A Guide to Plein Air Painting - Jackson's Art Blog (2024)

FAQs

What does plein air painting mean and what is the concept? ›

En plein air is a French expression meaning “in the open air”, and refers to the act of painting outdoors with the artist's subject in full view. Plein air artists capture the spirit and essence of a landscape or subject by incorporating natural light, color and movement into their works.

“Plein-air” is French for “open air.” (“plein” is pronounced like “plain.”) So plein-air painting simply mean going outside to paint. “Plein-air” is a funny little phrase I thought no one used anymore until I learned what it meant a while back. Now, I hear people, mostly artists, using it all the time.

Oil colors are the classic plein air painting medium, the one preferred by artists like Monet and Renoir, and the one most frequently thought of when considering the subject.

Plein air painting is the act of painting outside, and it came to prominence in the 18th Century, when paint makers began to manufacture tubes of oil paint. This facilitated a greater ease in taking painting gear outdoors in order to capture the ever changing light across the landscape.

plein-air painting, in its strictest sense, the practice of painting landscape pictures out-of-doors; more loosely, the achievement of an intense impression of the open air (French: plein air) in a landscape painting.

Good plein air work requires using the whole arm, not the hand. Find the large shapes quickly in what you are painting. Block in the shapes with three basic contrasts (dark, light, medium) and don't do any details until the end.

Introduction to plein air

The plein air approach was pioneered by John Constable in Britain c. 1813–1, but from about 1860 it became fundamental to impressionism.

It enabled the artist to better capture the changing details of weather and light. The invention of portable canvases and easels allowed the practice to develop, particularly in France, and in the early 1830s the Barbizon school of painting in natural light was highly influential.

Painting en plein air allowed artists to capture the emotional and sensory dimensions of a particular landscape at a particular moment in time.

Panels sizes 9x12, 11x14, or 12x16 inches will work well for plein air painting.

Can you use acrylics for plein air painting? ›

OPEN Acrylics, Mediums and OPEN Thinner – Tubes are best for plein-aire and each artist will choose the color palette that best suits the way they work.

For ease of use and portability, gouache makes a perfect plein air sketching medium. I'm a plein air artist who spends half the year in New Mexico. While hitting the trails for sketching excursions, I discovered a hidden canyon not far from my studio. The quiet and beauty has become a daily inspiration.

Changing Light - The best times for beginner plein-air painters is (in my opinion) between 11am and 3pm. The sun is high in the sky and the light changes aren't as drastic. Morning and evening light is the most beautiful and dramatic, but changes very quickly and can be frustrating.

If you feel like a certain element of your reference is going to be tricky when you paint, working it out through a pencil sketch first might be helpful - even if its not the whole picture and just a section of it.

While the Barbizon School is characterised by a group of artists painting en plein air, it wasn't until the invention of paint in a tube in 1870 that made the technique more widely accessible.

The answer is simple: no painting done from a photo can ever compare to the energy, immediacy, and sense of place that can come through in a plein air piece.

Established by the Barbizon School and made accessible by the paint tube, painting en plein air is most closely associated with the Impressionists who popularised the technique. Impressionism is defined by quick and obvious brushstrokes used to depict landscapes and everyday life scenes as subjects.

While there is some overlap between plein-air and urban sketching, the former tends to focus on the aesthetic outcome of the finished piece, whereas the latter's primary goal is on storytelling, witnessing, and recording, using any medium, indoors and out.

You can let shapes flow more freely into each other(with watercolor) and experiment with various techniques, ways to make a mark, (dry-brush, wax, guache from the tube, drizzled guache(!), scratching, spritzing, flicking water, bold gestural strokes, etc.) Plein air is a good place to experiment and take risks.