The Plein Air event hosted by the local art guild is rapidly approaching, and my best friend Kathy and I recently spent a second afternoon trying to become competent at it in a hurry. “En Plein Air” is basically painting outside, from nature. It’s been years since either of us have painted on canvas, and neither of us have attempted Plein Air. We’ve come to realize that signing up for this event might have been a bit…premature.

This time, we chose a pond for our subject. Here’s a photo of it:

Pretty, huh? We’re lucky enough to live in an area with lots of water–rivers, creeks, ponds, and marshes abound around here.

We unloaded our art supplies and lugged them to our chosen spots–I was pleased that I’d managed to haul it all in one load this time, following the first rule of Plein Air. I set up my easel and laid out my new acrylic paints and clamped on a canvas board I recently bought at Michaels. I felt optimistic–after all, my first practice painting turned out OK, despite a bad canvas and old paints (see my last blog).

I did a rough sketch of the scene, then starting to fill in color. Below are the 1st and 2nd pics of took of my work in progress:

In the first pic, I’ve sketched in the basic areas–background trees, pond, foreground, then started painting the sky. In the second pic, I’ve put down some dark greens for the trees and pond. In the sky area, I’ve tapped in some green for the foliage on the taller trees.

Above are pics #3 and 4. I scrubbed in a little green into the pale sandy color in the foreground and added tree trunks. I was no where near done when I packed up my painting stuff, but it was getting colder and windier by the minute, and I figured having a base of color down was a good start. When I look at the last picture above, I think it doesn’t look half-bad. That’s because it’s from afar. Look at it up close:

It’s simplistic and primitive. And every single tree is leaning one way or the other. One difficulty I faced was that it was so bright that day, it was hard for me to really see what I was doing. Even so, I could tell as I painted that it wasn’t right and was only getting worse.

If I’d been painting it during the Plein Air event, I’d be mortified. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos to know that real artists have paintings that look amazing pretty much from the first brush stroke. And at Plein Air events I’ve come across, the artists are set up on street corners and seem to effortlessly create amazing works of art based on the scene in front of them.

Both Kathy and I are alarmed at the idea of anyone observing our efforts. I jokingly suggested that we have a stand-in canvas to swap onto our easels in case anyone approaches us.

Of course we won’t do that, but this second Plein Air practice session clearly turned out worse than our first. I’ll work on my painting some more–Kathy says she’s ready to toss hers. Clearly we need more practice. And maybe need to watch more YouTube videos on Plein Air painting. Lots more.

Update: I’ve just finished my first round of tweaking of my pond painting. And although I worry it looks more like a tropical lagoon than a Virginia pond at this point, I feeling better about how it’s turning out.