painting en plein air

>>3103703
Just go out and do it. The first few times will be awkward and you will hate any time people talk to you, but you will get used to it and any future conversations will be okay. You can also put on headphones which is kind of a universal "do not bother me" sign.

>>3103703
>are any of you plein air painters, and do you ever have to deal with people walking up to you?
yes and no. the idea that you have to be outside to finish the painting is mostly myth, and the practice should've died with the impressionists.

The best thing to do if you want to work plein air is to do drawings, as detailed and with as many notes on color as you want, and finish the painting in a studio or wherever you paint indoors.

Everything you can learn from plein air paintings you can learn from painting indoor with still lifes. Then take that knowledge and apply it to drawings you've done outdoors. Light is light.

I see all these "plein air artists" who literally go outside for an hour, block in a landscape on a tiny canvas on their little portable easel, and instagram their way to victory. That is NOT good practice. You will learn more by drawing than painting anyways, and painting outdoors is so distracting and difficult that honestly it's not worth it.

You only have to be outside painting and have your easel blow over, or your painting smack into the dirt, or it to start raining, to realize that your romantic idea of "being in nature" isn't actually suited to making good paintings.

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>>3103703
>Bierstadt executed this painting in his studio, three years after going there

Yeah I get people who walk up to me whether I'm drawing or painting outdoors. Mostly older couples, some teenage girls, Asians, weird Australian aboriginals that chat my head off, and rich grande dames who want to make their connoisseurship known, but thankfully children tend to leave me alone. You shouldn't be so antisocial... just carry a taser in your pocket!

Get some canvas clips and a portfolio bag. I use 18x24" canvases. A foldable easel can go over top of it. Keep paint tubes in a backpack.

>>3103713
but what if being outside is fun to me

>>3103735
Maybe I'm just tired, but I'm having trouble picturing how you're setting up with the canvas clips and other gear.

>>3103713
>Everything you can learn from plein air paintings you can learn from painting indoor with still lifes. Then take that knowledge and apply it to drawings you've done outdoors. Light is light.

Laughably wrong. Light is light, but light from the sun diffusing through the atmosphere and being reflected and refracted against many objects is much different from a single light source artificial indoor light.

Also the distances involved are much different. How are you going to be able to practice atmospheric perspective on a still life that's a few feet away?

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>>3103896
>Laughably wrong.

>>3103713
People do plein air paintings to learn specifically about color and light, you idiot.

>>3103896
>>3104021
>You can't learn to paint by painting!

Assumedly, if you become good enough at drawing, it shouldn't matter what you paint. You can have atmospheric perspective (whatever the fuck that meme term means) in a preparatory drawing.

The idea that if you only paint landscapes you can't paint still lifes or portraits is patently ridiculous. It's all painting.

The way you guys are talking about what's "special" about landscapes implies that a lot of your ideas of landscapes is a bunch of effects compounded on top of each other.
>Here's what trees look like
>Here's what rocks look like
>Here's what clouds look like
As opposed to actual observational work.

The two greatest post-impressionists barely ever finished a painting outdoors.

Cezanne was notorious for hating plein air painting and instead finished much of his work in his studio over long periods of time from his memory and knowledge of painting.

van Gogh used drawings for pretty much everything, and we still have most of that stuff, whether it's small charcoal sketches, or full drawings like Starry Night or those boats on the beach, or even his master studies of artists like Millet (Which he did from plates which had no color, but what do you know, he did full color master copies of them)

>>3103703
>do you ever have to deal with people walking up to you?

Nobody gives a flying fuck, I could be a serial killer for all they care

>>3104393

Plein air painting tells you about light outdoors and your perception of it, just like life drawing tells you about the human figure. If it's something you like to explore nothing really compares to it. if you do a plein air, take a photo of the scene, return home and compare the two you will start to question your sanity because it's that different

>>3104398
>if you do a plein air, take a photo of the scene, return home and compare the two you will start to question your sanity because it's that different
thats why you do a fucking drawing! pencil and charcoal capture value just as well as painting while still retaining the detail you would normally lose with plein air painting. Taking notes on color is also incredibly easy, and your memory does most of the work once you see the values in the drawing you've done. You can execute a drawing much faster, and with much more specificity in 3 hours than you could painting for 3 hours outdoors. And instead of having to go back to the studio and guess what exactly the forms and values of the landscape were after the fact, you would have, if you do it right, a perfect guide in your drawing as to what your painting should look like.

Perception of light is a real thing, and there's value to seeing it in person, but the logistics of plein air painting: the wind, the bugs, the heat, the people. All of those things are a detriment to making a good painting.

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>>3104393

Wasn't this done en plein air?

>>3104425
yes and it shows, but he probably also worked on it after the fact. for the most part all the masterworks you associate with van gogh had heavy preparation and drawing behind them. I just... don't make me save examples to my computer... i have enough useless images on this hard drive from giving examples to anons.

