For Artists Who Love the Outdoors

I find when I paint in a region for a while, that my eyes start functioning like a camera view-finder. I want to go in for a closer look and then draw back and see the whole again. This week when I was in Usery Mountain Park, I was there to get up close to the landscape, to paint the foliage and rock outcroppings in one of the several draws the trail traverses on the way up to the wind cave. I found my spot without much difficulty, or as often happens, it found me, and I settled in for the morning.

If I were painting in my studio, I would normally do preliminary sketches, but I don't when I set up outdoors. Instead, I spend a few minutes scanning the selected landscape, and with each sweep, I look to frame my focus. Once that frame is set, I have no problem maintaining it for the duration of the painting session, but I need to take that initial time to find it. I may use my camera to help me more accurately determine the boundaries. While I know I'm taking a chance by not making initial sketches, something about being on site, with the sun moving compels me to do my planning in my head this way. The morning light has helped me make this selection, but it will change significantly before I'm through.

In her new book, Powerful Watercolor Landscapes, Catherine Gill writes about the horizon line being a psychological necessity in the landscape. I was really pleased to come across her statement, because it's one I've felt intuitively for some time; however,  just as important psychologically is the pathway that the viewer must find through the painting. So I need to be very aware of those two factors as I begin to sketch the scene on my panel. And, of course, my centre of interest. In this case, it's a palo verde tree on the rim of the draw, surrounded by rocks and cacti.  Lots of underbrush. I need to simplify, and eliminate a lot of the desert underbrush. The planning process in my head is exactly the same as it would be in my studio, except that my eyes do it all. I transform the three dimensional world in front of me to a two dimensional one, and then I sketch that abstraction and begin the process of bringing it back.