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Writer's pictureAlan Linquist

Art videos

When I came back to painting three years ago or so, I discovered a world of plein air painters online. Previously, I had painted for about twenty years, and during that time, computers had become a part of our lives, but at the time that I took a break from painting, watching personal videos had not yet become a national pastime. My son even suggested that I make plein air videos. I decidedly said "No." Even then, I knew that making videos took a lot of time, and besides painting, I worked for a living, and was starting a movie history podcast. It was too much work.

At the time, the iPhone/Android video revolution had not yet taken over the world, and very few artists were visually recording themselves in the process of plein air painting. Fast forward several years to 2020 and covid, and suddenly plein air painters were on all over Instagram and YouTube. It seemed like plein air painters were everywhere, at least if the algorithms of your YouTube channel was favoring them. Interestingly, I found certain things that many of them shared, although in some cases, they made artistic choices that I rejected long ago.

Many of these painters are one-session painters, meaning that they set up for the part of one day, and paint what they can on a smaller canvas or board, usually for a couple of hours. When it's done, it's done, except for maybe some touch up work back home.  To me, there almost seems as if there is a race they have accepted that they intend to win.    I also get the feeling that the influence of Bob Ross upon these artists help suggest the smaller surfaces and the short painting time they assume for their work. And I shouldn't forget the influence of the YouTube artists painting plein air upon those who follow them.

Some of these artists blend their paint combinations ahead of time, and many not only prime their boards and canvases, they tint them. This is not a bad thing. Rembrandt used to tint his primed surfaces wih a brown, and Gainsborough did it with a gray. As for myself, I worked for a paint company as a color matcher for many years and find it easier simply to match my colors as I work.

When I thought about plein air painting thirty years ago, I knew I had to accept time limitations, espeically if I wanted to work with larger surfaces. Rather than race to finish a work in one session, I would return on similar days. This made my ability to paint after I got off of work, but before supper was ready at home, quite feasible.

As for tinting, rather than coloring a surface one large color, I work area by area, and I tone those areas as I go along rather than toning the entire board. That way skies can be toned or underpainted blue, and grassy areas and trees would get treated with a green. Kind of selective toning.

One other thing I noticed about many of the plein air artists is that the American ones are primarily in the West. especially the West Coast. I also find them, occasionally on the East Coast, but when those videos pop up on YouTube, I rarely see a plein air artist based somewhere between the Appalachians and the Rockies. As I'm based in the upper Midwest, I know there are plein air artists in the area. Maybe they just don't want to make videos out here.

I've also come across plein air artists in other countries. Of course, there are some in Canada, and there does seem to be quite a bit of activity in western Britain. Also, there are artists down under in both Australia and New Zealand who work plein air. Many of them do very fine work. Sadly, I used to see some really good plein air painters in the Ukraine and in Russia, but that war over there has lost that world to us. One small tragedy in such a big fiasco.

Anyway, the point is that there seems to be so many different ways of approaching plein air painting, that to a great degree, you can pick and choose how you want to approach this creative process. Experiement and whatever works for you, use it.

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