>>3104524
i could post the starry night drawing, but this is another notable one. For a painting as complex as this one turned into, you absolutely NEED to do a drawing beforehand.

If intend to work on canvases larger than 12"x16" for landscapes you will need to learn to draw, and you'll need to prepare for the paintings with the drawings, and if the drawing is good enough and you have enough experience and vision it doesn't even require you to be at the location when you execute the painting. Most of the time "capturing light" is just a matter of exaggerating the values. Ever notice how FOR SOME REASON cezanne's paintings always seem to have the same type of light in them, while Gauguin's always have a DIFFERENT light, and the same for Monet and Renoir.

It's just how they liked to paint. They didn't all separately just happen to see different colors everytime they went outside. That's just what happens when you finally get a color palette you use for every painting.

If you have Naples Yellow in your palette then of fucking course the light sources will have a basis in Naples Yellow. This isn't digital art where you can just make any color you want, it's all down to what colors you enjoy using, and a general knowledge of how light works. A knowledge you can get from ANY type of painting, whether it be portraits, still lifes, or landscapes. Light is light!

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>>3104534
whoops forgot the picture.

I know it's hard to absorb knowledge through paragraphs on a russian nesting doll repair forum, but jesus. I'm the best source of information on this type of stuff on /ic/, if there's one person you should listen to it's probably me, and at the end of the day my advice is always: Draw more, paint more, draw everything, paint everything, and for god's sake stop pretending like art is magic.

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crit me pls

>>3104811
Clouds are easy. What else do you paint

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>>3104815
I only have this random experiment. it's shit but it's what I've got.

>>3104849
Pretty refreshing though. Has some good spirit and mood. You've got something, I wouldn't lose the forest for the trees when it comes to accuracy and detail, you've got a unique perspective.

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>>3103713
>practice should've died with the impressionists
>doesn't understand anything impressionists were doing
>is one step away from arguing to just take a photograph and trace it in the studio

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>>3103879
>backpack
>portfolio with canvases (clipped)
>easel on the bottom right
This is alright for storage or plein air painting. You can use a grisaille palette instead of bright colours.

>>3105509
Even if you're just composing and outlining with charcoal pencil on canvas, clipping them together will ensure that it won't smudge.

>>3105448
>>doesn't understand anything impressionists were doing
Focused on painting light and non-idealized versions of nature. What's not to get. I wouldn't say they succeeded. In the public consciousness the impressionists took the MOST liberties with portrayals of nature, even if they would've told you otherwise at the time.

Either way, impressionism is dead, and trying to copy what they did and hoping for the same success is infantile and incredibly "le wrong generation" but it doesn't stop contemporary artists from doing it anyways.

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>>3105524
wrong, arrogant, and hostile.

>>3104404
>>3104524
>>3104393
>>3104534
>>3104537
None of the anons you replied to but I appreciate your advice, heres a (You)

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Can someone please criticize Sargent in a convincing manner? That's the real test isn't it?

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I'm really glad we have this kind of record.

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Paul Helleu by Sargent

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>
After 1906 Sargent decreased his production of portraits and concentrated largely on works such as The Fountain that combine informal, intimate portraiture with light-saturated, impressionistic landscapes. However much he intended this work to convey spontaneity, Jane von Glehn’s description of posing for it suggests a very different atmosphere: "Sargent is doing a most amusing and killingly funny picture in oils of me perched on a balustrade painting. It is the very ‘spit’ of me. He has stuck Wilfrid in looking at my sketch with rather a contemptuous expression. . . . Poor Wilfrid can’t pose for more than a few minutes at a time as the position is torture after a while." The painting was composed over several days that were frequently interrupted by rain, and thus it was a composite creation. Evidently Sargent’s impulses as a portrait painter continued to guide his approach to painting, which included multiple sittings, contrived poses, and appropriate props. The Fountain is distinguishable from Sargent’s earlier indoor portraits, such as Mrs. George Swinton (Elizabeth Ebsworth), however, by the Impressionist effects, such as that of the play of bright sunlight on a variety of surfaces, that suggest the artist’s prowess with rich, rapid, painterly execution. The von Glehns and the plume of water behind them comprise a study of whites set off by the deep green of the dense trees and the variegated browns and grays of the architectural details. A later, more matter-of-fact canvas shows both Jane and Wilfrid painting out-of-doors absorbed in their work. The Sketchers, however, is a spontaneously produced landscape study and does not represent the same complex narrative as does the Art Institute’s painting.

>>3105556
I was reading about the painting of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, which while pained plein air...took 2 years.

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>>3105710
Ye Shepherds Tell Me, song composed and arranged by Joseph Mazzinghi (1765-1844)

Ye Shepherds tell me, tell me have you seen, have you seen my Flora pass this way? In shape and feature beauty’s queen. In pastoral, in pastoral array.

