Landscapes

When the famous portrait artist, John Singer Sargent, tired of doing portraits, would mutter "no more mugs" and turn to the freedom of painting landscapes.
As a student, all my teachers stressed the importance of "going out to nature" to paint. Consequently, ingrained with this concept, I have always painted "on site".  The present day term for this is "plein air", but in my day it was simply getting yourself outside the comfort of your studio and painting directly from the subject.  No PHOTOGRAPHS allowed!  It is not easy; the source of light and consequently, the shadow patterns constantly change.  It can be either too hot, too cold, or too windy.  But I am firmly convinced that putting up with the inconveniences results in a better painting.  As an artist, I am always my most severe critic, and I feel that plein air painting helped me to produce the more perfect results for that critic. 

Admittedly, at my age, I no longer go out in the winter as you see in the picture below.  And of course, as an illustrator, I naturally have to work from photos.  However, I found that my outdoor experience helped to correct the discrepancies always inherent in photographs.

Here I am painting early morning, in the dead of winter!  The painting shown above is what I was working on.  Nearly all of my work features the "drama of light" and here is a good example of the unusual.  There is a play of only a few spots of light, and most of the snow is seen in shadow against the early morning sky. Very few artists would choose this resolution of the subject.

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