Plein Air

Plein Air Painting in the spring is something I absolutely love. It is so very vibrant with the brightest greens and so many colorful flowers. I want to share a plein air piece that I entered last year at the plein air booth contest in “Art on the Green in Coeur d’Alene, ID“. This piece won 3rd place. It is entitled, “Beauty After Fire H1224”, a watercolor on 140lb wc paper showing a vibrant forest scene coming back to life after a wildfire.

Here is a picture I took of the sky right when I started. It was a beautiful sky full of life. I was sitting where we just finished rebuilding our house after the wildfire of 2023 (Oregon Road Wildfire), and, these are the only patch of trees that remain. They looked so happy and I was so glad they were there. I thought I’d go ahead and put those tall standing giants on paper with their great backdrop. The biggest challenge for me was doing that dramatic sky first.

This second picture is what it looked like at the at the end of that first afternoon. I returned the next day, but of course the sky was not anywhere near the same so a lot of the view from there was more from my head than my eyes seeing it. I added the red’s in the sky after I had put orange in the bare clay dirt at the tree bases. It really warmed things up, yay!
Today taking a look outside, the bug has really got me and I am wanting to get out there and paint, hope to see you out there too!