Happy Fall! to everyone. We are expecting a light frost tonight. I am more than happy to welcome in more moderate temperatures and the changing color of the landscape.
It is the time of year that I want to paint outside. When I was in College at Sam Houston almost all of my work was Plein Aire. We didn’t think painting outside was anything special. It was the way you did it. Photography was not easy to use to augment your studies back then. It was expensive and the film development took time. My brother whose career in art took off in the 7os, did use photography. He had his studies made into slides. He had a huge slide collection. It wasn’t at all as convenient as todays’ smart phone photography. The onset of the smart phone made it so easy to snap one or hundreds of shots, upload them to your computer and you can create beautiful compositions in the comfort of your studio.
About 15 years ago, artists started reclaiming Plein Aire as a means to interpret their landscapes. I love to do Plein Aire, but hate the mess of dragging oil paints/solvent/easel (my favorite medium) outside on location. Recently I have been doing some research on using waterbased pigments. Casein, gouache and watercolor are really fun to use. When we went to France with Sallie Anderson, we did our Plein Aire studies in watercolor. But the transparency of watercolor is challenging and limited in the end results. Adding the gauche and casein gives you a lot more range, from transparency to opaque.
I have attached two of my recent studies in gauche. Both of the studies that I have attached are on watercolor paper with a salmon tinted undercoating. I was taught to work on a white surface, but I am warming up to using an undercoat. In this case it adds a warm mid tone to the composition that I find intriguing and allows me to work quickly as the light moves across the scene. I am considering both of the studies as an oil composition…
Love to all, and stay safe. Susan