Painting Distant Mountains How to paint EN PLEIN AIR Rees Valley New Zealand

How's it going? Andrew here with another painting video and in this video I want to share with you one of my favorite aspects of landscape painting and that's working from direct observation, in the open air or en plein air. I had the opportunity recently to catch up with some fantastic en plein air painters. We painted for two days in the Ries Valley just outside of Glenorchy. Let's check it out. Hey guys, how's it going? I'm just driving here, obviously, heading out to Glenorchy this morning. So we've got a little bit of a drive ahead of us. Glenorchy is about three hours away from where I live and I'm catching up with some of the best en plein air painters in this country and one of them from abroad. I'm going to see Richard Robinson, John Crump and Scott Hamill. I'm also going to catch up with my best bud Samuel Lerp. So check this out. We're going to do some en plein air painting and see some amazing scenery. I just love this part of the world. You can see why I moved down here because there's an abundance of amazing scenery to paint and this is where I'm going to draw inspiration from for this particular painting session. We're heading into this little area near Glenorchy called the Ries Valley. It's just over here tucked just behind Mount Earnslow. Now I've never had the privilege to work in the Ries Valley so this is a new subject for me and I've also have not had the opportunity to work alongside these other artists so I'm really excited about today. Everybody was already set up alongside this little river by the time I had arrived and the paintings were well underway. It's going to be exciting to see how John Crump goes as well. I've been excited to see his technique up close and just how big he works and the scale of the brushes and the sheer amount of paint that he uses so I'm sure to learn a few new techniques there. I think it's really important to remain open as an artist. You never know when a new technique can just be a paradigm shift for you with painting. Scott Hamill has got a particular technique that is loose and free and he also works at quite a large scale pumping out some big works in a short period of time. Richard Robinson here is working on an exquisite little study taking in the same view. I really love where this painting's going. It's got a really delicate quality to it. It's always great catching up with Sam as well. He's got a fantastic technique with lots of freedom and loose brushwork. Sam almost paints exclusively on plein air. Now my head is full of all of these fantastic ideas working alongside these guys but I'm just going to go back to what I know for now and try and get down as much information as possible. There's a lot to this scene to take in and it might be quite a trick to try and fit it all onto that canvas. I do know that these mountains in the background are going to feature heavily in the composition and I love all of that detail. The light here is going to shift pretty quickly so time is of the essence. I begin by sketching the very basic broad lines of the composition in. Because I'm working on a darker tone here, more or less an opaque burnt sienna, I'm going to sketch in a much lighter color which is titanium white mixed with quinacridone magenta. This part of the process is all about relationships, getting the sizes right one thing relative to another. So I sketch in some loose lines knowing full well that I may have to shift something down the track but once I'm happy with it and I've got things more or less locked in place, then I'm going to go on painting whatever's furthest away and working my way towards the foreground. Now this technique is diametrically opposed to what some of the other artists here today are doing so I have to remain a little bit open. Maybe I might change this somewhat in the future because it is very interesting to hear their philosophy about how they go about making an en plein air painting. I find that working in that depth though, in that distance, helps me get my colors right from the outset. Working with some of those cool blues and the shadows and then bringing the saturation up as I bring these tiers of depth towards the foreground. Now here I've used more or less ultramarine blue and cobalt teal with a touch of titanium white and I go back and I apply some thicker titanium white with a bristle dagger. To try and maintain some clean color, you'll notice as well that I'm working in zones. So once I've established one zone and I get the character of that area right, I then move on to the next one. And each zone more or less is its own unique set of colors or a block of colors if you will. And this blocking in process helps me establish the image quickly and also helps everything key in to its right place. Now I have to be careful with some of that distance because yellow, which I'm using here, mixed in with a bit of that ultramarine blue and a little bit of burnt umber here, that will start to come forward a heck of a lot. So I have to tone down that color a little bit and desaturate to really establish that distant forest on those hills. Nothing compares to working on plein air. It's amazing just being outside in the elements. I'm noticing that light continue