could already feel the sunlight coming out in this painting.

8. Pulling Back on the Contrast

I felt the painting becoming too contrasty. Wanting the feeling of bright sunlight that bounces into the shadows, I used some lighter colors, turquoise and blue, to bring down the contrast. I also defined the sky and carried some of that color down into the ground plane to brighten it up.

Dominance in Your Design

What’s important in a design? Dominance. A painting with a clear dominance among design elements keeps equals from competing. Although many design elements can come into play, the ones most important for creating an effective sense of mood, and therefore a successful plein air painting, include value, temperature, and chroma. For example, you might choose one value to dominate. If your scene depicts a sunny day, the light values should occupy more real estate in the painting than the others. You might choose to group both your lights and your mid-lights into the "light" bucket and let them occupy much more than 50% of the painting. You can get a feeling for dominance by looking at master paintings—any of the paintings in this book, for example— and trying to determine how the artists used it. A painting lacking or weak in dominance of design elements will often come off feeling confusing or uninteresting.

9. Finishing Touches: Tying up the Darks

Tying darks together in the shadows created an interesting pattern to lead the eye down to the trio of dark trees at the bottom of the hill.

Complementary Color Palettes

Basing a painting on a set of complementary colors (such as orange and blue) can be dramatic. But the drama can be pulled back with a more neutral version of a complement or with a split-complement (a tertiary color next to the complement on the color wheel).

Stephen Quiller, Falling Leaves Contrails, October, 2003, watercolor and casein, 32" x 23". Plein air. Private collection. Margaret Larlham, Prickly Pear, 2020, pastel on sanded paper, 12" x 16". Plein air. Private collection.

Complementary Palette—Secondary and Tertiary Orange and blue-green, dull versions of each, make for a pleasing harmony.

Nathan Fowkes, Descanso Bridge, 2000, watercolor and gouache, 9" x 14". Plein air. Private collection.

Complementary Palette—Red and Green Here, an intense red sits in the embrace of its complement, green.

Complementary Palette—Rich and Dull  The lively oranges play against their split-complement, a dull blue-violet. “THE MASTERS ON COLOR

After making a small value sketch, I squint at the color of the landscape and decide whether the underpainting should simply echo the darks of the sketch or whether I might use color contrast. Most often this would be a warm maroon for the trees, orange for the earth, and

yellow for the sky.” —MARGARET LARLHAM

DEMONSTRATION GHOST RANCH MORNING

oil | MICHAEL CHESLEY JOHNSON

Quick color choices sometimes involve making your best guess. Here’s how to follow up a best guess with adjustments.

Materials

Sketching Gouache paints Watercolor paper Viewfinder 6B graphite pencil Sketchbook Surface Hardboard panel primed with two coats of acrylic gesso, 9" x 12" Brushes Assortment of flat hog bristle brushes, #2-#12 Oil Paints Burnt Sienna Raw Umber Cerulean Blue Phthalo Green Titanium Zinc White Hansa Yellow Light Hansa Yellow Medium Yellow Ochre Ultramarine Blue Napthol Scarlet Permanent Alizarin Crimson Solvent Odorless mineral spirits Painting Knife Small trowel-shaped painting knife

1. The Scene

I chose a backlit view of a mesa. The strong contrast between sunlight and shadow with the beautiful, warm, rich reflected lights that appear in the shadows appealed to me. Also, because of wildfires out West, a certain amount of haze increased the sense of distance in this particular scene, demonstrating how air quality can affect this attribute.

2. Color Study in Gouache

I made a quick sketch at the same time of day, giving me an opportunity to study some of the light effects.

3. Thumbnail Sketch

At the same time the next day, I went back. I used a viewfinder to help with composition. Using the tool as a template, I created a small rectangle on my paper with the same proportions as my larger painting surface, 9" x 12" (a ratio of 3:4), so I made the value sketch the same proportions but smaller, at 2" x 2.5". I used a 6B graphite pencil to block in a few value shapes—dark, mid-dark, mid-light and light.

A Word About Thumbnail Sketches

A value sketch should be the same proportions as the painting. Making it in a small format forces you to simplify and reduce the number of shapes.

DEMONSTRATION WATER’S EDGE

acrylic | MARK MEHAFFEY

Color temperature helps define shadow and light, going a long way to help depict mood. Mark shows how he plays warm against cool colors for interest.

Materials

Surface Acrylicgessoed panel, 6" x 8" Brushes Various short-handled brushes for watercolor and acrylic Drawing Water-soluble white pencil Acrylic Paints Alizarin Crimson Ivory Black Cobalt Blue Anthraquinone Blue Cadmium Yellow Light White Cadmium Yellow Deep Cadmium Red Light

1. Laying in the Shapes 2. Starting to Block in Color

Sometimes a lack of time is a good thing. I made this painting with a thunderstorm approaching. Knowing I didn’t have much time, I chose a 6" x 8" panel and decided just to get the gist of the scene. After toning the canvas with Alizarin Crimson and Ivory Black, I quickly drew the contours of the major shapes with a water-soluble white pencil. I mixed Cobalt Blue and Anthraquinone Blue and varied it by adding other colors. (Anthraquinone Blue mixes darker violets and greens than other blues.) For the foreground, I used this mixture plus Cadmium Yellow Light. For the tree trunk, I used the blue mixture plus Alizarin Crimson. I roughed in the rocks along the shoreline with the blue mixture to which I had added a very small amount of white. The white slightly lightened the value and made these shapes a bit more opaque.

