My Barn Burned Down

Walney Pond, Chantilly, VA

Yesterday I went on my first plein air painting trip! I am always impressed with seeing artists out with their easels set up and seeing them complete a full painting in one session. Usually the style is impressionistic/expressionistic,  so I thought, well, that shouldn’t be too hard. oy vay. My first mistake was deciding to try plein air combined with just learning oils. (I am used to acrylics). Wet into wet painting is a whole new ball game and everything kept getting overmixed and turning the same color.  The next mistake I discovered was not blocking in the main areas of the scene onto my canvas. I ran out of room for the pond reflections-plus inverse sky.  Pfew. A lotta learning the hard way. After three hours I decided I had to let the thing dry and finish it later from photos.

My first attempt at plein air painting. (No LOL zone)

What I had not experienced before was how challenging it is to even see the colors of nature when you are looking right at it! I actually felt my brain struggling with “water is not blue” because clearly, on a totally overcast day, the water was mostly tree reflections and dark green, brown, gray….not blue. And the bank of trees were obviously made up of individual trees with many different colors….of GREEN. Okay, that tree is green but I can see it next to the next tree which is green, but really red green, next to bluegray green….oy vay again.

But it was great fun, as it was part of a Meetup.com group and hanging out with other aspiring artists was invigorating. The location was gorgeous and I decided that plein air painting and painting from life in the studio are my goals. I definitely recommend you try it!

Here’s one plein air painter’s blog I follow for inspiration: Tom Brown.

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