by Bob Bahr

Mackenzie showed workshop participant Ruth Rawhouser how she initially blocks in a scene.	Mackenzie discussed with Mike Flanagan the subtle value changes present in the scene during a workshop in Wyoming last September.

Colorado artist and instructor Jeanne Mackenzie is a true believer in plein air painting, and if her words don’t convince you of this, the vigor and enthusiastic focus she exhibits when painting outdoors is proof. An artist can have that kind of intensity in the studio as well, but the difference is comparable to a newscaster broadcasting from a studio compared to a correspondent reporting on the scene. The excitement is palpable, as the plein air painter is literally immersed in the subject matter.

This is a blessing and a curse. On the positive side, it means being in the great outdoors, and it means getting to know the subject much better than would be possible with photography. On the negative side, as Mackenzie points out, is the greatly increased need to edit the view. “There’s a 360-degree scene, and you are the architect,” she explains. “You are in charge of this landscape. And there are probably 10 paintings for every one scene, so one needs to look at the myriad options. The key is to learn to edit.” Mackenzie advocates the use of a viewfinder—even a simple, makeshift one consisting of an empty slide mount will do. “As soon as you put the four walls around your composition, you’re ahead of the game,” says the artist. “Then plan the painting; do a thumbnail. The tendency of a new plein air painter is to try to capture everything in the scene. That’s just not possible, nor is it desirable.”

This scene is a study in the location of a low, hidden horizon line. The viewer’s eye level is halfway up the canvas, indicating that everything above that line is situated on a hill.	The greens are very similar in the valleys, so the artist must make them cooler and less chromatic as they recede. They blend with the sky in the distance.

At a Susan K. Black Foundation workshop held last September in Dubois, Wyoming, Mackenzie taught this important aspect by example. Students heard Mackenzie talk through her decisions on where to set up her easel and what to include in her piece. She was studying the sky to see if the clouds were interesting enough to deserve a lot of space on the canvas. She was looking for paths into the composition, color relationships, interesting shapes, and, most important, what her gut was telling her was the most interesting part of the scene. And Mackenzie was trying to avoid some pitfalls. “Just because the scene is pleasing to the eye doesn’t mean it will make for a successful painting,” warned the artist. “Good composition is what holds the painting together.”

The artist teaches several workshops in the United States each year, and a couple of international workshops as well. Last year, her schedule included a trip to Tuscany, Italy, where students painted vineyards, hill towns, olive groves, and picturesque stone walls. Although the emphasis in her workshops is on plein air work, she incorporates time in the studio so she can explain concepts such as composition, color mixing, and equipment basics. The instructor also takes care to prepare the studio painters in the group for what they will encounter in the great outdoors. “As soon as you go outside, your style changes,” Mackenzie said the first morning in Wyoming. “You feel like you have to hurry up yet you want to put in all the details, and so you tighten up. But you can’t take a studio approach outside—that would set you up for failure. Just plan on painting a two-hour painting. Think of it as a study, as color notes—that’s a manageable goal. Soon those color note studies will become full-fledged paintings in their own right. Plein air painting will make you a better studio painter, because it enhances your powers of observation. Plus, the emotional attachment you make to a plein air study will really make a difference when you paint a larger studio piece from it later.”

Student Critiques “Small Tuscan hill towns are challenging because they are on uneven ground,” explains Mackenzie. “This artist did a good job of capturing the flavor of the town square. However, it is missing that wonderful strong Tuscan light. Also, the sky is too warm and too dark. Remember that the shadow side of the clouds is lighter than the ground. Always use a clean brush to keep the sky bright and light.” “This has a nice feel of the turbulent and stormy sky that was out there,” comments Mackenzie. “The painter has correctly drawn the perspective of a person up on a hill looking over a town. There are some confusing tangent lines in the upper right that move the tree shape into the cloud forms. Soften these lines to give each its own form and plane.” “I really like this vantage point, looking down the vineyards,” Mackenzie comments. “The artist did a fine job of giving the vines a feel of strong light. It would be more inviting if the vine stakes had a little variety to them—they are a bit centered and of similar height. The painter could also push those distance hills back by making them a cooler blue-green; they are a bit close in color and temperature to the foreground greens.”

