Plein Air

From ( Wikipedia)
En plein air is a French expression which means “in the open air”, and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.
Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the mid-19th century working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism. The popularity of painting en plein air increased in the 1870s with the introduction of paints in tubes (resembling modern toothpaste tubes). Previously, each painter made their own paints by grinding and mixing dry pigment powders with linseed oil. The Newlyn School in England is considered another major proponent of the technique in the latter 19th century.
It was during this period that the “Box Easel”, typically known as the French Box Easel, was invented. It is uncertain who developed it first, but these highly portable easels, with telescopic legs and built-in paint box and palette, made treks into the forest and up the hillsides less onerous. Still made today, they remain a popular choice even for home use since they fold up to the size of a brief case and thus are easy to store.
French Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir advocated en plein air painting, and much of their work was done outdoors, in the diffuse light provided by a large white umbrella. In the second half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century in Russia, painters such as Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin and I.E. Grabar were known for painting en plein air. American Impressionists, too, such as those of the Old Lyme school, were avid painters en plein air. American Impressionist painters noted for this style during this era included, Guy Rose, Robert William Wood, Mary Denil Morgan, John Gamble, and Arthur Hill Gilbert. The Canadian Group of Seven originated by Tom Thomson and Filipino American artist Sherie Sloane [1] are examples of plein air advocates.

Artist working en plein air, on a pedestrian bridge in Edmonton.

Plein air painters painting in Ringwood, NJ.
The popularity of outdoor painting has endured throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century.
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Beautiful Earth 05

Today I went to Cramerton ( about 9 miles from my home) with 25 or so local artists and we painted standing in the grass along a winding river.    The scene was a small bend in the river with ducks and submerged logs.  Really very nice, but of course It was about 96 degrees and that was at 5:30 pm…   It didn’t take long for the sun to start to set and the temp to drop, good thing too cause I was melting. Painting plein aire is always a little tricky and today wasn’t an exception. The warm air kept drying out my paper so the first plan to have a nice wet into wet water scene kinda died as the paper was drying faster than I could paint.  Then again the oil painters had  lots of bugs in their paint so I can’t complain…
On to plan B and  I decided to do some exaggerated color and see how that would look.

 

Water Saving Tip: Only wash clothes when you have a full load of clothing, this could save 1000. gallons of H20 per year!

Here’s a picture of my buddy Martha who was painting to the right of me, we were stacked up like cord wood and to be honest, my view was a bit skewed.

This is a photo of the Mannco boys who are Martha’s sons.  The were thrilled to have found along the shorline a fishing line with a  hook and a worm all ready to go.   In this photo you can see them trying to catch dinner. 

 

Here are some of the other artists… there in front is Bob from my Saturday morning drawing sessions.

All in all it turned out well and I left before dark.  Maybe next time I’ll take oil… stuff doesn’t dry out so fast!