More plein air landscapes

After some busy weeks, I finally have time to update my blog. Here are some new plein air pieces I've done lately. I'm getting ready to do a lot more outdoor painting now that the weather's nice. I'm getting back into practice. I got a guerilla painter outdoor setup, which makes things much easier. It was a bit of a cluster*$&$ to do it the way I was doing it before. I've done about 10 or so lately and the first few were really bad. I'm only showing the good ones here. I think I'm all warmed up by now.

The first three were done on location then finished from photos that I took at the scene. I tried to just bring them to completion at home and not add too much extra information to them. I'm definitely learning that photos completely flatten the scene and kill the color. Not only that, they make the color choices for you, whereas when your on location, the colors sort of vibrate and change depending on adjustments your eyes are making to the environment.

The last painting was done very quickly with the intention of making it look good on-location, rather than depending on any studio work to bring it to completion. I've been making a lot of attempts at that and this one's halfway decent, but not quite there yet. That's really tough. I'm going to keep studying painters that are really good at quickly suggesting detail and make successful and aesthetically pleasing "quick reads" of scenes. I think it's a good skill to have. I plan to be posting some Photoshop paintings soon as well.