Kelsey Creek Plein Air

I got up at 5:30am this morning to paint at Kelsey Creek Farm before work. Now I know from experience why I prefer to paint at the end of the day. In the evening, it gets cooler as time wears on and if you want, you can keep working on some aspects of the painting as long as it is light enough to see. You can enjoy the evening breezes as you clean brushes and pack up at your leisure in the fading twilight. In the morning, especially during a Seattle heatwave, it just gets hotter and hotter as you paint, and at some point you need to apply sunscreen, and if you get on a roll and don’t mind that the shadows have all disappeared, you apply sunscreen again – and then you pack up and wash brushes under a withering sun.

Still, I had fun, and I had wanted to return to this location to do a 9″x12″ version after a 4″x6″ study I made a few years ago.

Old study on the left. New painting in progress on the right. I’m using water miscable oils – some Holbein Duo and some Royal Talens Cobra. I started the under painting in Burnt Sienna, and then strengthened the darks with Burnt Umber and then Raw Umber.

I stayed long enough to paint the sky, but I forgot to soften the edges between the sky and the distant trees. No problem – I’ll do that tomorrow morning if I don’t sleep in.

Summer Solstice Plein Air

It’s Father’s Day and the Summer Solstice and I am painting once again at Marymoor Park. No concert this evening – just the Washington Brewer’s Festival – and a couple of curious drones buzzing around overhead.

This time I had 90 minutes to paint. I started by reestablishing the cast shadows, then painted the remaining trees from back to front. After that, grass and then the road.

I could probably call it done at this point, but I will probably touch it up a bit in one final session. I want to add a few larger pieces of grass in the foreground with a rigger brush and work on the shadows along the edge of the road. Also add a few sky holes in the trees and a bit of sunlit tree trunk.

Here’s the sunset on the longest day of the year!

June 16, 2015

Spent about an hour this evening working “en plein air” at Marymoor Park. This time it was hazy and beginning to cloud up, so the colors weren’t as brilliant and the shadows less defined.

I began with the sky, using a mixture of Cerulean Blue and Titanium White. I really wanted to mix in a bit of yellow and red to replicate the warm, sunset air I had seen the night before, but this evening, the light was much cooler because of the clouds, making the visible patches of sky appear blue.

After painting the sky, I mixed in some Raw Umber and painted the distant treeline, taking care to soften the edges. Next up were the trees on the upper left, using a lighter, more saturated green made with Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre, and Raw Umber. The highlights in the trees are Cadmium Yellow with a bit of Yellow Ochre. At some point I began losing the light and switched to darkening values across the painting with Raw Umber and the green I used for the trees. The plan is to cover some of these darks with lighter leaf and grass textures.

Plein Air Marymoor

Plein air painting this evening at Marymoor Park! Twas a beautiful afternoon, with nary a cloud in the sky as I made my way past a long line of cars queuing up for an A.R. Rahman concert in the park. Once past the concert traffic I made my way to the dog park and then onto the Audubon Bird Loop. I stopped at this lovely spot, which I had scouted the night before.

It was halfway through the golden hour so I rushed to set up my pochade and block in the painting. I spent 25 minutes in total on the setup and the block in. The plan is to return another day to start on the color.

What a wonderful evening! After packing up and saying “hi” to some dogs, it was beginning to get dark, but I could still make out the dying embers of the sunset as I made my way back to the truck.

Potholes Plein Air

I took a weekend trip to the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge near Moses Lake to do some plein air painting. The area near the Potholes Reservoir Dam is great for plein air. The desert scenery is fantastic and the network of dirt roads has lots of pullouts and parking and access to restrooms and a nearby general store. It’s about twenty miles from Moses Lake.

After a year of studio painting I had forgotten how hard it is to do plein air. The problem is time. In the studio, you can always paint an hour longer or return another day. In the great outdoors, the light is only good in the early morning and late afternoon and it changes constantly. It also takes time to scout locations, and if you are painting far from home, you really have to wrap things up because it is not practical to return.

You also have to pack carefully and make wise use of limited space.

All in all it was a great trip, but I really need more practice.

In order to get the best light and shadows, I painted early in the morning and late in the afternoon. This shot was taken about an hour before sunset.

On the first day I only had enough time to do a rough block in before the sun went down.

The thunderclouds that had been building all afternoon put on a great show as the sun went down.

During the hottest part of the day when shadows were few and far between I scouted locations.

In order to make the best use of the golden hour, I spent time during the middle of the day blocking in shapes. Having a good drawing freed me up to think about color when time was short during the good light at the end of the day.

End of day two. One take away is that time management is really important in plein air – with changing light conditions, you just don’t have much time to mix colors and apply paint.