Friday, August 26, 2016

Indoor and outdoor work

This summer has been rainy. So I haven't been out bike riding and sketching as much as I should. Earlier this month I got together with some other Plein  Air painters downtown La Crosse on a day that was both sunny and not excessively humid. Plein Air Artist of La Crosse
Downtown La Crosse, gouache

Another fine day I rode my bike to the La Crosse River Marsh and did a gouache painting. I came prepared with insect repellant.
I did quite a bit of indoor work this year. Earlier I did lots of charcoal drawing, then now I am using Conte crayons.




Friday, August 12, 2016

Doing more outdoor work, gouache painting set up

Despite the rain this summer, I managed to get some outdoor painting and drawing done. Last year I bought gouache paints and practiced first with them indoors to get a feel for the medium and then developed an outdoor painting kit.
The kit had to be be able to fit in my bicycle baskets along with my stool, drinking water, tripod and other accessories. I went through several ideas, including a covered palette with tube paints squeezed into sections. But there were too many days between painting sessions and the paint would dry out. Gouache is watersoluable and rewettable but rewetted paint just isn't the same. The paint had to be freshly squeezed to be at the consistency I like. A solution is a wet palette made from pencil set tin, sponge cloth and cooking parchment paper. The sponge would be wetted and a precut sheet of parchment paper laid on top with the freshly squeezed paints on that. This has kept the paint soft and workable outdoors.When done the parchment paper is put in my trash bag along with any used paper towels, the sponge squeezed dry and put back and a small spray bottle is used to spray an ammonia mixture on it to inhibit mold growth. Several sheets of precut parchment paper are stored in the tin.
My easel is two boards hinged to together with adjustable hinges and I attached a tripod quick release plate to one of the boards to attach to a tripod.
I spent more money and bought a good tripod. The tripods I had are decades old and either big and heavy or lightweight and flimsy. The tripod I bought is a Mefoto Backpacker.




Here are some of the paintings done outside this summer: