Working the Plein Air

From the Rocky Shore 12x16 oil

There are painters, it's true, who can knock out a plein air painting that is ready for hanging, a little jewel, and there are the collectors who snap them up.  And there are painters who use their plein air work as studies for larger paintings to be completed in the studio.  Those plein air paintings are for color notes and compositional ideas, and many of them, too, could be hung on the wall.

I, on the other hand, tend to think of my painting outdoors as an exercise; it is a way to try to hit the hue and tone and temperature that I see, a coordination between my eye and the brush that needs training, endless, endless training.  Occasionally I will find that I like something I have done enough to let it hang around so I can look at it.  This one above I might hang up for a bit in the studio and ponder.  (Compositionally, though, I think having that band of rocks across the bottom makes it harder to enter the painting.)

Other times, it's simply a disaster: Nothing works, I jab and push and the paint won't dry quickly enough to go over it, the color is off, the drawing is crude.  Those times, I cut the session short and pack up my gear in disgust, trying hard not to be discouraged.  The painting below fell into that category.  It was too hot where I set up, the sun had gone too high (I find the sunlight at noon to be the least interestng of the day) and I was struggling with the matted grasses in the foreground.  So I quickly packed up the gear and literally muttered to myself "Well, that was a waste of paint."

But when I got home and cleaned up the palette and pulled the painting out, put it on the easel in better light, I realized that there was something there in spite of the troubles.  It isn't a good painting, and there are still many things to resolve, as we painters say (in layman's terms, it still looks like shit) - for example, that mess at the right-hand edge, the blotchy grasses, the values that still need to be distinguished from one another.  But still there was a truth to it somehow.  It spoke to me of what I saw, and there was an honesty in the color, the temperature of the day, the dryness of the fields and hillsides.  I find it fascinating that a painting can be a lousy painting and still have something to offer. This painting tells me to not give up, because somehow the practice of trying over and over again to mix color has led me closer to being able to do it in a successful way.

Champoeg Park 11x14 oil