Today's Plein Air Painting Adventure, Step-by-Step

Today I went out to paint with a group lead by the talented artist Joe Lombardo and we painted at the Whetstone Metro Park, in Columbus, OH. Sadly, today was the last outing of this session, but the good thing is that we managed to squeeze in a one-hour demo by Joe, a critique session with pot-lock, and a little less than a couple of hours of individual painting. Yay us!

I had brought with me several panels with old paintings that plan to paint over, and I picked a small 5"x7" panel as the paint-over candidate of the day.

Starting from a previously painted panel that I don't like, frees me in several ways. 

First of all I have no fear of ruining it, it can't get much worse than something I don't like, right? So I paint with less fear, and it helps me keeping the strokes fresh and loose.

One other advantage is that the canvas is already covered in paint, and I can use the specks of the old painting showing through in between strokes, and make them work for the new one.

Furthermore, the old painting has some kind of texture already created, often non-related or even contrasting with the new scene. I scratch the excess texture with the blade of a palette knife, but a lot of it stays. I actually like how that underlying texture creates some kind of visual tention and interest.


Soooo, today I got my old painting out, and I started painting over, every once in a while I remembered to take photos at different stages of the process, as you can see below.
It even fell on the ground face down and got covered in grime and dead leaves, but it did not bother me.... :)

Here is me with the final painting.

Me with my plein air painting at the end of the session, when I went back to my home studio.
I did a few re-touches after this.

This is the old painting that I covered up. I had done it in my backyard two or three years back, and it just did not have good value structure or composition.

So I drew the new composition with thin paint.

Drawing of new composition on top of old painting.

Than I started painting the new scene. (below)

Perhaps I should mention that I was using a very limited palette, made of red, phtalo blue, lemon yellow, and white. Very challenging because so limited, but the colors are so powerful that you can mix pretty much anything you need, as long as you apply control. Especially phtalo blue can take over the painting, it's so strong.

Starting applying the paint... This is when it fell down.

The new scene was coming together nicely, and I like it much better than the old one, I call that a success!

A few more trokes and details.

At the end this is what I ended up. Not too bad for being a daily painting done outdoors, with shadows moving, colors shifting, bugs, and even the fall face down. lol Can you see the particles of dirt still on the lower and upper right side?

Final painting,
still untitles.
Oil on board
5"x7"
Available

And that's my painting adventure for the day!

I sure enjoyed it, and learned a lot from it, plus I ended up with a keeper.
Good day!

Thanks for reading!

: )

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