Plein Air--trees

More plein-air painting at a ridiculous hour. 

This painting is now SOLD--woo hoo. Maybe some pics from it's new home will follow! 


[oil paint on gessoboard panel, W+N oil paints on an allaprimapochade.com box]

Plein Air--Ganondagan

We got up at an obscenely early time for a sunday and went painting/photo-bug-hunting at a near by Native American Community/Museum. They have some great hiking trails and grasslands open to the public--which coincidentally for my fiancee--contain a ton of creepy crawly spiders for her to take pictures of. Meanwhile, I can set up the ole easel and paint away! 

[oil paint on gessoboard panel, W+N oil paints on an allaprimapochade.com box]

Plein air afternoon

It was finally a nice afternoon around here and we had a sniff of spring last week. I grabbed the plein air kit and headed out to get some practice for the Finger Lakes Plein Air festival. I was accompanied by some locals who were sharing some VERY interesting life stories. 

[w+n/gamblin oils, allaprima pochade box--custom]

sketch

round 1

final

brrrrrrrrr plein air painting

We have had some unusually warm days this past few weeks so I have taken the pochade box out for a spin. The only problem is that with these warm days there is always a high wind factored in. So it isn't as warm as you want it to be! 

Thousand Islands

But has anyone "really" counted them?

We had a dudes weekend planned and the weather decided to be less than favorable for the time we were in the 1,000 Islands. Mid morning I took break from our usual shenanigans and headed down to the water to paint. It was a dreary morning, gray and more gray, rainy and did I mention gray? 

I decided to use a limited palette to reflect the grayness. Indigo came in really handy! 

the image needed some editing--it was so gray the pic was dull! 

Plein Air

I recently purchased a travel pochade box (thank you Ben for creating a custom smaller version for me!) so I can dive into plein air painting. Plein air painting is an old form of painting where the artist travels outside of the studio and creates a piece outdoors, while in front of their subject. Monet was a very big proponent of this style, often time painting 10 or 12 pieces in a row as the light changed! Most of the time the artist will create the piece, alla prima, which means 'first attempt' or all in one sitting. My plan was to use this as a hiking kit, travel to a location, create a painting, and then hike out. It took a few tries to get the pack situation figured out, what tools and snacks to bring in order to be truly portable. Below you can see the setup and a few paintings I have attempted with this new piece of hardware. 

started on site, but had to leave in a hurry--finished in studio

maiden voyage! canandaigua lake vista

started a cool sketch of the boathouses and then a truck blocked my view! 

a paint outing with canandaigua's finest artists

My lovely girlfriend giving it a whirl!