Painting landscapes everyday until I'm a master

Summary

In this video, the artist embarks on a personal challenge to improve their environment painting skills by participating in 'Plain Air April.' Throughout the week, they create daily plein air studies, focusing on color accuracy, texture, lighting, and composition. Despite struggling with some pieces and facing moments of self-doubt, they push through to refine their techniques. By the end, they gain confidence in their color matching and texture work, while acknowledging the need for more growth in stylizing environments and pushing creativity in their work.

Takeaways

• 😀 The speaker has spent the past year learning to paint portraits, focusing on realism, texture, color, and lighting, but struggles with painting environments.
• 😀 The speaker decided to challenge themselves by painting an environment every day for a week, inspired by the 'plein air' event that occurs every April.
• 😀 They aim to improve composition, accuracy, texture, and lighting in their work, while incorporating some stylistic choices.
• 😀 They plan to study and reference other plein air artists, using freehand sketches without tracing and avoiding color picking.
• 😀 The speaker’s focus on texture involves pushing the boundaries of environmental textures to make them more realistic.
• 😀 Lighting plays a key role in the studies, with the speaker selecting references based on interesting lighting scenarios.
• 😀 The first piece was a test painting, which the speaker felt was overly ambitious and lacked satisfaction, leading to a struggle with self-esteem.
• 😀 In their second study, the speaker experimented with background colors and textures, incorporating purple and yellow hues in the sky for interest.
• 😀 The third study focused on experimenting with difficult lighting, pushing for more accurate color and lighting representation but also considering stylization.
• 😀 Day four’s painting involved a beach scene, with the speaker experimenting with perspective and rake textures, but feeling the clouds weren’t quite right.
• 😀 By day five, the speaker struggled with self-confidence and was not in the right headspace to finish the piece, leading to dissatisfaction with the result but a desire to improve and fix it later.

Q & A

What was the artist's main challenge during the 'Plain Air' painting process?

The artist's main challenge was painting environments, as they felt more comfortable with portrait painting and struggled with composition, textures, and lighting in environmental scenes.

What event did the artist participate in to improve their environment painting skills?

The artist participated in 'Plain Air April,' an event where artists paint outdoors every day during the month of April, although the artist began in May, focusing on daily environmental painting studies.

What was the artist's approach to improving their composition in environment paintings?

The artist focused on freehand sketching without tracing, aiming to improve composition by directly observing and painting scenes. They paid special attention to the subtleties of light, color, and texture.

How did the artist approach the color choices in their paintings?

The artist aimed to match the colors in their studies as accurately as possible, but also experimented by subtly shifting some colors to create interest. They avoided color picking directly and tried to match colors by eye, focusing on tonal shifts.

What key technique did the artist use to handle the sky in their paintings?

The artist experimented with creating strong textures in the sky, using a base color of bright orange or pink to make blue skies appear more vibrant. They also studied and incorporated subtle color shifts in clouds, such as purple, blue, and yellow.

What did the artist struggle with in terms of texture during the process?

The artist struggled with achieving realistic textures, especially when painting elements like grass, trees, and distant mountains. They found it difficult to balance hard and soft textures, especially when considering distance and scale in the scene.

How did the artist feel about their first attempt at plain air painting?

The artist felt frustrated with their first attempt, acknowledging that it was overly ambitious for a first try. They mentioned that the experience was a learning process and that they didn't manage to capture everything as they had hoped.

What did the artist focus on during day three of their painting challenge?

On day three, the artist decided to tackle a more complex painting with challenging lighting, specifically focusing on painting a tree with orange lighting and experimenting with blending techniques. They also compared their approach with another artist's version of the same reference.

What lesson did the artist learn regarding the use of brushes for texture?

The artist learned that relying too much on specific brushes, like Mike McCain's grass brush, could make the textures appear artificial and predictable. They aimed to experiment with different brushes to avoid overusing familiar textures and to create more varied effects.

How did the artist manage their frustrations and continue with the challenge?

Despite feeling discouraged on some days, particularly after a bad day on day five, the artist persevered and continued working. They went back to their previous piece to improve it, focusing on refining techniques like softening textures and adjusting color accuracy.