to shift and seeing as this canvas is a little bit larger than I would normally work, I have to speed things up and not get too bogged down in detail. Now again I just keep that yellow in check by mixing in a touch of quinacridone magenta as well. Remember if your green gets a little bit too saturated or out of hand, that magenta really comes in handy as a complementary opposite. Remember that the red and the magenta will counteract the green. And this almost achieves a bit of a gray quality which this New Zealand forest seems to have. It's not a really saturated green at all. Now it's really important for me as a studio painter primarily to continue to work outside because it hones my skills in observation. And again working alongside some other artists is opening me up to some new ideas and causing me to challenge some of the things that I had established as firm laws for my particular practice. So one of the things that I've noticed about some of these other artists is that they'll get those darks in first and they'll establish some of the deeper shadows in their scene to lock in their lighting dynamic. I must admit when it comes to chasing that light, I've had to fight with it here in this painting because once I get my highlights established, I notice that it's completely changed on me. Every 15 minutes reveals an entirely new scene. I'm going to leave my study about there. I've got plenty of work to get back on with in the studio and maybe this reference material together with my own plein air study will inspire a bigger painting. But what a spectacular scene. It's also great watching how John has got on with his painting. It's amazing to see how much area he covers in such a short period of time. I just love the freedom and the boldness of that brushwork. I believe that this technique really lends itself to this landscape. I think he captured it absolutely amazingly well. It's got this beautiful depth to it and that sky has got a really lovely loose freedom as well. It's great that I'm going to be painting with these guys for a couple of days so I'm going to get an opportunity to learn even more about his technique. Hey guys, well it's day two of our little en plein air trip and we're heading back down the Ries Valley. It's a fantastic little spot down here but we're going to take this view from a slightly different vantage point, maybe get a little bit more extreme topography. I'm just going to do some really interesting things to the foreground but that means it's back down this dusty trail this morning and I'm just trying to catch up to John and all the boys. There he is. Now we couldn't have asked for a better day. We're parked on top of this riverbank here, looking down the valley and we have the same majestic peaks in the background which I know are going to be a key feature in all of our paintings. This river snaking its way towards the foreground may form a really unique focus in the composition as well. Now let's take a closer look at John Crump's technique and see if we can get a bit of an insight into how he works at such a scale. This canvas here is over a meter long. One of the secrets to his speed is the size of these brushes. He's using bristle flats at about number 10 and 12. Now John's system here also hinges on this simplified palette of color and these are all the artist quality Winsor & Newton oils. Now John works directly on his white canvas, sketching in the composition first really loosely and once he has the foundation of the composition in place he begins by adding in the darks and this firmly establishes the lighting dynamic. I'm just getting in my darks as you can see probably there's some little spots down here that are going to be darks as well but that's the bulk of it. When I started looking at painters and their work that it wasn't the careful stuff that caught my eye, it was the broad, bold, confident sort of approach and so it sort of moved me in that direction over the years and I've discovered that sometimes that the rougher I paint at the end of the painting the rougher I've been the better I like it. Now I don't have that long to work so I've got a lot of information to squeeze into a little panel and no I'm not going to be working at the same size as John Crump just yet but in this 8x10 I think I'm going to have difficulty fitting the river in so what I'm going to do is focus more on those mountains in the distance and have just a little silver thread of a river sneaking its way into the foreground somewhere. When working with an abundance of subject matter it's so much information it can be difficult working out what to leave out of your painting. There's just so much going on in this scene to try to get it all in the one little 8x10 panel it's just not going to work so I think what I'm going to do is zoom right up to those mountains and just get like just that stripe of those majestic peaks in the background you just have a little hint of that river snaking through here into the foreground. Oh and this ridiculous get up here let's just stop the sandflies biting my neck it's not even working they're going down in there still ah it's what we have to do. Now old habits die hard I'm going to be working in the background first and working my way towards the foreground however