Welcome to Studypainting.com. This site will present ideas and content about learning to paint and improving your painting skills. This site is the complement to my other site, studydrawing.com. The plan is for this site to become a resource for a broad audience interested in painting skills. For now, I will be focusing and blogging about my own process of reviving my practice of landscape and Plein-Air painting.
I have a lot of training and experience with painting. I've also gathered a good amount of Plein-Air painting experience living in San Diego for a number of years and joining the local outdoor painting group. During that time, I was very busy with my life and day job. When I had the time to go paint outdoors, I just dove in, grabbed the materials I needed, and just went at it.
This approach had mixed results. I made some paintings I really liked and I had many flops. The thing that became a drag on the experience was knowing I was not following a very structured approach to executing my outdoor work. It is only now that I can see how unstructured I was, while at the time I might have told you and convinced myself I was being systematic. I might have said to you "I'm being totally systematic. I start on a pre-toned board and get a basic drawing in place first with a dark brown, setting up basic color areas with washes of a thinned color, then with that setup...honing in on specific features and elements of the scene...mixing color against what should be a good starting point of context."
It still felt frustrating. I now know that this mental framework was not robust enough to really push my skill forward. Now I am taking the time to break down the elements of my process, and give them some time, attention, and critical thought in my studio.
I'll be blogging about my thoughts, observations, and integrations here. I hope you enjoy.