I made a trip to North Yorkshire to join friend and fellow artist Paul Knight for a spot of en plein air painting close to his home on the edge of Dalby Forest. The location is a landscape painter paradise with amazing vistas in every direction. It was a cold crisp bright November day, with an unpredictable weather forecast, one that would challenge the most hardy plein air artist. We set off from our meeting point descending in to a valley, walking for about 20 minute until we reached a bridge over the river Derwent. Here we settled on painting a small two tier waterfall up stream with steeply sided valley framing the river as it receded in to distance.
My first challenge
I chose to work on a piece of aluminum composite for this painting. I had a piece in panoramic shape, which I decided to use in a portrait from, taking a slice of the waterfall as my focus. One of the biggest challenges I have found working with alluminium composite as a support particularly in sub zero temperatures is that it is difficult to get the paint to adhere the surface. With this in mind I coated the support with a thin layer of Spectra gel and I was set to start painting.
The changing light
The day began cold bright and sunny with a strong wind pushing the clouds across the sky obscuring the sun with a frustrating frequency. Usually you get the chance to plan your painting, establishing the extremes of light within your composition and adapting your painting as the light changes subtly. Not today, as soon as I had I established my overall tones the light changed and it constantly flipped from cold to warm. I see today was going to be a challenge indeed.
Level of focus
One of the biggest challenges I find when I am out painting is level of focus. Once I have established my composition and have loosely mapped it out on my support, I have difficulty in disciplining my eye to focus on the portion of the landscape I have chosen to capture. Unlike working from a photograph where there are clearly defined limits to a composition, when you are out in the vastness of the landscape your eyes can be overwhelmed with wider picture distracting your focus from the chosen composition, peripheral vision is working overtime. It takes me a while to overcome this, only when I have got some of the main elements in to the painting that gives me an anchor point to work from does it become easier.
Using a view finder is an option. But I find them quite clumsy and get. In the way of my spontaneous painting style. Weather extremes After we had been painting for maybe forty minutes there was a cloud burst and we were pelleted with hail stones, saturating us and all our equipment. My painting was pitted by the marks from the hail stones. Now frozen and wet we desired to retreat back up the valley and draw a line under the painting session.
Despite the challenges I thoroughly enjoyed painting in such an idyllic place.
seancoupe 