Every geographic area has its plagues, I suppose. Here in Northwest Florida, our plagues are yellow flies from mid-May through the middle or end of June, and in late summer or fall, dog flies. I react badly to yellow fly bites, getting a huge hive within minutes. If I put a good anti-inflammatory cream on the bite right away, I will avert a reaction. My plein air painting backpack is stocked with a strong repellent, and the best anti-inflammatory salve I can find. I used both today.
We painted at Eden Gardens State Park, which is just a hop and a skip from my home. I cajoled my dear friend, Lori Ceier, into coming out and painting with us. Lori is the producer of my favorite website for local activities, www.waltonoutdoors.com. Lori claims not to be an artist but I think what she really means is that up ’til now, she has preferred photography to painting.
Having recently completed my training as a Reiki Master, and thoroughly convinced of the Law of Attraction, nevertheless, during yellow fly season, I still cover most of my skin with clothing and put repellent on what’s left. I fared pretty well, until the last half hour when the frustrated flies were fairly spitting their venom. We all stopped painting soon then, and went to the screened pavilion for our critique. Lori took a series of Photos showing the progression of my painting, and posted them on her Facebook page for WaltonOutdoors.com.
Plein air critique is interesting. We each put our paintings up in a row and everyone ooo’s and ahhh’s and then each artist talks about their piece, the challenges they faced, what their intentions were, etc., and then the group might offer a suggestion for this effect or for that one. If an artist has had enough of that fun, he or she might end the suggestions by saying thank you , y’all have given me a lot of ideas, and then we move on to the next piece. Generally though, these are what I would call “soft” critiques, in that all of the artists are so encouraging — no one ever tells you that maybe you should take up sculpture or some other art form.
I felt so brave when I was painting, daringly putting a muted purple in the trees in the background, and a bright purple in the shadows in the foreground, and painting the silhouette of the foreground tree leaves a deep red-violet. But when I look at the painting from any distance, the purples just become dark values, not daring at all! My intention was to paint the background trees and grasses with brighter colors and more detail, and the foreground with broader brush strokes and less detail. I think everything turned out more or less as I had hoped, except for the color of the water. When I put the rich red-violet trees and shadow patterns in the foreground, the water of the bayou in the middle-ground, which I had painted a light pinkish blue, became more muted by comparison, almost a light gray.
In general, I’m pleased with the overall impression of looking out at the bayou through very large trees. The barely visible picnic tables show the scale of the trees.
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Most of my paintings and images are available for purchase. Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot
I was privileged to paint plein air beside my artist friend 
I painted for 2½ hours before the chill crept up from my freezing wet feet into all of my bones. My painting was unfinished when I stopped, lacking the top of the tree line, the standards supporting the boats, and the catamaran’s mast wires. So I took a few shots with my iPhone to help me remember what the scene looked like, to finish it in my studio.
I am starting to see in color. That may sound strange, but the fact is that most of the time in my normal everyday activity, I hardly pay attention to color. When I was focusing on figure drawing, I occasionally used color, but for the most part I was focused on line, shape, and value, usually rendering the whole piece just using a black-white value scale. Now that I am painting again, I am noticing for example, when a white railing is picking up the blue of the sky, or how intense a green becomes when it is contrasted with red. I am finding that much of what I think I am seeing as different tones of a color are actually the same color which looks different depending on what color is next to it. I am particularly challenged by all the greens I see, when landscape painting. If I try to mix an exact shade of green, it often seems muddy compared to what I actually see. Who knew, that Einstein’s theory that everything is relative applies to painting as well as nuclear physics, that the better way to achieve a color is to find the color next to it which gives it the quality I want. Resisting the temptation to launch into that as a metaphor for life, I’ll instead move on to my adventures in plein air painting over the past week. Last week we painted at Nick’s Restaurant, and I bemoaned the fact that I know very little about boats. The next day I decided to take another run at the featured boat, using my photo references, and came up with the piece at top right. It was the little paprika-colored spots of rust washing out from the old nails in the hull, that gave the greens and turquoise the punch I wanted. So I wafted a little of that color into the foreground grasses too.
This week is the largest of the spring-break tourist weeks in the beach resort communities of Panama City Beach, Seagrove Beach, and Destin, FL. So when the announcement came that the plein air painters would be meeting at the docks again in Destin, I knew the drive would take all the fun out of the adventure, so I opted to paint from my dock in my back yard. I had thought I would be painting my view of the creek leading into Tucker Bayou, but when I looked upstream, the color of the bayou grasses intrigued me. My initial 6″ x 6″ study, left, did nothing for me by way of planning my painting, but rather served more like a singer doing la-la-La-LA-La-la-la scales to warm up her voice before performing.
