I have recently started painting outside and why did I not before? Painting Plein Air (in the open air in French) has been and is still a revelation. It has made me think more aboiut what I am doing, made me more confident and opened my eyes to color.
The two paintings I am most proud of were recently painted in my local park. Both were entirely executed outside (OK, maybe a 30min ‘tidy up’ was needed on the lower of the two!) and took very limited time and resources. That is the beauty of it, painting in the open, it seems to install a time limit on you that makes you paint freer. Painting small is the key, certainly at the start. The paintings above are small 7x5in canvas boards and are so small compared to my normal 1.25 x .75 meter canvas I paint. I try to allocate about 1-1 1/2 hours on the painting and try not to fiddle when I get home.
I also recently went on a loan painting trip to Wales and painted 2 paintings on site. Each took about 2 hours to paint on location, mainly because of the age old Welsh problem of ‘rain stopped play!’ There was some work needed back home – but I had the colors down so it was just the case of finishing off where bad weather had finally got the best of me. This was the first painting holiday I had been on, ever! I loved every moment of it. It was not an organised trip, just me, with only myself to blame if I got lost, which I did, several times!