Shepherds tell me, tell me have you seen, have you seen my Flora pass this way? Have you seen, tell me Shepherds have you seen, tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way.

A wreath around her head, around her head she wore carnation, lilly, lilly, rose; and in her hand a crook she bore, and sweets her breath compose.

Shepherds tell me, tell me have you seen, have you seen my Flora pass this way? Have you seen, tell me Shepherds have you seen, tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way?

The beauteous, the beauteous wreath that decks, that decks her head, forms her description, her description true. Hands lily white, lips crimson red, and cheeks of rosy, rosy hue.

https://youtu.be/Ao12qChxaiA

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I admire the Victorians for this kind of hidden language.

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'Lady With A Rose'. She was believed to be romantically linked with Sargent, which makes her expression here twice as amusing.

Does one painting reference another here? Is he that deep?

>>3105751
sargent was a gay

>>3105751
>>3105760
I definitely believe he was homosexual, or at least mostly gay leaning bisexual. His financial support of him mother & sister meant he could 'put off' getting married and concentrate on discrete affairs and painting. Perfect.

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>>3105760
There's no evidence for his sexuality.

Still >>3105751
seems more convincing than tons of anatomy drawings.

>>3105556
His drawing skills are technically impressive if unremarkable, and he never really learned how to distinguish himself from the revolutions drawing was having (and as a result painting was having) in impressionist and post-impressionist circles.

Looking back on his work it very much seems like he would apply a filter of loose brushstrokes over otherwise boring drawings, very similar to what the average painter does today, where they will take a photograph, draw it exactly how it looks, but paint it "loose" and "impressionistic", when really they're anything but.

The vein running through all great artists is an idealization of nature, whether it's Cezanne, Picasso, or Michelangelo, but none of that exists in Sargent's work. He has no creativity when it comes to changing what he's looking at to make it more appealing. He takes no risk.

You only have to look at one Ingres portrait to see what a fraud Sargent was.

To the layman it must be impressive, but otherwise his work was more of a performance than actual art.

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>>3105777
Sargent's work took 0 risks, and masqueraded as progressive.
Ingres was actually progressive.
consider too that both had rich clients that probably had very specific ideas of what art looked like. Sargent gave them exactly what they wanted, Ingres made great art in spite of commissions by rich idiots with no taste.

>>3104859
thanks anon!

>>3105781
Lol no
Ings was a great draughtsman, but you're just being catty.

>>3107010
i know, i'm being overly critical. boredom.

>>3107016
Saw two Sargent's today at Chatsworth House. Nothing else there could compare.

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>>3105781
>Sargent's work took 0 risks
It's because he didn't need to be concerned with gimmicks which Picasso and the likes where. He was too adroit for that. Nonetheless he was heavily influence by impressionism as embodied by monet, a close artist friend of his. And those tendencies are very evident in his work.

How could Ingres have good tast when he doesn't even compare as a draftsman, pictoral composer or painter?.

>>3103713
This, for the most part. I've always hated people looking over my shoulder while I work, it made art school somewhat challenging, but I was not the only one who struggled with it, and all of our teachers understood. I HATE being interrupted when I get a workflow going in my head, while painting. So, my compromise is, I do plein air, but I just do color studies with watercolor, some sketches with pencil, I try to find spots with little or no traffic, and I have a DSLR that I take extensive photos of the subject with.
What I'm doing is making my own references, for a finished painting later, in the studio. I've learned what is enough, and what isn't.

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I sketched pic related on paper plein air today. My advice: use a limited palette, limited brush set, and get a travel easel and a book bag. The larger the canvas you choose is the greater the challenge. Oh, bring lots of paper towels with you.

>>3107967
>How could Ingres have good tast when he doesn't even compare as a draftsman, pictoral composer or painter?.
uhhh what? ingres is leagues better than sargent even if you're a sargent fan.

>>3108339
Ingres was excellent at rendering every surface with exorbant detail. Which is nice in a way. But most of his portrait show little distinction in character or facial features for that matter in addition to composition.

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>>3103703
You don't really need an easel if you keep the painting small, I use postcard-sized watercolor paper and a waterbrush, that really keeps your gear to a minimum. Watercolor is hard as fuck though

>>3108334
Nice!

>>3103703
Get a small setup. A small, folding aluminum palette, 2 waterbrushes (one big one small) and a sketchbook are all you need.

I'm autistically carrying around a backpack with all my sketching stuff in it and even after lightening it up quite a bit it still feels like overkill, just for the added comfort of having a tripod + attachment for the sketchbook and a folding stool to sit on.

>>3105556
Not real criticism but I don't like his stuff when it gets too loose... especially his watercolors sometimes are WAY too loose. I'm talking about the plein air ones not the studio ones like the alligators