Using Watercolors En Plein Air

I like painting en plein air (outdoors) but have mostly used acrylics since I started painting with the Cincinnati Brush & Palette Painters. We go on an annual fall trip and last autumn's was in Hillsboro, OH.

 

This year I want to go to the trip location early and scout out some subjects to paint in advance because I wasted a lot of time doing that in Hillsboro; the sunny weather was pretty and the fall color spectacular so I was just having fun looking at potential painting sites. I liked how the downtown area was decorated with these pumpkins and cabbages, so I decided to see how well I would do outdoors with watercolors.

Enough that I want to take them out with me every week this summer and on our trip to Madison, Indiana in the fall. When I first started painting with this group, I guess I assumed that I needed to finish the work I started that day on site. And I have done a few successful alla prima paintings from our weekly outings.

But even with watercolors, I see that if I can get the basics down on-site, there's plenty of room to go back and work on these paintings later in the studio. I need to keep this in mind when I paint!

It feels sort of like it does when I'm singing in the Sycamore Community Singers or with the Sycamore Presbyterian Church Choir: I find that I sing a lot better once I've memorized the music. I think if I can get "the bones" of a plein air painting down while we're outside, then I'll be free to really paint it once I get back home, with the memory of being on location coloring everything I do with it later.

In business, we used to talk about the Conscious Competent, Conscious Incompetent, Unconscious Competent, and Unconscious Incompetent. As an artist, I think I work best as an "Unconscious Competent" because when it's really happening for me, I'm not even thinking about why I'm doing what I'm doing; in fact I'm hardly even aware of it. And of course, I've certainly been an "Unconscious Incompetent" because one has to be brave and risk failure to be an artist! As one of my old bosses used to say "You can tell how good an artist is by the quality of work thrown into his or her wastebasket (or painted over)."

Right now I'm having a lot of fun being a "Conscious Incompetent" by trying all kinds of things I haven't done for a long time in order to practice, learn, and get better at them. Watercolor painting for example: I started a large one yesterday inspired by a photo of irises that I love. And I may try painting that same subject tomorrow in acrylics. Or even with knives in oils.

Westward Ho! Sculpture at Yeatman's Cove in Cincinnati

Ever since I moved to Cincinnati, I've loved this statue downtown along Yeatman's Cove titled "Westward Ho!" Here's the latest on 12" x 12" canvas painted in oils with knives. I've ordered a dark brown floater frame to try with this. Once the paint dries, I have just a few more things I want to do with it before putting it out for sale at Final Friday March 29 at the Pendleton Art Center in Cincinnati. I'm also going to see what it looks like as a 20" x 20" giclee print.

I had to stop for a while after starting this on Feb 12 because the paint was so wet I needed to give it some time to dry before working on it more.

The photographs I took of it never inspired me like the real thing did. But when I saw it during a recent walk, I decided to work on it as a knife painting.

Rather than crop my horizontal photo, I just squeezed it in my mind to fit onto a 12" x 12" square canvas. Not displeased but still need to work on this some more as I continue to paint with knives and "traditional" (not water-missable) oils. 

Having painted in acrylics for so long, I've forgotten how much more time and patience it takes to paint with other media: watercolors, water-missable oil paints or traditional oils. The first day I started on this,  it took me half an hour just to get the caps off tubes that are still full of good paint, even though I haven't used them in years. Then I had to go and buy gloves to wear, because these paints were not going to clean up with water. And since I didn't have a palette handy, I painted over one of my acrylic paintings in neutral gray so I could use it as one.

I have an unfinished small acrylic painting of impatiens started during the Montgomery Garden Tour last summer. Think I may use it to play with some more knife painting. When I complimented one of our Brush & Palette Painters on her work that won a prize in the Women's Art Club of Cincinnati's Signature Show this year, she told me "the "quest" of experimenting while painting with knives is exhilarating and sometimes a disaster but, happily, sometimes not."