Top Tips for Sketching Outside ✨ ~ ArtToolkit Demi Palette & Our Garden Party 🎉 ~ Iris Edition! 🕊️

Welcome to the Video! Let’s Paint! Today we’re looking at some of my favorite ways to use our time outside ~ it’s taken quite a while for me to figure out, if there’s only a few minutes, how it can still help benefit & improve the art, so I want to share these things with you!

We’ll also Swatch an Art Toolkit Demi Palette, the perfect pocket size watercolor accessory!

The Colors in theOrder Swatched are~

Daniel Smith Hibiscus
Holbein Lilac
American Journey Apricot
Daniel Smith French Ochre
Schmincke Stil de Grain
A Combination of Holbein Gouache Silver & Winsor & Newton Gold Gouache
Schmincke Celadonite
Daniel Smith Terre Verte
Daniel Smith Sleeping Beauty Turquoise
Daniel Smith Indigo
Greenleaf & Blueberry South African Chromite
Greenleaf Blue Barite





~ Sketching En Plein Air ~
On Outdoor Sketching
A Leaflet


The first thing to understand is that painting en plein air, or painting outdoors, is something very different from painting in your studio or at your desk, in a space where you’re comfortable, where you can concentrate & get in the zone creatively ~ I’ve tried many times over the years & you can see some early videos where I was attempting to paint on location, mistakenly thinking ~ I know how to paint I can just do that outdoors, but it’s such a different ballgame ~ you’re in completely new & unfamiliar circumstances ~ you need to know & understand your palette completely.. . the colors need to be second nature so choosing & mixing colors can become intuitive ~ also knowing your subject matter helps ~ what I’ve found is that you need to lessen the distance between you & your subject in several ways, in order to make a painting session outdoors successful ~ so here’s a few steps i take & what I actually use outdoor painting for

First, that sense of overwhelming wonder never ceases to amaze me! I love the feeling of breathlessness when the golden sun fills this whole arch above & around you ~ in the beginning I thought I had to try to push that feeling away & just focus

But now I rely on that feeling to guide my color choices & sense of expression. So I’d say the first thing I do is rely on that deep & profound feeling of beauty ~ I really lean into it for a few minutes before I pick up any materials or before I make any decisions ~ I just enjoy

Then I observe ~ I start to think a little about what im seeing & try to determine what if anything I want to focus on ~ I usually only have a few minutes so I want to decide if there’s something I need to focus on while I have it there in front of me,

A cloud in the sky,
The color of a petal,
The shape of a leaf,
A small part of the composition,
A larger compositional notation ~ trying to figure out & rearrange some elements while they’re all in front of me, like a jigsaw puzzle ~ what should I leave out, what should I put in, should I move some things around
I think about what’s standing out to me the most

After I do these things to prepare,

There are two more things I’m looking for from the painting session. So.. .
Third, I want to map out the form of what’s in front of me, I don’t mean to learn it from scratch, definitely practice things you want to paint beforehand so you have a basic understanding of what you’re going to paint, but use the time to see what’s in front of you & look more closely at the detail, how does the light affect the bark, how does the fall of the branch affect the tree line,

even in small unfinished ways, this can inform more polished work later on ~ I use this as a time to gather visual information about the subject.

& fourth, I collect color notes. I use what I feel from that day, to inform how I want to portray the piece,

The feelings I felt in the beginning looking & absorbing the scene in front of me, will directly affect the colors I choose ~

Is the sky powder blue with soft puffy clouds, or are there blazing streaks of opera rose across a silvered evening sky, does the light produce a halo on the horizon or is the sparkle of the rain creating a more dappled effect

So the four things I do are
1. Feel! Absorb the beauty in your surroundings
2. Observe ~ Decide what inspires you most about this scene
3. Use the time to reconstruct some crucial elements of the form
4. Collect Color Notes


Lastly, have fun! Remember there are a lot of challenges from time constraints to weather conditions that can adversely affect your time, so don’t be too hard on yourself, think of it as an amazing opportunity to build a repertoire of emotional color notes & visual depth ~ it’s like you’re building a lexicon of beauty to rifle through when you’re constructing more finished works later on! Or maybe you are a Sketchbook artist & these are your completed works, memories & little gathered treasures, compiled. Either way, hopefully your work will greatly benefit from these steps!

Until next time, Au voir!

Have a gorgeous week!
🤗💝🌷🦢💌🐩🪷