She went on to emphasize the importance of a thumbnail sketch. “I have heard students say they might add a tree here or there or change something in their composition later,” she recalled. “You wouldn’t build a house by adding the kitchen and then wonder where to put the bedroom next. You would have a good architectural plan to know exactly where things are going. This is why I recommend a thumbnail sketch before painting—you work out the problems there.” Mackenzie urged the participants to use a thick pencil or marker so they would not be tempted to turn this simple sketch into a drawing. She recommended that the students keep the sketch small—perhaps about 2" x 3"—and draw within a box that has plenty of room around it for possible edits and notes. Squinting is crucial in this stage; artists should be looking for the big shapes and the basic dark-light pattern in determining the composition of the sketch. Students should consider the placement of the focal area, which Mackenzie suggests might be placed a third of the way up or down on the canvas, as well as a third of the way left or right on it—essentially the proportions of the Golden Mean, which is based on the aesthetically pleasing and naturally occurring proportions of the Fibonacci sequence (as illustrated by various examples found in nature). The artist took some time to explain how thinking in ellipses can help someone convincingly depict depth in a painting, especially if the piece has water or a road in it—things that are flat. From the viewer’s perspective, the closest part of a road or stream can be represented by a more circular oval, and as the water zigzags into the background, it can be roughly depicted as a stack of increasingly flattening ellipses. This will help the river or road “lay down” in the composition.

A workshop participant sketched the sinuous line of the creek on her canvas in an accurate way, but the result was a somewhat weak composition. Mackenzie picked up the student’s sketchbook and pencil and suggested the composition shown here. “Diagonals are wonderful elements to find in nature,” commented the instructor. “But to get a nice lead in for a painting you may have to create a better design. By going with a more pronounced diagonal in the river shape you invite the viewer into the scene and give more energy to the painting.”

Mackenzie recommended that the canvas for a plein air painting be lightly toned with what will likely be the complement of the scene’s primary color—she uses a paper towel to rub in this tone and to lift off the excess. A light wash of either burnt sienna, or ochre and alizarin crimson, work well for most scenes and tone down the distraction of a glaring white canvas. For her demonstrations in Wyoming and those from a recent trip to Tuscany, Mackenzie chose burnt sienna to offset the greens in the landscapes. The transfer of the thumbnail sketch to the canvas followed, using a thin, neutral color mixture, then came the block-in. Like most art instructors, Mackenzie emphasized the importance of getting big shapes down first. She also told the workshop participants to boldly put down dark darks early on. “It is easier to lighten a dark than to darken a light,” she said. Once the canvas is covered, the light source must be rechecked, the focal point should be examined to make sure that the composition leads the eye to it, and the lightest lights and darkest darks must be reinforced. Those darks, however, should be relatively thin. “Remember, use lean darks and loaded lights,” she told the students. Light can catch on the high-value brushstrokes but one should avoid such glare on the dark strokes in the shadows. Values and temperatures are refined next, with attention paid to atmospheric perspective. Depth may be reinforced by adding sharper edges to foreground elements and by softening the edges in the background. A few tight details will lead the eye around the canvas. Once the canvas communicates the original message the artist wished to convey, it’s time to stop. Mackenzie told workshop participants that the painting time should stay under two and a half hours. “It becomes a different painting after that,” said the artist. “And don’t be too critical of your piece when you have just finished. Many great plein air paintings are born after they have seasoned overnight.”

Expanding on the river sketch, Mackenzie illustrated the concept of stacked ellipses for depicting flat surfaces in a scene. “It’s very easy to have the roads and rivers in your paintings look like they are waterfalls or paths coming down a hill,” explained the instructor. “To make the forms look convincingly flat, train yourself to see the ellipses in the forms. Closer to you, it’s as if you are looking into a cup—and you can see the river bottom. As the ellipses extend farther back into the scene and get closer to eye level, they flatten out and blend in with the landscape.”

Although she leads workshops in a variety of locations, Mackenzie says that the similarities in the different painting spots outnumber the differences. Sure, the fields of lavender in Provençe are a powerful image that feels unique to the visitor. And the landscapes in Wyoming offer an unusual challenge: the dramatic lack of atmospheric distortion in this part of the country makes distant objects look very clear, so much so that some artists intentionally paint in more atmosphere than they really see in order to make the scene more convincing. But the fundamental things apply, regardless of where one’s easel is set up. “You’re dealing with the same types of light-and-shadow issues whether it’s a vineyard in California or in Tuscany,” says the artist. “You carry those basics wherever you go.” Mackenzie concedes that at certain times of day or at certain times of year a view in a particular locale can be utterly special, but she asserts that it’s not so much the actual sight as it is the experience. “It’s not where you are that makes it a special painting,” she says. “Your memories come mostly from people you meet, the feel of the wind, the scents of the countryside, and other sensory experiences. You can’t help but translate those things into your paintings whether your scene is the hill country of Tuscany or the cornfields of Illinois.”

