Digital Plein Air Sketching

We had a couple of days off this past week so my wife and I packed picnic lunches and sketched at two different locations in Lancaster County. On Thursday we went to the Tanger Arboretum where I sketched in the dwarf conifer garden using my 12.9” iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and the Procreate app. Brenda decided to sketch in the beautiful Beech Grove area of the arboretum. I made a color palette to paint from by snapping a photo with my iPad and using the create swatch palette from photo feature in Procreate. I used the standard Procreate flat painting brush.

On Friday, we packed a picnic for the Columbia Crossing Visitor Center in Columbia, PA which is beside the Susquehanna river. The massive concrete arch bridge is a feature of the area that’s hard not to include in an outdoor sketch. I decided to sketch with a fountain pen in a sketchbook while we sat by the river. Brenda was not into sketching that day so she read out loud some historical facts about the bridge and other bridges that were in that location over the years.

It was great to be outdoors (though I think we’ve both picked up mild allergies over the years).

One Year/100 Paintings

One Year/100 Paintings - #31 - unfinished Plein Air painting of what I believe to be an old one room schoolhouse near the intersection of Fairview Drive and Route 94 in Hanover, PA. Painted with Golden Open Acrylics on 7 x 5 canvas board.

One Year/100 Paintings

#24 - One Year/100 Paintings - Tugboat at the Baltimore Inner Harbor - Plein Air painting with Urban Sketchers Baltimore - gouache and watercolor in Moleskine watercolor album. This was the second painting of the day and though I do like the look of the painting, I feel that the tugboat appears to be sinking, much like the Titanic.

One Year/100 Paintings

#15 - One Year/100 Paintings - Last week I was on vacation and was able to get out one chilly day to paint at Lake Marburg. I first hiked around the lake, but was unable to find a suitable subject, but then on my way back to my car, I found this view. I had packed a thermos full of coffee, my lightweight pochade box made from a metal document holder and a tripod seat.

Pochade box

Made from metal document holder

I tried to work quickly and not get caught up too much in the details, my painting style is still emerging. Finding the tube colors difficult to mix without being too vivid, I'm going to watch videos by other plein air artists to see what colors they are using on their palettes. It was getting toward noon and my appetite was building, not to mention the chill in the air, so I finished quickly to have a leisurely lunch at The Famous in downtown Hanover.

Painting En Plein Air

Week 18 - Painting En Plein Air. I had chosen to do this activity during the same week as Digital Collage for a contrast in working styles and also because I could work with one when I couldn't work with the other. 

For the first time trying plein air painting, I packed up my French Field Easel which is usually set up as my studio easel, and helped Brenda get set up with another easel of mine. We headed out to Codorus State Park near the Mary Ann Furnace Trail where the overflow parking is located. There is an old barn there that Brenda made a painting of and I painted a distant hill with trees. I used an inexpensive water mixable oil paint set for the first time and found them stiff at first, but added in Acrylic gloss medium and they went on better. The weather was in the mid seventies, with sunny skies and swirly clouds. The sounds of nature and the occasional car passing on the road below with butterflies bouncing among the tall grass in the field, was also quite pleasant.

We had a couple of ladies out walking their dogs briefly stop to check on what we were painting. Nothing too traumatic, but one of my fears while out painting, that I might actually have to talk to a stranger about what I'm doing. 

Setting up and taking down my French Field Easel was also problem free, thankfully. The time passed quickly and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Brenda had some difficulty painting with the easel I had put together for her, so after watching several plein air painting videos on YouTube and seeing different Pochade Boxes with their fancy straps and drawers, we set about making our own inexpensive Pochade Boxes out of wooden sketching boxes bought from A.C. Moore.

The process involved inserting 1/4 - 20 T-Nuts in the bottom of the boxes allowing them to be mounted on a tripod. We bought inexpensive wooden rulers and used screws to make a brace to keep the lids open while painting and added a bungie cord setup to hold our canvas boards in place while we painted. They fit quite nicely in a backpack with our tripods and other painting essentials. We tried them out on Sunday at another part of Codorus State Park and they worked quite well, though now we feel it is time to invest in better quality paints.

Now that I've experienced Plein Air Painting, it is definitely something I want to do more of this summer and fall. If I continue to enjoy painting en plein air, I may invest in a better quality pochade box, but for now this one is pretty cool.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017, a yearlong creativity exploration - Experimenting with Yupo Paper.