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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Step-by-step: Painting the bell tower and waterfall of Longwood Gardens

Chimes Tower at Longwood Gardens, Watercolor. 9"x12". Here's a step-by-step look at how this watercolor landscape was made. Inspiration was rooted in many family visits to Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia. We had ice cream near this pond that features a small waterfall and a bell tower from which musical chimes can be heard playing. Step 1 I sketched out the composition, placing the tower in one of the thirds of the image. Step 2 I placed washes of blue for the sky and green for all of the areas of foilage. I also placed base colors for the tower, dry ground, and stones. Step 3 Next, I used richer and darker greens to make shadows in trees, bushes, and ivy on the tower. I also began coloring shadows in the tower. Step 4 I painted more shadows under leaves and stones to suggest detail, using a variety of light and dark greens. Step 5 I painted shadows and details for the left half of the wooded...

T. Rex is 'Tyrant Lizard King'

Tyrannosaurus Rex. 9"x12" Watercolor. After seeing photos of scaly Tyrannosaurus Rex skin, I painted the picture above using colors and patterns inspired by other large reptiles. Tyrannosaurus Rex means "tyrant lizard king", although it wasn't much like any lizard today. It's resemblance was more that of a dragon walking on two feet. At 40 feet long and weighing 8 tons (14 metric tons), tyrannosaurus was enormous. It stood 12 feet tall and had bone crushing teeth the size of bananas. It isn't known whether T-Rex was a scavenger or a fierce hunter, but its forward pointing eyes could be indicators of a keen sense of sight and razor sharp focus on its prey. Here's a second Tyrannosaur painting and a reference photos taken in the wild. Mother Tyrannosaur leading her young. 6.5"x 9" Watercolor. Wild Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Smithsonian c. 2018.

Instagram gallery

I took the advice of my sister recently and added some of my sketches to Instagram . My plan is to update Instagram with new sketches as I am working on them. Watercolor sketches have been slow for me lately because of other commitments, but when the time becomes available again, I will be doing another portrait painting and a landscape painting, if God wills. Here is the account: https://www.instagram.com/penntomassetti/

Penn's Sketchbook

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