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Documentation en Plein Air

In a dispassionate sense, plein air painting is documentation of what the artist sees and experiences. I’ve heard workshop instructors use the word documentation. I have used the word to describe the business of keeping records, the primary purpose being to have a defense if someone were to question actions taken. In business, record-keeping is such a necessary evil, that it is difficult to apply the same word to something so joyful as plein air painting. For the most part, I am a truth-seeker, not just about what I see, but about what I perceive, stretching from the mundane to the eternal questions of the universe, of which many are closer to being answered by the time a plein air painting is finished!

Sometimes I like to sit with a plein air painting after I bring it home, and ponder whether or not I want to add a detail or two in the studio, to improve the composition, or the legibility, or the impact. Usually I leave it as is, preferring the spontaneity of expression to accuracy or finesse.

Below is an 8 x 10 I painted yesterday evening, in our county seat, DeFuniak Springs, Florida. There is an old clock on the street corner, with the name of the bank cast into its housing, that fascinated me, with the evening light creating an interesting combination of oddly colorful pastels in the background building and the street. The colors were particularly appealing to me. As sundown approached, the yellows and pinks became more and more intense. It was fun — I would like to go back and paint this scene again.

Oil painting of the bank clock on Baldwin Ave., DeFuniak Springs, FL, painted en plein air

Earlier in the week I painted with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at Eden Gardens State Park in Point Washington, Florida. It is one of our favorite places to paint, with a restored antebellum mansion central to the gardens and massive, Spanish-moss bedecked live oak trees. We had received a good bit of rain as a tropical storm passed south of us in the Gulf of Mexico, and that rain revived the resurrection fern decorating the live oak trees with bright yellow-green new growth. The day was clear but the summer heat made it seem hazy, so I avoided the temptation to detail anything, and instead let the awkward shapes of the trees merely serve as a framework for the fern.

Oil painting of the Wesley Mansion at Eden Gardens State Park, painted en plein air

I live on a gorgeous section of the Gulf Coast, with beaches of sugar-white sand so fine it squeaks underfoot like dry snow. This mansion at Eden Gardens is second only to the beach, as a popular venue for weddings. I have painted at several receptions, and have acquired a domain which redirects to a page on my website set aside for my work for weddings: www.30AWeddingPainter.com. 30A is the beach highway where I live, and has become a geographic identifier for the area. I decided to start marketing that work, so a couple of days ago I created a Joan Vienot Wedding Painter Facebook Page. I hope to have more to report soon!

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Plein Air Painting With New Colors

As if I didn’t already have enough challenge painting en plein air, I recently tried out a new color, “cobalt green” on a couple of plein air outings. In both cases, the bright color was perfect for representing what I was seeing at the time, but it challenged me because I was unfamiliar with how it mixed with my other colors. At the Ft. Walton Beach Indian Temple Mound, I painted a bushy palm study, and at Grayton Beach State Park I painted a front-lit scene showing the colors to be much warmer and brighter than when viewed from my usual position of looking into the light.

Oil painting of a palm tree at Indian Temple Mound in Ft. Walton Beach, FL Oil painting of the fall grasses in the sunes of Grayton Beach State Park

The next week our Wednesday painting group, the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters, met at the restored train depot in DeFuniak Springs, and we each painted various views around the depot and the surrounding lake yard. I chose a limited palette which included cobalt violet, a color I have carried in my paint-kit for a long time, but rarely use. It mixed well to create many of the red-violets I used to tie my painting together.

Oil painting of the train depot and tracks at DeFuniak Springs, FL, facing east

This past weekend I took a workshop from Keith Martin Johns hosted by my friend Lynn Wilson through her On the Waterfront Gallery in Apalachicola, FL. Keith taught us to paint using a 9-step value-scale from white to black for our method of changing the value of our colors. I never use my ivory black. It was a bit stiff when I squeezed it out of the tube, and I realized the tube may have been as much as 30 years old! Keith and Linda had provided us with photo references, and the assignment was to take two photos with two very different kinds of lighting, one predominantly sky, and the other a landscape, and compose a 24 x 36 painting from the two photos. I felt uncomfortable with the unfamiliar methodology, so it really forced me to stretch and grow, trying something new, with a sky I never would have attempted except for having attended this workshop! My effort is below.

Oil painting of amazing pink clouds swirling into the sunset over a marsh scene, painted in Keith Martin Johns workshop
Click the painting for a link to purchase.

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These below are the two photo references the instructor provided that I used to create the composition above.

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Painting en Plein Air at the Florida Chautauqua Assembly

Every year in January the Lakeyard in the city of DeFuniak Springs is the site of the Florida Chautauqua Assembly, a festival offering educational exhibits relating to the selected theme for that year. Typically it also includes exhibits of times gone by, including Civil War re-enactments complete with cannon-shooting. Recently it also has welcomed plein air painters. A few other brave souls and I painted there last year in the 34º weather, brrr! I was very happy to be painting in my shirtsleeves this year.

I wandered the grounds for a while before deciding to paint in front of the frontiersmen camp. Initially thinking I would paint the whole scene, I instead decided to greatly simplify the challenge by painting only the gourds hanging from a tripod of branches. I was amused by a baby Nubian goat bouncing around the encampment, and wondered if I could paint him, but he didn’t ever sit still long enough to get a good drawing done.
Oil painting of gourds hanging in the frontiersmen camp at the 2015 Florida Chautauqua Assembly
Baby Nubian Goat

So the next morning I painted just the goat’s head after watching him some more and looking at some photos on my iPhone that I had shot the previous day. A friend of mine asked for the painting as soon as she saw it.

Oil painting of a baby nubian goat at the Florida Chautauqua Assembly, 2015My final painting that morning was of the encampment itself. The family shared with me their meal of eggs and potatoes and meat flavored with a little gospel. When I started painting, I had to move fast because the festival was about to close down. So I generalized a good bit, letting the colored shapes suggest form rather than distinctly defining it.Plein air oil painting of a frontier encampment, an educational display at the 2015 Florida Chautauqua assembly

Here are a few photographs of the actual event…

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