Plein Airpril 2025

Last year I missed Plein Airpril, it seemed to pass before I was even ready to start! So I was keen to participate this year, although I knew I would be busy teaching. I decided to prepare the best I could and give myself the room to do as much or little as I had energy for. This worked out really well, as I managed to go plein air painting on 9 days.

It was also my chance to finally try plein air painting with gouache. I tried gouache a while ago but never got stuck into it. Then at the end of last year I made some coasters with acrylic and gouache and loved the experience. One thing that had been holding me back was my worry for the gouache drying out and not having suitable materials for taking it outdoors. After lots of research (mostly from Sarah Burns) I decided to try a wet travel palette and prepared my paints. It worked beautifully, although I took care to keep the palette level to avoid leaks and spills.

The colours are so much more vibrant compared to my other watercolour sketches, although if I painted with watercolour from tubes (instead of rewetting from dried pans) they would be too. I enjoyed painting in a more opaque manner and need to practice it again soon.

I did use a variety of materials other than the gouache:

• *Etchr sketchbook A5 cold-press with Schmincke watercolour and waterbrush
• Hahnemuhle paper taped to board with ArtSpectrum watercolours and Escoda brushes (on the easel)
• Derwent watercolour pencils in the Etchr sketchbook and waterbrush

*My most commonly used materials for plein air painting.

Reflections

I prefer to go with watercolour first for large areas and initial colours when plein air painting. Sometimes I then use watercolour pencils for details or texture (and I don't think they work well on the cold-press paper for large areas). Depending on what I want to achieve in the painting I alternate between wet-in-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. Typically the wet-in-wet will be early on and larger areas, while the wet-on-dry will be for final touches and smaller areas.

I noticed that I am more unsatisfied with paintings where the dilute appearance of the watercolours with the waterbrush is evident. Although the waterbrushes are handy and quick, I struggle to darken or use thick paint with them. For example, to paint foreground tree branches over (i.e. in front of) water. One way to boost the paint saturation is to spray my paint in advance so they absorb the moisture, but this requires remembering to do it before the painting stage (ideally when sketching).

Squinting has helped me a lot with identifying the shapes and values and I also do it when thumbnailing or the initial pencil lines.

Without a goal for Plein Airpril other than to paint as much outdoors as I could, it's difficult to ascertain my progress, but that's OK. I'm a firm believer of just practicing to 'get in the pencil miles'. In general, my desire to practice painting en plein air is to improve my landscapes and drawing from life. Painting landscapes outdoors in particular requires breaking down large amounts of 3D visual information into simpler shapes and values on a 2D surface. Each time I practice this I am learning tricks and shortcuts (such as the squinting) to achieve the look I want on paper.

It's also always enjoyable spending time outside in beautiful places and the paintings serve as wonderful mementos. She says, having forgotten the misery of mosquito bites, or frozen hands in the wind... 😉

So what's next?

In September there is the Plein Air Down Under festival (early bird tickets available until July 31) so I've registered to be an artist as well as attend the gouache 2-day workshop. See you there? Read about past PADU festivals here:

My Etchr sketchbook I use for plein air paintings is almost complete now, so I will record a flip-through tour and upload it to YouTube soon. Did you see the video of my first plein air sketchbook?

In the meantime I'll aim to keep practicing my landscapes and painting from life with both watercolour and gouache - such as (spoiler) on my Europe trip in May-June.