Gardens

Last week we experimented with outdoor "plein-air" painting, and I think we all experienced how hard it is!

Today I looked back at my first entry of the year, called "Abstract Landscapes", and this quote from Ideelart.com:

"In the Mid-1800s, landscape artists began utilizing a style of painting called “plein-air,” or open-air painting. Plein-air brought painters away from their studios to paint outside. This instantly made landscape painting the most sensual way a painter could work. ... Plein-air painting offered a world of sensual delights, such as the flickering of light off water, the changing colors of the sky, the miraculous multitude of colors lines and forms in nature."

My favorite way to work is back and forth between outdoors and studio. I often start a painting outdoors, take lots of photos, and finish it in the studio.

Here are a few of my favorite expressionist or abstract garden paintings:

Southern Garden, Paul Klee:

Walk in the Garden, Annie O'Brien Gonzales:

The Writer's Garden, Kathleen Elsey:

Your assignment for next week is to choose one of these paintings (or find your own example) and copy the style to reinterpret the painting you started last week.