Plein Air painting: Dirt, oranges, and a banana.

So, today I had what I call my first real plein air painting session. For all you painters who live in a hole, and for regular people who don't paint: plein air basically just means painting outdoors. It comes from the French en plein air, 'in the open air.'

Anyway, I call it my first real plein air painting because I thought that I had never done it before, but then I realized I that I actually have. But the other times I was making watercolor sketches and not necessarily trying to make anything look like real life, and this time I was using oils and wearing a painting hat.

I decided not to get too adventurous for my first time, so I headed to Prospect Park in Redlands. I parked, prepared for a long expedition to find The Perfect Spot, and found it in an orange grove after looking around for about 10 seconds. Feeling like I should take this thing more seriously, I wandered around checking out the other options, and eventually ended up back where I started, about 15 feet from the parking lot.

Plein air painting definitely brought a whole new set of Challenges. Namely:

The Challenge of how to not drop your brushes in the dirt a second time.

The Challenge of how to not use unladylike language when the wind is blowing everything goddamn everywhere.

And most of all, the Challenge of what to paint when the lighting is changing every five minutes--from completely overcast, to so-blindingly-bright you can't tell if you are painting with ultramarine blue, or a banana.

But all in all, I ended up having what I would categorize as a really fun time. Which for some reason kind of surprised me. And as an added bonus, I learned some things that are going to help me in the studio. I won't share those things with you. It would be too boring, and useful.

I was out for about 2 1/2 hours, and here is what I came up with:


Love, Nat