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Author: Scott_Burkett, Contributing Editor
| We were recently victimized by hurricane "feeder bands" after nearly 2 years of severe drought. A couple of nasty storms down in the Gulf of Mexico stretched out their "loving arms" and dumped a bazillion inches of rain on us. "Great!", I thought, "...we sure could use the rain." Then I realized of course, that in celebrating our new found precipitation, my plein aire plans were necessarily and indefinitely shelved! :(
After 2 days of waiting for a break in the weather- anxiously pacing throughout the house, I made the decision to bring the outdoors "in", so-to-speak. Immediately I hopped online, went to our WetCanvas! Reference Image Library... and sifted through several hundred landscape images until choosing this lovely shot of a poppy field. The contrast of the silhouetted tree with the red poppies would be nothing short of breathtaking! |  |
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| As plein airists will be quick to tell you, one of the many secrets to working successfully outdoors, is to master the "squint". Colors will tend to appear "lumped" together or as a mass while squinting. This is one way plein air'ists identify “shapes” in nature.
It was quickly apparent that I would not gain much info squinting at a small 8x10 reference photo, so I opted to instead run the image through the "painting simulator" contained in the reference image library system. (The result is the image you see below). Freshly armed with my two images, I was ready and anxious to get started! Now, before going further, I think it important to point out that I consider myself more or less a beginner. I picked up painting 4 years ago after starting the WetCanvas! site. Unfortunately, running the site affords me too little time to focus on painting, thus my progress as an artist has been slow in coming. Nevertheless, I hope that while my brushwork and style yet has a way to go, that I can impart a few tips or inspiration along the way. :) |
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 | The first thing I did was to mount a small 8x10 stretched canvas to my French easel. On the vertical support struts above, I secured the "squinted" photo version with masking tape...keeping the original photo off to the side for quick reference.
My intention is to produce a small "8x10" study rather than a finished painting, per se, with plans to spend about 20 minutes actually painting, (though I will have to make numerous stops to take photos of the various stages). |
 | Next, I began to gather my materials.
First, I selected several bristle brushes, (mostly flats), and a filbert or two. After getting into the work, I decided to use a painting knife instead, thus never really used the brushes other than for the initial value study. Cobalt Blue and Cadmium Red were two colors I also wanted to use for this piece, so I laid those out as well (to the left). Look, and you'll also see a small pile of the cobalt blue on the top-left of my palette left over from the night previous. Not to be wasted, that will be used! :) |
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