Blog

Painting Plein Air vs Painting from Photos

Most artist don’t want to hear this, but plein air painting is, in essence, a learning activity that is considered a must for the student who aspires to be a representational landscape artist. It is also a refresher for the advanced artist who is in a rut and may have succumbed to bad habits. And, of course, it is wonderful to enjoy the outdoors as a fisherman would.

The main purpose of painting outdoors, in my opinion, is to learn to see as an artist, which means to be able to see the subtleties that occur in nature as to color (cool/warm), values (dark/light), and edges (hard/soft), and not only be able to detect these nuances that occur in nature but be able to apply them to his or her painting. Without this knowledge and training, it is impossible to show any of this simply by copying a photograph.

This study of nature, in the learning stages of an artist, takes time and effort. With experience, this knowledge becomes second nature to the advanced artist. Then he or she can easily apply this knowledge to his or her painting with ease in the comfort of the studio, regardless of what source is utilized to do the work, whether a photo, a sketch, or memory. Personally, I believe, creative, exciting work can be made much more easily from a sketch, memory, and yes, a photograph than being distracted by all that is seen outdoors. In the studio, alone, focused, with no distraction it’s much easier to be free to experiment and be innovative while creating personal artwork.

At the end, if the artwork is good and exciting, hardly anyone will ever ask the artist how he or she did it.