Название: Plein Air Techniques for Artists: Principles and Methods for Painting in Natural Light
Автор: Aimee Erickson
Издательство: Rockport Publishers
Год: 2023
Страниц: 176
Язык: английский
Формат: epub (true)
Размер: 33.4 MB

Take your plein air artwork to the next level through easy-to-understand workshop-style lessons and skill-building exercises.

In Plein Air Techniques for Artists, award-winning artist and respected workshop instructor Aimee Erickson demystifies how to capture a variety of light effects and guides you in strengthening your plein air skills through practice.

Plein air painting is a wonderful way to spend your time. It’s an active meditation, a reason to travel, and a way to interact with friends and nature. Plus, it’s not easy. There’s always a challenge if you want to meet it. In painting, color is used to describe light. Plein air painting is primarily about responding to the conditions of the day, about making some kind of visual record of what you see. But the landscape changes with the light, its appearance shifting almost as if it’s trying on different outfits. How to cope? Do we freeze a moment with a photograph and paint that, or do we chase the sun across the landscape? How about neither: If we learn to recognize and understand various lighting scenarios, our knowledge can be the filter we see through. We can identify a phenomenon and paint that. The painting becomes a record of the artist’s understanding.

En plein air means “in open air” in French and carries the connotation of being in the great outdoors. For the purposes of this book, the term means painting from life. It means directly observing nature and painting outdoors—unless you’re indoors or in the car. It means your subject is lit by natural light—unless you’re doing a nocturne and all the light is artificial. It means painting quickly to capture the conditions of the day—unless you’re working slowly or over multiple sessions or on a very large canvas. It means working directly, without a sketch or plan—unless you plan or sketch first. There’s a difference between studio painting and plein air, but we can save that discussion for another day. Let’s go paint.

This accessible book covers:

Materials and gear. Gain a basic knowledge of the possibilities so you can keep your options open and your plein air process fresh.
Composition and value. Explore the impact of proportion, color, value, line, edges, shape, and texture.
Color. Consider how knowledge and intention, your color palette, and what you see—your perspective—take turns being in charge of the color game, inventing rules and finding solutions.
Light effects. Learn how conditions of the day—how much light there is, and whether it’s soft, diffuse, golden, harsh, pale, or dusky—affect everything we see and how we paint.
Design and the visual idea. Discover strategies for developing a visual idea, from creating serial studies to working with a camera to improvisation.

Featuring exceptional still lifes, figures, and landscapes by other noted artists working in a range of mediums, Plein Air Techniques for Artists gives artists at all levels of experience the guidance they need to grow as a plein air artist.