by M. Stephen Doherty

A Change of Seasons 2007, oil, 35 x 37. All artwork this article collection the artist unless otherwise indicated.

After graduating with a B.F.A. from Kansas State University in 1992, Kim Casebeer worked as a graphic designer and art director, and she created a space in her small apartment for working on pastel paintings. Although she enjoyed the directness and richness of pastel, and earned her signature membership in both the Pastel Society of America and the MidAmerica Pastel Society, she was anxious to develop her ability to paint outdoors with oil. “My husband and I enjoy hiking and being in nature, and I felt challenged by the idea of responding directly to the landscape with oil,” she explains. “Four years ago I participated in a workshop with Michael Albrechtsen at the Scottsdale Artists’ School and traveled to Sedona, Arizona, to study with William Scott Jennings. Those experiences helped me redirect my studio work toward oil paintings, and when we moved into a new home with a large studio space it became possible to work with the solvent-based paints.”

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It wasn’t long before Casebeer began participating in plein air events, using her field work as the basis of studio paintings, and exhibiting her oil landscapes in galleries. To understand how she works on location, we recently joined her at a park near her home, where she spent two hours developing an oil sketch of a sunlit hillside and the reflection of the trees and bushes in a small lake. As she developed her painting, Casebeer reviewed the 10 fundamental steps of plein air painting that have helped her make such rapid progress.

String Lake Light 2007, oil, 14 x 11.

Step 1: Paint What You Know and Love

“I grew up on a farm in south-central Kansas near the Flint Hills, and I always feel a stronger emotional connection to that landscape than any other that I paint,” explains Casebeer. “That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy painting in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and other locations. I have grown fond of those regions and know them well. Once I find a location that inspires me, I return for weeks at a time and immerse myself in the space. I eventually come to understand the space and atmosphere of those places as well as I do those of Kansas, and I have strong feelings about those familiar locations. I think it helps any landscape painter to return to paint the colors, shapes, patterns, space, air, and weather patterns they know intimately.”

Root Study by Jacob Collins. Read about a plein air workshop offered by The Hudson River School for Landscape.

Step 2: Consider the Pattern of Light and How It Will Change

Buffalo Fork Turpin Meadow 2007, oil, 9 x 12.

“Before I set up my easel in any location, I think carefully about how the light will change during the two or three hours I will be painting,” the artist says. “I don’t want direct sunlight on the painting surface or the palette because the strong light will distort my perception of colors and values, so I position myself so the light is hitting the back of the easel or where I can work in the shade of a tree. Most landscape painters prefer to work at the beginning or end of the day so the raking, warm light will sculpt the shapes within the scene. At midday the overhead sunlight tends to flatten the shapes, and one is forced to rely on backlighting, reflections in water, or other conditions in order to differentiate the forms within the scene. I also have to evaluate how the sunlight will change direction over two or three hours, and I lock in the initial pattern of light and shadow rather than constantly change the direction and intensity of the light.

Magic of Oxbow 2007, oil, 11 x 18.

Step 3: Use a Palette of Colors You Know Well

“I learned early on that sticking to the same palette of colors and the same arrangement of those colors is very helpful in plein air painting,” the artist explains. “The less time I have to spend locating the ultramarine blue or the cadmium yellow, for example, the more time I have for painting. And, using the same reasoning, it’s better to know how I can mix a wide range of colors and values from a limited selection of tube colors than to bother with four or five yellows, reds, and blues.”

Step 4: Be Clear About the Center of Interest

Evening Stratus 2007, oil, 24 x 36. Private collection.

“It’s very easy to become absorbed in the excitement of painting outdoors and lose track of why I chose a scene and what I want viewers to recognize as the center of interest,” the artist reasons. “I constantly remind myself what needs to be the most important part of the picture and how I can direct viewers to that area. The simplest way to mark the focal point is to make it the place at which the darkest dark meets the lightest light. Another method is to use directional shapes—pathways, streams, fence posts, or roads—to literally point viewers to the center of interest. In Backlit Trees, for example, the lake narrows and takes the shape of an arrow that points attention toward the contrasting light and shadow along the shoreline.

Gallery View a gallery of additional work by Casebeer.

“Getting viewers to notice the focal point is only half the challenge of composing a picture,” she adds. “The other half is directing their eyes from that center to the other important sections of the painting. I don’t want to leave the viewer stuck in the center but, rather, I want to lead them around and through the rest of the composition. This can be done by carrying a line from the focal area toward another location, or just repeating colors and patterns that link each section of the composition.”

Winter Morning Looking West 2007, oil, 24 x 48. Private collection.

