Plein air painting

(C) 2017 Dale DiMauro

Plein air painting is a challenge but I am committed to working on one small one each week for a while. I purchased a new watercolor easel intended to be used outside and a beautiful palette/ pan set by Sennelier. The challenges to painting outside from prior experience include the changing light, weather patterns such as wind and bird droppings. Ultimately, you have to keep your composition simple and paint in a direct manner with minimal detail.

The most challenging thing for me is to plot out where I am going to paint in advance. This way I am mentally prepared for what I will be faced with. This painting was done as I sat on a picnic bench in a nearby state park while I sat in the shade and looked toward the sun. I kept this painting to one hour in duration.

This painting has too much green for me, even though there were layers of green in the scene. I am learning my way around this new palette which has bright, rich pigments. I like the warm tones and the soft and hard edges in this picture.