An Artist's Guide to Plein Air Painting Oct. 2015 | Page 23

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NOW LET US HAVE A LOOK AT A PROCESS DEMONSTRATION:
ASSESSMENT OF THE SCENE:

A potential landscape must be assessed with a critical eye before a
paint tube is opened. In truth the success of the painting depends
considerably on your assessment of a scene at the very beginning.
It is at this point that all your experience with composition comes into
play. As your experience grows this will become an intuitive process.
Besides a naturally attractive scene I always look for elements that
will catch the eye, draw the eye into the scene and hold the viewer's
interest. Perhaps the most critical element is that of Light and Dark.
I will refer to this as L&D. This element is broken down into values of
light and dark, but at this early stage we are just looking for the very
basic L&D elements. Think black and white only!

Open your sketch book and draw a small landscape shaped block
about four by two centimetres. This is your L&D canvas. Take a dark
pencil or even better a black felt tip pen and block in the most
prominent dark elements in the scene. Leave out everything in
between black and white. You will notice that there is now two values
– black and white.
PRO TIP: Have you ever started a
painting nicely with all the light and darks
in place only to lose direction in the
middle somewhere? This is almost
always due to losing the light/dark value
pattern. Re-establish this L&D pattern
then focus on the colours only keeping
within the pattern.

An Artist’s Guide to Plein Air Painti