by Steve Whitney
Painting en plein air—that is, outdoors, on location—is a delightful way to sharpen your painting skills, enjoy the outdoors, and hang out with friends. Just as working from a live model improves your drawing skills, so painting on location helps you strengthen your compositions and to see both values and colors more clearly. These benefits accrue regardless of whether you ever paint landscapes in the studio and cannot be entirely replaced by working from either models or still-life setups. For landscape painters, of course, painting from life will lend authenticity to your work regardless of how skilled you otherwise may be.
Yes, it’s true: painting outdoors on location is challenging, but in that challenge lies its value to all painters. Nature offers far more information in any given scene than you can possibly include in a painting. That means you have to learn how to pick and choose and to simplify the complexity before you. That’s a skill you will find useful regardless of the type of work you do.
Shifting sunlight presents another useful challenge. Because the scene before you changes minute by minute, the first step in any plein-air painting, regardless of the medium you choose, should be to quickly capture the pattern of light and shadow. Once you have established that pattern, you also have established your basic composition and from there can complete the painting without worrying about the movement of the sun or the interference of passing clouds. Learning to quickly assess the possibilities of a scene and block it in encourages the use of large shapes and simple patterns. This, again, is a skill that translates seamlessly to studio painting.
Many artists avoid plein-air painting because they fear feeling embarrassed in front of their peers or onlookers. They shouldn’t worry. Onlookers are almost always amazed and delighted, and your peers share all your challenges and frustrations.