Monday, May 14, 2007

daily painting practice - plein air workshop

I am back after my short break from posting. This past weekend I did a few outdoor paintings.

I signed up for a Plein Air class taught by a wonderful artist (Deb Groesser). Deb is a great teacher and really knows how to break down the process of outdoor painting into simple steps. The class was offered through the Joslyn Art Museum and was at the (Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha.)

Lesson learned. Don't paint in direct sunlight. It washes out all the color . Here is my sketch from the morning. Actually it was between 11AM and noon in bright sunlight. It looked great in the sunlight but looking at it now all the color is muted and grey.

I learned my lesson and in the afternoon stayed in the shade to paint.

The center of interest was one of the other painters. I had a great sketch going until....
... she sat down...

click on the picture to enlarge the image

Plein Air Study
8"x10"
oil on masonite

I gave the final away to the artist in the painting.

I will probably only post 2 or 3 times a week through the summer. Sorry but the studio paintings take priority over the blog.

8 comments:

Cara said...

Glad you're back. I'm sure we understand about the priorities - we all ahve them. Hurray to you for planning your stategy.

Yep - the sunlight does a number on paintings for sure - I've been a victim myself. Thanks for sharing -

Schuivert said...

Hey Peter, thanks for another good post. Good to see once more the effect of painting outdoors in full sunlight. wouldn't it be a perfect painting to "touch up" later?

I wonder if and how you escaped the storm so far, but if you haven't declined gracefully yet I would like to "tag" your blog as explained in my post .
Feel free to join or ignore of course!

René PleinAir said...

Yessssssss he's back!!
And even beter he's back and is starting to paint plein air!!

Do take your time Peter!

Peter Yesis said...

Cara and Bart - thanks for the welcome back!
Rene- you are my outdoor painting guru! I hope I can get to the point where I can do outdoor painting as much as indoor.

Ed Terpening said...

As we used to saw at Apple Computer: "The Journey is The Reward".

Donald Wienand said...

i think "grayish" painting is actually not so bad at least i can get some atmosphere?

by the way:
My link "D.Wienand" hast changed. I have a wordpress blog now and my url is "www.dwienand.de" i try to do this one bilingual..:)

Sarah said...

glad you are back, dont worry about posting daily, it can be a terrible destraction. People still keep an eye on what you do...bonne chance!

Mike said...

Hey Ed! More nice stuff . . .and it is always nice to have someone to watch develop right along with me! Very cool blog.

Do you mind if I set up a link to you on my blog?

Best!
Mike