3. Adding the Middle Values

I painted the distant shoreline and indicated some of the tree foliage with a mixture of both Anthraquinone Blue and Cobalt Blue plus small amounts of Alizarin Crimson and white. I kept the value of this mixture in the middle range, knowing that I would add the lightest lights toward the end. To warm up and bring forward the mass of leaves, I added Cadmium Yellow Deep to my blue mixture to make a warm green.

4. Moving Toward the Finish

For the water, I used a mix of Anthraquinone Blue, Cadmium Yellow Light, and white. For the shadowed green of the grass, I used this same mixture but with less white, and for the sunlit grass, I added a bit more white. At this point, the painting shows a dominance of cool colors.

The sky was in reality a dark, threatening gray. But because cool colors dominated, I wanted to warm up the sky to make it a “foil” for all the cool color. I made a neutralized, warm light yellow with Cadmium Yellow Deep, a small amount of Cadmium Red Light, plus the blue-green that did not wash out of my brush, and lots of white for the sky.

I then mixed a brown from all three primary colors—Anthraquinone Blue, Cadmium Red Light, and Cadmium Yellow Deep plus white—for the picnic table and used it to add a little warmth to the left of the tree. I quickly brushed in the skin tones and the shirts of the two figures with Cadmium Red Light right from the tube and also mixed with white.

5. The Finish

I added a few highlights to the rocks. To indicate the shadow under the figures, I brushed in a mixture of Anthraquinone Blue and Alizarin Crimson. (These two colors make a very dark violet that is better than black.) After the painting dried, I used a wet bristle brush to rub off all the remaining white pencil lines. From start to finish, this painting took about forty-five minutes. The rain hit as I was packing up.

4. Establishing Background and Main Foreground Masses

I established the sky using a combination of cool blues and a hint of warm yellow. This allowed me to sculpt around the tree line and form the silhouette of the far landscape. I added a few sky holes and scumbled in some light passages of olive greens to show the mass of vegetation in front of the main body of trees. A few dark- and medium-value marks show the bulk of the fallen tree trunk, which makes up most of the log jam. I observed the large clump of earth and grasses mixed in with the debris and sketched it in.

5. Adding Reflections and Warm Color Notes

After painting the local color of the exposed dry riverbed, I added a patch of warm orange and a lighter value to this area, hoping that it would be a good base for the small amount of detail to follow. Then, starting at the horizon line, I laid in the final layer and details of the river stones. I used different values of the same color family to keep uniformity in this area. I indicated the sky reflection and dappled light created by the movement of the shallow water with a lighter value blue. Now I shifted my attention to the foreground. A mass of detail can sometimes be confusing, so it is always important to squint and pick out only the important shapes and values. I always paint what I see and not what I know is there.

6. Adding Effects and the Finish

This is the icing-on-the-cake stage. I could relax and enjoy the final mark making. I used my little finger to blend here and there, softening some of the hard edges in the shadows. I used a warm ochre pastel to indicate the destruction of the broken bark that had been ripped away from the tree and vegetation that had traveled the full distance of the river from several miles away. A few strokes of the edge of a light gray pastel completed this small plein air painting.

Marc Hanson, Morning Drive, 2013, acrylic on panel, 9" x 12". Plein air. Private collection.

CHAPTER 5

REFINING AND FINISHING

You’ve spent time working out ideas with value sketches. After finally settling on one, you copied the design over to your painting surface. You blocked in shapes, not worrying too much about getting colors exactly right. Next, after comparing your painting to the scene, you created a mental priority list of what needed adjusting. Because time was passing, you started with the most urgent first. Now you can step back and congratulate yourself. But what else needs to be done?

Calvin Liang, Santa Barbara Harbor, 2012, oil on canvas, 12" x 16". Plein air. Private collection. Linear Perspective and Scale The pier creates a set of lines that heads towards a vanishing point and gives a feeling of depth. Additionally, the sails of the boats, which get smaller as they go off into the distance, provide a sense of scale for the distant headland. “THE MASTERS

ON FINISHING AND REWORKING I really love to rework my paintings. I always take a photo of the scene, which I use to work from when I am back in the studio.”

—CALVIN LIANG

Marc Hanson, January Skies, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 36". Studio. Collection of the artist.

Cloud Size Diminishes with Distance These clouds are similar in size, yet seem to get smaller with distance. For the closest clouds, the viewer sees more bottom, but in the distance, more of the sides. The brushstrokes used to depict the clouds also follow cross-contour lines, creating form.

Lines Formed by Natural Objects The stream twists here and there, but still displays a sense of narrowing as it goes into the distance, correctly following the rules of linear perspective.