Plein air painting

One of the best ways to see lights and shadows is to paint outdoors under the natural light.  The sun, of course, moves fast, so we learn to paint fast.  There's something about painting in the fresh air that's unbeatable.  We endure the rain, wind, sunburns, allergies, cold, heat and everything the weather dictates just to achieve that spontaneity and freshness.

I painted my "Lilypads of the Liliponds" (above) on a winter day, not much sun but a lot of wind.  That was one of my first plein air paintings in the area called "Brookshire" in Texas.  I saw the real colors the way they actually were instead of working from a photograph.  Of course, being a colorist I have a tendency to exaggerate the colors a little.

My "Prickly Poppies" (below), on the other hand, was done on a very hot Texas summer day in an area outside of Austin with a fairly dry climate.  It was so hot that day that I had to paint indoors but the fun of it was that I would be going outside to observe the prickly poppies, their flowers and leaves, the anatomy and behavior of the whole plant before I could come inside to paint them from memory in the fashion of "a la prima".

Some experiences are hard to forget and the details of the process of painting these two paintings are still with me.