A good exercise for landscape painters

There are lots of reasons to get out and paint on location. One is to learn how much your camera "lies" to you.

A good exercise is to make a sketch of relative shapes and sizes and take a photo from the same location. Then compare both - notice the distortion, particularly in distant shapes. Benefit - it gives the need/freedom in the studio to read into what photos are giving and to manage to the benefit of the painting.

In this case I did a simple quick sketch of shapes and relative values ( thats the D MD ML and Light on the sketch). I tried to be accurate in representing each shape: buildings, trees, lane, etc. Then I took photos from the same location and same height as my eye - the same eye I used to make the sketch.

Notice the difference. Camera pushes background back.

I used the sketch to make a quick plan on 12x12 linen board using an acrylic marker. Painting water-mixable oils. Made wash  using aliz crimson. Then did a simple quick block-in of the relative shapes and values using a large firm brush. Left the shapes flat and just focused on relative values.  Needed to extend the darks over the building to enhance the lights.

Result is a bit of an Edward Hopper flat-shape look to things ( I wish).

Been getting out of control again with my acrylics. All commitments met so have decided to tighten up accuracy, while still trying to be "me"  for the next few weeks working on "correctness" with simple architectural and figurative scenes in oils.

A fun hour.

Next best thing to plein air painting

For a variety of reasons I am finding it more difficult to be able to commit the time needed for making plein air paintings . Recently I have tried more sketching on location. Quick sketches take only a short time and still gets one involved with the great outdoors. It involves all that plein air painting does - except the painting. The planning, compositonal choices, simplification, value plan etc are still required. The thinking and decision-making are no different. And best of  all it doesn't require my ever-patient wife to hang about for a few hours.

A few month ago I " invested" in a new start-up Kick-starter campaign - the Nomad Art Satchel .  It arrived last week and I took it on our RV trip to Tofino. The satchel can hold all one needs, but I have other sketching kits that can as well. The two advantages the Nomad has is that it has a plate for attaching to a tripod and a shoulder strap that makes it possible to stand and sketch.

I expect it will get a lot of use. The sketches combined with photos should make good reference for studio works.

Nomad opens with pad side and storage side

Images from Nomal web page