En Plein Air - A new way of painting
For this month’s blog I had planned to write about my new experiences of en plein air painting - and then May happened. Here in the UK it was pretty much continuous rain, which was very disappointing as May is usually one of our best months for sunshine. I had been researching how to approach painting en plein air, had treated myself to a fancy new pochade box and spent ages trying to figure out how do plein air artists transport their wet paintings? (More on that later.) Then it seemed that the elements were working against my attempts to get outside and get painting.
As an artist who specialises in portraiture one may question what I was I hoping to achieve by going outside and switching to landscape painting. It is a fair point. I must confess that painting landscapes (especially buildings) has never really appealed to me. I have always been drawn to portraiture perhaps because of its potential to convey so much emotion. When painting portraits I especially love that moment when the paint really begins to look like the person I am painting and the portrait comes to life, it's magical.
So why plein air? I wanted to try something new, something challenging and something that would take me out of my comfort zone. American landscape artist Stefan Baumann says that the reason one goes outside and paints en plein air is to become a better painter. It will make you a better painter because it is one of the hardest things to do. He wasn’t wrong.
What I hadn't quite prepared myself for was that painting outside is completely different to painting in a studio. In so many ways, to the point where I feel like I a novice. In my studio I have my photo reference on my laptop which I can zoom in and out of to get as much detail as possible. Outside everything is constantly changing, especially the light. The biggest and most challenging difference has been that instead of building up a painting layer by layer over literally hundreds of hours, I have to get it all down in one go in a couple of hours.
This massive learning curve has actually been really enjoyable (except perhaps for my ego) and I am learning to paint in a new way. Much like drawing and painting left-handed, which I had to adopt for a while during injury, en plein air provides an almost child-like freedom. In one - two hours there's no pressure to produce a masterpiece which enables me to take more risks and to experiment. It is my hope that I can take this new found freedom back with me into the studio.
Much of my research into the topic of en plein air painting has been on YouTube, something I certainly didn’t have access to as a teenager and it has been a huge source of information and inspiration. I’ve particularly enjoyed videos by Andew Tischler, Steve Atkinson, Stefan Baumann, Florent Farges and Lindsey Kustusch. For those looking for informative videos on how to get started with en plein air painting click on the links at the end.
As for the question how do plein air artists transport their wet paintings? This is something that I have spent a long time thinking about. One very simple solution is to buy a special case that you can take with you to slot all your panels into. This looks like a good option but I personally do not want to be carrying around another piece of kit. One thing I have learnt very quickly is that you really don’t want to carry anything more than is absolutely essential, especially as oil painting equipment tends to be heavy.
Another option is to put two panels together (paintings facing each other) and separate them with something like a bit of bluetac or pins at the corners and then tape the panels tightly closed together. This solution also seems like a good option if you are doing multiple paintings in one sitting. However, after a discussion with my partner, who is far more practically minded than I, it became apparent that the best solution for me was something much simpler. I measured the size of panel that I would need to fit inside the pochade box and then I could just slot the panel (2mm mdf) into the box and carry it inside the box. For my particular pochade box I needed a very specific size of panel in order for it to remain in place during transport. As I prefer to work on canvas I have used canvas from a Belle Arte canvas pad and then cut it to size and taped it to my mdf panel. This has the advantage that I can then put these plein air pieces in a sketchbook if I choose to, or they could also be framed at a later point.
So now that I have all this figured out, let’s hope for a drier month in June so that I can get outside and really begin to figure out how to paint en plein air.
Links to videos on plein air painting:
Links to equipment:
Pochade Box
