Plein Air Painting
 
"Plein Air" is french for open air. The purpose for plein air painting is a kind of pureist art challenge, getting the real feel of the outdoors while at the same time remaining creative  amidst the elements. I enjoy being out there in the rain, and even more so in the snow and ice. No I'm not weird, I merely enjoy the isolation.

Out in the field, I work mostly in oil on canvas and wood panel, though I will do field sketching and in watercolor and some photography for reference material for studio paintings. As for plein air painting, I realy challenge the craft by sketching in paint, no pencils here. I like to keep the painting with in a maximum limit of 3 hours of painting on a larger painting and 1 to 1 1/2 hours on small ones. Sometimes 2 to 4 painting can be done in a day. Clouds have to either be painted fast or skillfully commited to memory, so an artistic license is a normal critera in painting plein air.

The painting below was painted on location near Jefferson, South Dakota in about an hour and a half . These storm clouds were moving fast so I took a quite and enjoyabler moment and commited it to memory prior to commiting to the actual painting. I then finished the painting in the studio. It took only 15 minutes to tuchup and finish.

Getting to a location is a hugh part of the fun, I don't put a time limit on that, all day is ok, heck so is a week! The reason for puting a time limit on a plein air painting is that it forces swift painting and intellectual challenge of desiphering the subject, each painting is different. The challenge comes from painting complex scenes in the same time it takes to paint a simple one. Challenge also comes in utilizing and developing long-term memory skills.

Many times, very complex scenes can not be finished to completion within 3 hours, in that case, I get the hallmarks of the entire scence painted and commit the rest to memory so I can finish it in the studio. I do take pictures for postarity, but I do not use them to finish plien air paintings. I use pure mindfullness and a little paint to finish plein air paintings in the studio.