here I'm going to try something slightly different and establish the shadows in the mountains taking a leaf from John's book and then around this I can add my highlights and this hopefully will lock in place the lighting dynamic for those mountains at least. Now I'm working in between these blue marks in the background establishing the snow line and this is titanium white applied with a filbert bristle brush and I'm using quite a large brush relative to the size of the panel this will help me cover more area faster. I'm only allowing myself about 45 minutes to do this little study and I'm going to apply a moderate amount of blending between this white and blue so I'm not going to get into any real detail techniques just enough to inform the next pass in the studio if I decide to do one but there's certainly going to be enough information here to make it into a bigger painting down the track and again once I've established those mountains in the background I then go about painting in these foothills. Now like with my previous study I have to be mindful of that yellow it's a color that doesn't travel well over a distance so I must knock this back down by using a little bit of a desaturating element like quinacridone magenta and this helps communicate those distant forested hills. Also the relationship of my highlight to shadow here is quite muted there's not much of a difference at all and that contrast I increase as I begin to approach the foreground. This also helps drive that depth dynamic. I'm just going to have a few of these banks here and use a bit of artistic license to help the composition as the river bends and curves into the distance it carves away those banks revealing a really sharp shadow and I love this linear aspect I believe it's really going to help that foreground. Despite the fact that the grasses in this meadow appear yellow to the eye I know I need to mute that color significantly so again I'm using some burnt umber and quinacridone magenta to tone that back down to help that depth really register. I'm going to darken and saturate these colors as they come closer towards the viewer. My time's nearly up the last few moves I'm going to make here to this painting are a couple of little highlights on the surface of that water to give it a little bit of a glisten and help bring that foreground further forward. Now I do sometimes finish off my own plein air studies if I feel they're going to make a great painting but sometimes I like to keep them just as they are as a memento of the experience. Let's see how the others are getting on. What are we guys beauty about? Richard's doing a Georgia O'Keeffe yeah and so I'm painting very colorful paintings. And how couldn't you be happy this is what landscape painting is all about. We're all honing our skills in observation and having a great time doing it. It's been great catching up with Sam again as well and I look forward to filming more episodes with Sam in the future. He's been slowly and methodically working his way through this landscape and it's really taking shape. I know this will give us all so much material to draw upon later in our studios and this experience we can pour into those bigger studio works. It's been such a treat to paint on such a spectacular day but also to work alongside John Crump and get a closer glimpse into how he makes his paintings. I know for one thing I feel like I have to speed up now and I'm encouraged to go a little bit bolder and a little bit looser with my works. It's amazing to see how much ground John covers in just a short space of time. And here's John's finished painting. I think it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the day. When I look back over my painting career so far a few memories really stick out as highlights. I'd say this day goes down as one of them. It was such an honour to work alongside such established and fantastic en plein air painters and I can't wait for the next opportunity we get to go out hit the mountains again and paint more en plein air. Well this was an awesome trip and I'm sure you'll agree it was spectacular scenery. I think I came away with a couple of decent studies certainly something to be added to in the studio later and who knows it might turn into a bigger studio painting. It was an added bonus to work alongside some fantastic en plein air painters. Whenever you're rubbing shoulders with other artists you always come away with a few techniques. A big shout out to Richard Robinson, Scott Hamill, Samuel Earp and John Crump. If you guys want to see more of their work I've put links to their website in the description down below. Now if you haven't already make sure you check out my latest tutorial The Winter Landscape available as a DVD or as a digital download. You can find those on my website and I've put the link to that one in the description down below as well. Now as always if you enjoyed this video then make sure you hit that like button for me. If you want to come back for more and see more painting videos just like this one make sure you subscribe to this channel. As always you can find me on Instagram and Facebook but most important make sure you subscribe through my website at andrewtichler.com. Thanks so much for stopping by I'll see you again next time.