PLEIN AIR PAINTING, FREE ART LESSON BY TOM BROWN

“IN HARMONY WITH NATURE”
6x8 inch Plein Air oil painting
by Tom Brown
To purchase this, email me at tombrownstudio@cox.net.
I painted this on location using my small laptop-sized paintbox, and I shot photos as I worked. I felt the artists who follow my blog might enjoy seeing how I approached this subject.
This little demonstration is not like the fully detailed lessons in my CDs and DVDs, but it gives you a brief overview of how I went about creating this painting.
In the photo below you can see that I sketched the large shapes of the composition using a thin wash of French ultramarine blue, then mixed some of my “dirty purple” to place the darkest darks. This mixture is ¾ cadmium red and ¼ French ultramarine blue.

I then mixed colors for the foliage using ochre and phthalo green, with a touch of cadmium red to warm it in places. The tree on the nearby bank was much warmer in color and I used more cad red in this mixture. At this stage I also painted the nearby bank itself, then added limbs to select trees.

The house nestled among the trees came next (see photo below). The house was partly in shadow, and I was careful to capture the light and shadow pattern before the light changed. At the same stage of the painting I established the color for the land at the water’s edge.

In this next photo you can see that I now established the key reflections in the water, beginning with the house and trees on the far side of the water.

Finally I added the sky and the reflection of sky in the water. I further developed some details throughout the painting to refine the composition and decided the painting was complete.

I hope you enjoyed this. I always welcome comments. If you liked this little demonstration please post a “comment” below to let me know. Thanks for stopping to look.
Today’s happy thought:
Free online art lessons.