Practicing Painting for Plein Air

Grasses 8x10

I'm aspiring to learn to paint Plein Air. I declared to do 100 of these small 8x10 paintings as a way to challenge myself to develop more painterly strokes and capture the light.



Still working from my photos, these paintings are numbers 8-11.


Painting textures, whether on walls in my home or on canvas, is fun to do. This painting I got a little carried away with a palette knife but I feel it helped me capture the texture of grasses.

New Mexico Landscape 8x10

I returned to this same landscape, that I tried to do in colored pencil. Now that I've had a chance to really examine the photograph and what I liked about the color combination, it was still an effort to capture.

Pichacho Peak AZ 8x10

Trying to get more out of a landscape I selected a photo with more plant material in the foreground and a more dramatic sky.


Definitely still need to work on the mountain and plant details but I like the sky.

Monahan's Sandhill Dunes 8x10

Now this is more typical of plein air. A higher contrast of highlights and dark shadows. This happens to be sand dunes in Texas. Although it does kinda look like snow. I think this is a more interesting composition.