Step 5: Start Painting Overall Relationships

When Casebeer begins painting, she makes a point of painting big shapes such as the band of background trees, the overall mass of the water or grass, and the large green shapes of trees along the shore. Once those are established, she can break up the shapes into smaller patterns that identify the specific appearance of each landscape element.

These large masses are usually painted with relatively thin mixtures of oil color so they dry quickly and remain relatively translucent. As she continues, the artist applies thicker strokes of paint, especially when blocking in the patterns of sunlit grasses and the reflections in the water.

Backlit Trees 2007, oil, 9 x 12.

Step 6: Simplify Forms, Especially Those Away From the Center of Interest

Beginners often make the mistake of painting everything they see and trying to match the exact colors and values they identify in nature. Casebeer learned early on in her studies that it is better to simplify the forms, remove the elements that don’t support her intentions, and only elaborate on details near the center of interest. “When you think about how landscapes actually register in our minds, you realize that we take in a general impression of what we see and one or two important elements of the scene, not every single detail,” the artist explains. “It makes sense for artists to paint their pictures in much the same way. For example, in my demonstration painting, the hillside behind the trees just needed to appear as a distant form, so I painted it as one band of light purple-gray without indicating the shapes of the individual trees. Similarly, the sky just needed to be a warm glow of light.

Coming soon...more plein air events, tips, featured artists, and instructional videos. Check back in February to visit the new section of our website devoted entirely to plein air painting!

Study for The Charming Landscape 2006, oil, 12 x 16. Private collection.

“Keep in mind that the point of this demonstration was to create a sketch, not a finished painting,” Casebeer added. “I kept things simple because I just wanted information I could take back to my studio. If at some point in the future I want to use the sketch as the basis of a large painting, I will be able to remember the scene or I will know how to make up details that would fit logically into the picture. Once artists have spent two or three hours staring at a scene and recording it in an oil sketch, they can usually recall everything they saw and felt at that moment. It’s really quite amazing, but I can look at a sketch I did two years ago and immediately recall the weather, the sounds around me, and the colors I mixed in each area of the painting.”

Step 7: Modulate Colors and Values to Suggest Atmosphere and Space

Some of the most helpful advice teachers can give their students is how to manipulate oil colors to create the illusions of light, dimension, atmosphere, space, texture, and form. For example, it is almost axiomatic that there is more contrast and texture in the foreground of a scene than in the background, and that colors follow a prismatic progression as they recede into deep space. That is, there is usually more red, orange, and yellow in the foreground rocks and bushes and more blue, indigo, and violet in the distant mountains.

A Glorious Evening 2007, oil, 24 x 30.

Step 8: Step Back and Evaluate Your Progress

As mentioned earlier, it is easy for plein air painters to become so caught up in the process of quickly recording what they observe that they lose an overall sense of how their painting is developing. It’s for that reason Casebeer makes a point of stepping back from her easel periodically to compare her developing picture with the scene.

Step 9: Remember Why You Chose a Scene

Casebeer finds it helpful to remind herself why she chose a particular scene and what important information she wants to convey to viewers. If at any point in the painting process that message becomes confused, she adjusts colors and values to re-establish the focus.

Quiet Along the Snake 2007, oil, 24 x 30.

Step 10: Stop When You’ve Accomplished Your Goal

Casebeer considers many of her plein air paintings to be studies, not finished works of art, so she stops painting once she has all the information she will need to create a studio painting from the sketch. If, however, she wants to carry the picture to a higher level of resolution, she will keep working for another hour or two.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief and publisher of American Artist.

About the Artist

Kim Casebeer earned a B.F.A. from Kansas State University and worked as a graphic designer and art director before becoming a full-time artist. She is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America, the American Women Artists, and the MidAmerica Pastel Society; and she is a member of the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters and the Oil Painters of America. Her paintings have been included in exhibitions organized by these groups, as well as by the CM Russell Museum, in Great Falls, Montana, the Gilcrease Museum, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Pastel Society of the Southwest, the Pastel Society of New Mexico, the Salon International, and the Scottsdale Artists’ School Best and Brightest. She is represented by Rive Gauche Art Gallery, in Scottsdale, Arizona; Galleries West Fine Art, in Jackson, Wyoming; Leopold Gallery, in Kansas City, Missouri; Strecker-Nelson Gallery, in Manhattan, Kansas; and Silver Heron Gallery, in Depoe Bay, Oregon. For more information on Casebeer, visit her website at www.kimcasebeer.com.

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Comments

Hi Kim, I enjoyed reading your 10 steps and agree with them all. I have been painting en plein air in watercolor and more recently in pastel and you have summarized the major points to be considered by all plein air painters. Your work is lovely. I personally found that painting en plein air improved my overall painting ability, composition, use of color and speed. Now I much prefer plein air over photographs although I still do paint from both.