Summer has finally hit Alaska, and with it a little outside painting. As a novice to the whole plein aire thing I have to say it never brings about a dull painting session! I've only been out on a few plein aire escapades, and every time I've gone out I was challenged, amused, and stunned by my enviroment. I don't know what it is out painting out doors, I can go for a walk or picnic or something outside and have just a calm peaceful outing. Once I pull the paint out all sorts craziness starts happening. Talya's farmyard pets are victim and know this truth far too well.
Today I woke up around 4am to head out for an early session of plein aire painting. Great morning for painting. It was sprinkling very lightly so the colors outdoors where all beautiful, rich, saturated colors. Perfect for starting the studies on my barn painting. So I head out on this perfect, quite and peaceful morning. Soaking in the my beautiful Alaskan surroundings. Feeling at one world around me, I quietly set up my supplies. And as soon as I do of course its starts to downpour! But I figure there are worse things in the world. I'm painting in oil so as frustrating as it is to dump the water off the pallet every little bit it doesn't really effect the painting. And so I begin. Rain, its just a little distraction. Wet freezing feet and hands are all just part of the experience.
A few minutes later and I come to my senses as an artist and realize "the rains not THAT bad, its all part of the painting experience". And again I am at peace, and happily painting. But alas, fate would not be so easy on me. I was painting next to a horse pen and for reasons I may never fully understand the pair that was in there decided that 10 feet away from me was the best place to start "making babies"! Let me tell you, I'm all up for an exciting outing and all, but that was FAR too much excitement for me! Though I never quite understood the concept before, celibacy really started make sense to me. And horses, not so cool as I once thought.
An hour of dealing with all this and I decided I was cold, wet, and a little traumatized by the local farm life and figured my little plein aire painting was good enough. Got the colors, rainy day saturation, and atmospheric effect I was going for. And so I packed up my gear and ended yet another "exciting" session of plein aire painting.
And for all you valley artists (and Anchorage artists too, I'm not judging) who sleep means nothing too, I'll be making a lot of early morning plein aire trips. Should you decide to pull yourselves from you warm comfy beds and I would be more than happy to have you join me : )
A little note on the importance of plein aire painting Cameras see landscapes a lot differently than the human eye. As you can tell in this pictures the entire top half of the mountain didn't come out in the picture because of the light cloud cover. In real life it was very visible. Also the rafters and insides of the barn look almost black in the photo, again, not how they look in person. I will be doing a lot of studies of this barn in different weather conditions to really get a feel for atmosphere, lighting and everything else that changes in a typical scenery. Things that really have to be experienced and painted on site to be able to truly capture.
