Get outside
I’ve been doing some plein air painting since the end of last summer: painting outside. Probably the most well known practitioner of this approach was Monet and maybe the artist whose paintings inspired me to try it out. There was also the Canadian, Tom Thomson, a park ranger who painted, from his canoe, scenes of the Ontario wilderness. I still admire his paintings at the AGO, where a selection of his plein air studies are organized in a very tall, dimly lit room. I bring students often to this room and point out some of the decisions Tom Thompson made in these fast paintings. There are a few recurring motifs in his work, one of my favourites being the screen of trees:
This is a challenge to paint but it creates such a satisfying effect. Another thing he does a lot, is to take advantage of using long shadows that describe the topography of the land. Look also at his use of colour especially how rich and colourful the shadow areas are. It’s not easy to make such bold colours work well together, which is one of the main challenges of painting fall colours.
Painting outside is really great because it gets you into nature but also because you are faced with a lot of surprises and a lot of moving parts. For example, the light can suddenly change dramatically. Those nice long shadows appear at the end of the day when the sun is low. You might only have 20 minutes to capture them and incorporate them into your composition.
When I was painting the scene above, I lost control of the paint density. When the paint becomes too thick on the canvas, it is difficult to make changes. This is a problem since my approach requires adjustments along the way. I think that Tom Thomson did a fairly precise drawing before applying the paint on. The paint is very thickly applied which makes me think that he had a pretty clear drawn idea of what he was going to do. When time is limited, you don’t want to fumble around changing things too much. My painting of the tractor didn’t work out because I realized the drawing was wrong after piling the paint on. I might revisit it in the spring and see if I can salvage it.
Have you painted outdoors? How did it go?