Adventures in plein air painting
June 26, 2009
Adventures in Plein Air Painting Continued: Immediately after my Zapata Ranch plein air painting retreat, I returned to the studio to complete the two half-finished paintings started on the ranch. To my amazement, it felt like I was still plein air painting! I even attempted to set up outside on my patio, but the heat and intense sun drove me back inside (along with some wild weather). A weird sensation for sure, but not unreasonable, as I was attempting to continue the plein air vernacular while finishing these two half-done paintings.
I did have photos, of course, of these barns, but they just didn’t tell the color story correctly and they seemed stilted. So I relied on my memory, taking guidance from the values and colors already placed in the painting. The photos were helpful for the architecture of the outbuildings and fence, but that’s about it.
On the Easel Morning Barns – unfinished 12 x 16 plein air oil
Remember this red building? Well, here it is completed:
Morning Barns 12 x 16 Oil (plein air finished in studio)
This next one never got into the last blog though it was in my Email Newsletter. I painted this on the last morning. On location, I set up and began in earnest, but the light was changing so fast and my brain was thinking of the drive home and maybe even writing grocery lists too, so I packed it in and headed out. The view of the ranch in my rear view mirror nearly caused me to turn around, but soon I was driving though heavy thundershowers and I knew I had made the right decision.
On the Easel Morning Light 11 x 14 Unfinished Plein air oil
Departing Shot 11 x 14 Oil (Plein air finished in the studio)
As you can see, more of this painting has been changed. As I was plein air painting, I kept thinking that I had too much dark green value in the background hills. This would create a problem with the darks in the near trees. Of course, when I started, the background hills were in deep shade, highlighted only on the peaks and that flat green surface reflecting the brightening sky. I had no photos of that early light, only one as I was departing, so I needed to choose some direction before I began. That was a hard decision to make and I am not sure if I made the right choice after all. I did paint the grasses and shrubs from memory though, as their bright warmth was what caught my attention in the first place. My photo said nothing about these colors and values, to my surprise. What is real? What is the truth?
This conundrum will always exist for those of us who paint both in the studio and plein air. I believe that each individual sees color, light, value etc differently, so how in the world can we expect the camera to capture our individual color perspective? And how can we expect each camera to capture these elements the same way? And how can we expect every person to see and understand our personal concept of color and value?
Perhaps these subtle differences in our individual interpretation of color and value create symbiosis between an artist’s painting and a collector or admirer with similar interpretation. Our concept of color and value may even shift from outdoors to indoors as our eyes adjust to the amount of light received or even as subtly as one day to another. I can sometimes look at a painting I did a week or so ago and wonder why I chose to paint with those colors – I would choose something different now to represent the same thing. Is there a right and a wrong interpretation? Or do exercises, including color charts and maybe plein air painting actually make our observance of color and value more acute and therefore correct?
Are artists really trying to accurately capture what Mother Nature ‘said’ in that landscape? After all artists frequently take the liberty of moving mountains, trees, buildings and anything else we please to make a better composition. We also change color and value to add excitement and three-dimensionality to our paintings.
Maybe what we should search for is our individual truth. We observe on site or observe photographs, but our reading of that information is ours alone. Understanding our individual reading is where we will find the truth. And Viva la difference!
This was pretty esoteric stuff, but that information just may help us examine artwork more openly as we try to interpret each artist’s reading of color, light and value.
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Au revoir!
Ginger
