En plein air - drawing and painting outdoors and on location

En plein air refers to the practice of painting outdoors on location and is French for "outdoors." This is the opposite of painting in a studio. Below is a plein air painting by John Sargent of Claude Monet painting outdoors.

Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood (1885) by John Singer Sargent. Oil on canvas. 54.0 × 64.8 cm. Tate Gallery, London. [Image from Wikipedia.] See more works by Claude Monet from artsy.net.

Since learning more about this practice of painting and drawing, I am slowly beginning to try it out. This weekend, I had an extra hour, so I went to a park and found the tree below, which I painted on location in watercolors. I used a water brush (inspired by James Gurney's post here) and a portable watercolor palette that I added some paints to.

I wanted to do a study of a tree and found this perfect young oak as a subject.

The next day, I was at the playground with my wife and son, when suddenly, my sketchbook was bombed with bird-droppings (one of the naturally occurring dangers of outdoor drawing/painting).

My time is usually very short, so I take photographs of the subjects I want to paint. If I cannot finish them on location, I will be able to draw them from my phone later.

Here is the young oak tree that caught my attention.

I sketched this donkey later after we left the petting zoo.

James Gurney is an accomplished painter and illustrator who has written a lot about this subject of plein air painting at his blog Gurney Journey. Here is a link to some of his almost 200 plein air posts: Plein air painting.

I suppose that outdoor painting doesn't have to always be serious. Below my three-year-old son and I had some extra fun taking our painting practice to the back yard.

A joint effort by my son, Jonathan, and myself during a time of outdoor play. We each painted on one side of this blank gift card.

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Instagram gallery

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Penn's Sketchbook

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