Tuesday, 4 March 2014

Rainforest Jungle: The ultimate green plein air conundrum

Sit a While, Costa Rica, 2014
I decided to start the 2nd leg of our Costa Rican journey with the last seating area painting. I did this piece as a demo for my students. 
First of all, whenever I teach plein air, my take on dealing not only with green, but with noise, wind and weather, or any distracting stimulation is to know how to compose. Yep, that's your anti-dote. It's the one thing that will get you over that psychological hump of can I ? or Do I really want to? 
Many find plein air daunting, and I find it to be one of the most challenging ways of making art,  but one that will give back freshness, and qualities of freedom you can't get any other way. 
To know good composition in the moment, is to know what to do 1st, 2nd, 3rd. It also gives you the knowledge of  how and what to concentrate on, in your moment of choice, between distraction and creating with focus. 
This piece was done on a piece of Canson mi-tientes, a dark warm green. On it, I used only yellow red and blue to delineate between value areas- light, medium and dark. Once the values were established, I expanded the pallette. All the pieces you see on my blog done on location, are done in one hour or less. They have a rougher look to them, but I like the looseness. 

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