PAINTING - Plein Air....what?
Ok, what have we here? Plain Air, I mean Plein Air? Hmmm….
Seems this is a fancy term for painting outdoors. Ohhhh kay.
Well, my wife and I won a weekend vacation to a cabin on a small lake. So, I thought what a great place to try this! There must be something to it, or else people wouldn’t be so excited about it.
So, I grabbed some acrylics in a box and some canvas, canvas boards, and brushes and learned real fast, I need a travel easel for this stuff. So I moved over to a picnic table out by the front of the cabin and used a tiny display easel I luckily had brought. (see pic). Without going into all the details I learned first off that outside is big, and you can’t paint big. So, I limited my picture to what I could see in front of me, and sketched it to delineate the painting. Then I noticed all the colors and the movements and the sun, and the grass, and the trees, etc… It was a whole new deal.
I could really learn to like plein air painting and will do it again soon. One last thing, I don’t think you have to travel all over to do it. Maybe just as good in your backyard. Here’ s a link that tells a little about it.