Exercise - Painting Outdoors

I completed this exercise some weeks after my initial visit because of the excessive heat / lack of shade at the location.  As preparation, I visited Pitsea Creek and completed initial drawings.  The view chosen faces over the creek towards the industrial areas of Thurrock (mainly refineries) by the Thames.  The coast around this area is flat marshland with tidal creeks and exposed mud flats at low tide, often feeling desolate, even in the summer months.  However, the area is actually a country park, popular with dog walkers/families, so perfectly safe for a lone female artist.

I knew I would have to sit on the ground to paint because of the sloping terrain and as it is always breezy, it would not be practical to use an easel.  I therefore chose an A3 board pre-prepared with a neutral beige ground which would give a tone to work against for the white buildings.

In terms of equipment, there is a nearby car park so, although not having far to carry the equipment, still wanted to take the minimum necessary as good practice.  So, planning carefully with reference to my original sketches and memory of the scene, my kit comprised:

Paint (small tubes): Titanium White, Cerulean, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Paynes Grey, Sap Green

Brushes: 8 flat, medium round, short flat ½” & palette knife

Other equipment: paper palette (anchored by stones), kitchen roll, skin wipes (to clean both brushes and hands), a towel (to lay across my legs to stop paint getting on my clothes) and a large binbag on the car’s back shelf to avoid transportation mishaps.

Because I was using oils, I knew the initial paint application would need to be light – too much would prevent overpainting / just mix with any further application, so applied neat paint as thinly as possible.  I began at the top of the board, working down to the foreground without any sketched outline, which also helped as I was holding the board with one hand whilst painting with the other.

While applying paint to a board on your lap/without support is not the easiest way of painting, I felt it encouraged the economical use of brush strokes and simplification of the landscape.  The foreground rough grass I depicted using broad areas of colour loosely blended together while using the palette knife to pick out longer grasses where the land merges into the creek.

I feel the sky and buildings work well in this picture, although the composition is not as originally intended; I planned to make the sky the largest element so the sense of distance is not as great as it could be.  This was mainly due to brush sizes taken – I should have used a smaller flat to make the buildings smaller and give a greater sense of perspective.  As it is, although not exactly central horizontally, the horizon should have been lower, which would also have lessened the area of plain grass in the foreground.

While I think it takes great devotion as an artist to complete complex paintings “en plein air”, and not something I am naturally drawn to, there is benefit to painting outdoors in terms of your initial response to a landscape – in this case the bleakness of the view captured in a limited palette.  If using this painting as a sketch prior to a more complex painting, I would also have taken photographs to possibly include more foreground detail.