Plein Air-ing it

"Alexandria"

10 x 8 in

Oil on Canvas

I love long weekends especially at the cabin with family and friends. Sleeping was the number one thing in the agenda and I am happy to say that I succeeded. Second to sleeping was continuing my journey with plein air paintings. As I mentioned in previous post landscapes are not my strong suit, but I do have an admiration for them and enjoy painting them any chance I can. I wanted to try to capture the time of day as fast as I can without having the distraction of putting every hair on a dog.  My goals were to capture the time of day, mood in the painting, and edit my process.

Similar to my previous post, I started with the top left picture with just a quick gesture of the landscape. I only want to capture the essence of the scene and its perspective. The top right picture shows my next step, this stage I only ad the overall tones for each section of the painting. This stage I like to call the "rough" in stage, still going quick to capture the type of light I want, similar to doing gestures but with color. This stage allows me to see how the overall color and mood that will be in the final painting. I want to try to keep close to this palette the further I move away from this stage and closer to the final. The bottom left picture I start to zero in on a section and take it to a finish. I first start with the darker values and move to the lighter values. In this stage I am taking the tree's in the foreground and the tree's in the background to a close finish. Then on the bottom right picture I complete the lake and sky, repeating the same process in working from dark to lighter values.  When all the shapes and values are stated in the painting and close to a finish I can then go around and put the finishing touches. 

Painting on location.

Here is another painting I did when the sun was starting to set the previous day. This was a really quick painting as the clouds were going in and out. The size of this painting is 5 x7 inches, being restricted to that size allows you to go much quicker.

Thank you again for stopping by and viewing. I hope you enjoyed this post and the paintings. Till next time, cheers!