The Colorado artist is clearly comfortable painting outdoors, capturing the fleeting light, waving off the bugs, and reading the clouds—not just to paint them accurately but to assess whether they will rain on her within the next 30 minutes. She co-founded the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters in 2000 and focuses all of her workshops on painting outdoors. But she’s not a purist.

Mackenzie's Work

Autumn’s Early Snow 2007, oil, 20 x 24. Private collection. Vanishing Farmland 2007, oil, 30 x 40. Courtesy Wild Horse Gallery, Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Winter Warmth 2006, oil, 8 x 10. Private collection. Laden Boughs 2006, oil, 28 x 22. Private collection. San Juan Splendor 2007, oil, 11 x 14. Collection the artist. Off the Path 2006, oil, 8 x 10. Private collection.

These pieces often serve as studies for larger work—Mackenzie uses the plein air piece to remind her of the color notes and feel of the scene, then she creates a larger work—as large as 30" x 40"—based on the small piece, her original thumbnail sketch, and photos she took of the subject. The hard part is capturing the same energy she felt on location. Her solution: Move up in brush size, and paint from the shoulder with broad arm movements instead of painting from the wrist. “The loose brushstrokes that you loved in a plein air piece won’t translate otherwise—you tighten up and spend too much time on the piece,” she said. For example, Mackenzie took an 8"-x-10" plein air study of a cactus and made a 36"-x-48" studio piece from it. She tried to honor the freshness and vigor of her original brushstrokes in the study by simply translating the one little stroke that depicted a paddle on the cactus on the study into a big shoulder movement with a large brush for the same paddle in the big piece. “Yes, you are going to put more information in the larger studio piece,” acknowledged Mackenzie. “But remember—if one brushstroke is good, then 100 brushstrokes are not necessarily better. It could look overworked.

Upcoming Mackenzie Workshops Guatemala—Antigua City, jungles, Lake Atitlan March 3 through March 12 Explore Guatemala www.exploreguatemala.com Fredericksburg, Texas April 21 through April 25 Fredericksburg Artists’ School www.fbgartschool.com Appleton, Wisconsin May 12 through May 16 Richeson School of Art www.richesonart.com Telluride, Colorado July 24 through July 27 Ah Haa School for the Arts www.ahhaa.org Acadia, Maine September 1 through September 5 Acadia Workshop Center www.acadiaworkshopcenter.com Venice, Italy October 4 through October 11 Il Chiostro www.ilchiostro.com

“Mastering the art of plein air painting only enhances your studio work,” Mackenzie continued. “Learning to quickly observe the values and color in landscapes makes your paintings in the studio stronger. You trust your observations and show a more confident brushstroke. Just as a studio painter learns the subtleties of the skin tones in figure paintings, or the temperature changes of a still life rose, the plein air painter brings quick intuitive observation skills back into the studio. With greater knowledge of those subtle changes in value, temperature, and color, paintings get more light and life in them.” One could say that plein air painting should simply be part of a well-balanced diet of painting subjects. Mackenzie’s goal is to make this addition as enjoyable and painless as possible for students.

About the Artist
Jeanne Mackenzie earned a B.F.A. from San Diego State University, in California, and has participated in workshops led by Clyde Aspevig, Michael Lynch, Matt Smith, Skip Whitcomb, and Wayne Wolfe, among others. She is a dedicated plein air painter working in oil and is a founding member of the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters, in Colorado. Mackenzie has participated in numerous exhibitions organized by groups such as Arts for the Parks, Oil Painters of America, Brushes With Italy, American Women Artists, Houston Museum of Natural Science, Susan K. Black Foundation, and The Artist’s Magazine. She is represented by El Presidio Gallery, in Tucson, Arizona, and Ruidoso, New Mexico; Scottsdale Fine Art, in Arizona; Fairmont Gallery, in Sonoma, California; Gallery East, in Loveland, Colorado; and Wild Horse Gallery, in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. For more information on the artist, visit her website at www.jeannemackenzie.com.

Bob Bahr is the managing editor of Workshop.

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