Plein air Painting

Vermont is full of changing colors. Each maple, hidden in the lush greens of summer, begins changing and becomes a vocal point.
Choose one tree or a forest of trees as a focal point or paint a story which brings the eye through the painting with no highlighted focal point. Be sure to keep the eye rotating in the painting or the viewer becomes distracted by a different painting. This is treating a landscape as a spatial experience-we "take in the whole view" all at once.

Here is a painting from last winter. I am barely seeing snow this winter in Vermont. Of course this is the challenge for outdoor painters to capture the moment. Longing for a thick blanket of snow, I can easily lay that image over a landscape because painters can take liberties!
But the crux of any painter's desires, is to meet those desires and meet the landscape head on. Is a painter satisfied with a painting because it met the desire or met the landscape's visual image?
Be aware that this is every painter's dilemma.
We have five senses, don't limit you work to the visual only.

Back to Blogging, "Green Mountain Ledges"
I painted this Fall. What is the difference from the Green Mountains to Western mountains? Elevation is important and that alone changes the color of mountains besides the northern latitude creates low light year round. Color is affected by space. Color is space and each space is a different color. We are learning so much about color from science and painters can show these nuanced color changes to depict space, elevation and latitude. Happy New Year!

"Cloud Peak" is a painting inspired from my two trips to the Big Horn Mountains in northern Wyoming. This is a 6"x 6" canvas and one of four for the Brinton Museum Show in September.
What I love is the rock and snow covered peaks so I stick with what excites me. Ever do a painting and it bored you? Its not the painting but your interest in the subject matter. Keep painting what you love!

Pierce Point, Pt Reyes, CA

Come paint at Pr Reyes, June 6 & 7th classes on Impressionist's Palette and Perspective. The glow in this painting is the element Impressionism adds to a painting. Come learn the palette!

Petaluma Weeping Willow, oil 11"x14"

Spring Weeping willow tree in Petaluma-color will symbolize the time of year!

"Sentinel Rock" oil 12" x 16" was selected for Yosemite museum"s permanent collection, I am thrilled.  Perhaps because it was painted on location, it captured the imagination of the staff? It is the view from Yosemite Lodge's front entrance, perhaps that is why? What do you think?
If we were to ask a scientist: a color specialist in what attracts the human eye, what would they say? They would say it is the warm yellow orange color!
What is your answer now? Do you believe science? Painters can paint outside of the box, but can viewers see outside the box?

"orchard" 11"x14" oil

Get ready for Spring! It's not too early to practice Spring colors in the studio and how you want to scale the image on canvas or paper. Try out warm reds and cool reds to understand the range of pinks that you can make. All this practice makes painting in the field easier!

I am back from Pierce Point where I enjoyed a day with Pt Reyes painters and teaching at the Field Institute-outdoors of course. Outdoor painters encounter some of the toughest conditions-wind, clouds, cold, rain in the forecast. But when I arrived it was beautiful with a light breeze and sun and intermittent fog-a normal day at Pt Reyes Seashore.
Those that chose to "show up" as my friend Jennifer points out were winners! We painted.
Even if your painting isn't fabulous the experience of practicing, showing up and getting in the right frame of mind is well worth your time. Next time you will be more prepared!

January day and the ice is thick and the sky feels heavy. Who wants to paint such a cold scene? I was out x-country skiing and saw this and immediately wanted to capture the cold.
I tell my students, make it warm enough to want to look at the painting! It was warm enough for me to be skiing and this means that the filtered light and low light of winter is still light and still inviting, just as is the atmosphere of this January day.

Here is "Coast Range" one of my large landscape oil paintings. "How does one stay interested in painting," my aunt asked me during a holiday gathering.
The question sounded strange and foreign. However in my classes I see such a lack of direction or at a minimum students that cannot relate "study" as part of painting.
Painting has become entertainment and therapy. Students complain that they did not "mean" to do the elements in a painting, but they don't relate "study" with meaning.

This is painted with my left hand. I am right handed and I see right-handed because almost all my bird paintings have the birds facing to the right. Understanding how one sees is as important as what one sees.
Does your painting  at the end of a painting session look"wrong"? It may only be the way the birds are facing and the lingering experience of physically seeing backward that makes us feel the painting is wrong. Neither is wrong but a new sensation and a new beginning!

Amphitheater Lake in Grand Teton NP is in an alpine environment. This was painter during my Murie Center "Landscapes Matters" gathering in 2006 in Grand Teton NP. During my latest, move I discovered it and does it bring memories flooding back.
Painters while they are painting a scene, worry that if a painting they make isn't perfect, its "not good."
But perfection is not what matters-what matters is that it was painted in the moment and the moment returns. Every viewer brings their "moment" to the painting as well. Paintings are like great friends who remind us of who we are.

This oil took time to evolve. The color was not right-too warm, too cool in the rocks and the sky was a separate painting.
Give yourself honest feedback in terms that can be adjusted with painting.
Wondering if you like the painting? Give it up. A great painting is not about you. It is a story and tell it with clarity-there is a right color and a right value and a repeat of color, and consistent shadow pattern. I do not break the rules, I use them, over and over for great paintings.

Here are the colors of fall-late fall. Blue and yellow/ochre sing together and symbolize a season.
When you see a green tree and green grass and the actual color which it is up close to you, remember that this is only part of what you "see".
Organize color to give wholeness and a clear story to your art. Just because you see isolated objects/trees does not mean it is a good story.

Here is the same picture:
One has the midtones-the colors that we first see.
The second picture has the darks and lights that we also see. Which one do you like?

Here is a high country cabin in Colorado. Summer colors are saturated so painters remember that you can use the paint straight from the tube. Keep you whites out of the paint! Add white to sky colors only. Richness is great and one cannot be too rich! Let the color describe a mood.

Howe Farm in the spring and summer. This is painted with a high center of interest thus making the field very important but is it distracting from the farm buildings?
It would only be so, if there are too many darks in the field. Keep your darkest darks and lightest lights in either the foreground, middle ground or background when composing a landscape.
What painter put the darks in the background of a landscape??
Maynard Dixon, one of America's greatest painters!

Here are the Green Mountains that I love to paint. The abundance of flowers is what I feel and smell and sense-I paint more that I can see!
Students ask me if I "make it all up"?
Its a valid question. is there an answer to creativity, or a basis, or even a reason?
I respond that I teach techniques and how to apply paint, but they create. There is no one definitive book about good design and I doubt there will be one on creativity! Feast with your heart!

Here is one of my first mountain and lake scenes. I don't know how many I painted of different mountains and lakes before it dawned on me that this is what I love to do!
Following your passion is not just becoming a painter but also what kind of painter. Through your own discoveries we create culture: you paint your passion and I paint mine.
Being focused will help inspire your next painting. Just because I can do something doesn't mean I am passionate about it. A good story or painting will have that passion and not just a good line.