Journal - Sandra Neill Smith

ONGOING JOURNAL

PLEIN AIR PAINTING IN WINTER

The wind whips by my face and threatens to topple my pochade box. I use one hand to hold onto the box and the other to paint with. I hear the sounds of several easels blowing over and watch as a painting flies out of the back of a SUV and sails through the air to land with a whack in the middle of the road.

All my attempts to lengthen the drying time of my acrylics don’t seem to be helping. The palette with the sponge and the liner paper seems to be drying out quickly. Spraying the surface of the palette is a joke; as the wind shears the water into the air and very little of it touches the paper. At one point the paper lifts off the surface and I catch in just in time, gingerly trying to keep my fingers out of the wet paint. I have added mediums to my paint to slow down the drying time, but have recently realized that different brands change the value of the paint in different ways and I struggle with getting the correct value when the paint dries on my support. I can stand the cold temperature and deal with it by layering on more clothes, but the wind penetrates everything and makes my face and hands unbearably cold. We finally give up, pack up our supplies and head for a warm restaurant to socialize.

This is my first winter painting en plein air. I paint outside a lot in the summer and fall, but usually stay inside in the winter and paint from photographs and cut flowers. I am determined to paint en plein air year round. We are lucky here in Colorado that much of our winter is warm and sunny broken up with snow storms. The snow quickly melts and then it is nice again. However, we are either having a lot more wind this winter than normal, or I just haven’t been as aware of it before.

Once the weather issues are solved, then there is the matter of the colors of winter. I like painting the greens of summer and the brilliant yellows and oranges of fall. If it is warm outside in the winter, then the ground is usually bare of snow. The colors of winter are pale yellows and browns. Even the evergreens take on a darker, dustier color. In areas where I could drop in a variety of greens in the summer I am now faced with a tangle of branches. These shapes are hard to generalize and seem to be made up of individual pieces.


My usual bright palette needs to be drastically modified to get the subtle colors of winter. I am experimenting with some of the earth colors like Naples yellow and raw umber; colors I haven’t used before.This scene of Mt. Evans is probably the most subtle thing I have painted. It was actually painted in the car as the wind was too strong to be outside.	Here is an example of painting from the same spot in the summer. The area has an awkward road and plain field in front of the mountains. In the winter scene, I moved a grouping of trees I liked over to a better spot. In the summer scene, I added some penstemon from another photo.

Snowy areas with ice along the creeks gives me a relief from the yellows and browns. This creek view also shows the yellow and red tinged bark of the willows. This was painted brighter than the actual scene; a black and white photo of the area showed the yellow tree branches and the background to be of the same value. I pushed the color of the water also. The finished piece looks too tight and is not for sale.	Notice how much cooler this painting feels. I have used ultramarine blue instead of thalo blue. I also used a more limited palette and more grays for the foliage. Painting in oil allowed me more time to blend the colors in the water and snow. This is much looser than my first painting and I like it much better.

It is very difficult for me to work in subtle colors. Sometimes I just ignore the colors I see and paint in bright colors using the values in the landscape.

Most of the members of the plein air group are working in oils and I have rather enviously watched them work wet-in-wet for hours and continue to adjust their values and shapes. My allergy to linseed oil and petroleum products has kept me from using oil paints in the past. Recently, one of the members mentioned a line of oil paints made with walnut oil instead of linseed oil. I headed for the nearest art store and purchased a beginner set of M. Graham paints. Now I am on a new learning curve and am thrilled so far. Yesterday was my first experience outside with these new paints and I had so much fun! I love to be on a steep learning curve. One of the things that attracted me to painting in the first place was the variety of things to learn and the fact that one never completely masters it. I'll keep you apprised on this site as I experiment with this new medium.