Matt Smith critiqued a student's work during a 2005 workshop.

One of the best parts of a workshop usually comes at the end, when the instructor assesses the students’ work and points out areas where they excelled while giving specific advice for those areas that need improvement. This process not only helps the individual to whom the instructor is speaking but also assists the other participants by allowing them to see how their peers overcame similar obstacles and challenges. American Artist’s quarterly magazine, Workshop, has covered instructional sessions with top artists for more than three years, and those kinds of informative critiques are part of what make that publication so helpful to practicing artists. Here we’ve compiled critique sessions from some of the top plein air painters featured in past issues of Workshop to help you learn from both the instructors' feedback and the students’ progress.

INSTRUCTOR: Matt Smith
ARTICLE: “Understanding Light in the Landscape,” by M. Stephen Doherty
ISSUE: Summer 2005 Workshop

After the first day of talking and demonstrating to the workshop participants, Smith spent more of his time working individually with students. He evaluated their photographic source material and the preliminary stages of their painting efforts and commented on the overall composition of their pictures and the initial placement of colors and values.

Smith pointed out that the students who created the above paintings were successful in establishing the biggest shapes within the landscape before they focused on details. In several cases, he painted on the canvases to demonstrate how those shapes could be used to establish distance, pattern, texture, and compositional organization. …“Be sure you have the big, simple shapes resolved before you render them,” he said repeatedly. ‘Without that foundation, you are headed for trouble. …Texture is the last thing to be concerned about. Light will differentiate those textures, so let the highlights you add at the end of the painting process define them.”

INSTRUCTOR: Marcia Burtt
ARTICLE: “Bold Plein Air Painting From a Conservationist,” by Bob Bahr
ISSUE: Winter 2005 Workshop

Burtt loved the reflected light inside the barn and the warmth in the bales on the lower left in this painting. “The student has shown a great willingness to repaint,” Burtt said admiringly. The instructor recommended the student create interest in the foreground by making a definite shape of the shadow areas, and suggested she create additional drama by showing the posts approaching one another at the top. (IMAGE RIGHT)

“An absolutely beautiful painting,” commented Burtt. “There is so much to admire—the careful renditions of values that create layer upon layer of distance, the accurately drawn and dramatic dirt road.” Burtt felt this painting was a great leap forward in the student’s work. (IMAGE LEFT)

INSTRUCTOR: Lynn Gertenbach
ARTICLE: “Learning to Partner With Nature,” by Molly Siple
ISSUE: Fall 2006 Workshop

Gertenbach recalls the advice she gave this student at the beginning of the workshop, advice that bore fruit in this student’s work the day the group painted at Leo Carillo State Park. “I told her the rocks were too dark,” says the instructor. “I had her lighten them. A painter needs to look for the big, dark shapes first—the rocks in the water were the only very dark shapes, and there was no way to connect them. This created unrelated holes in the composition and made the rocks come forward. They should instead read in the distance. The student needed to bring the foreground up by using larger shapes and more intense color. The rest of the painting is very high key. High-key paintings are fine, but the same design rules apply. The same value and color theory, too—just in a higher value key.” The next step was to tackle the greens. The student needed more variation, and Gertenbach suggested using warm greens in the foreground, a cooler green in the next clump of grass, and a warm undertone under the faintest, foremost clump of grass in the middle ground. She also recommended adding the shadow in the lower-left clump in the foreground to draw the eyes into the painting and further accentuate a sense of depth in the composition.

INSTRUCTOR: Timothy Thies
ARTICLE: “Understanding Color Temperature in the Landscape,” by Edith Zimmerman
ISSUE: Fall 2006 Workshop

“Since the sky is your main point of interest, all the other elements in the painting should support that point of view," Thies said. "I would downplay the landmass by painting it with very close value relationships and subtle temperature changes. For the clouds, the subtle shifts are in color temperature, not value. Also, the clouds will be changing in about five minutes. I would paint one cloud mass at a time—really focus on getting it right the first time and don’t fuss with it because you have two other cloud formations you need to paint. Start on the left and work to the right; finish as you go. Whenever I want to see color and temperature shifts I look at the subject quickly and look back to my palette, I never stare at a shape of anything and ask what color it is. Glance at the object, trust what you see, mix it, glance again, adjust your paint mixture, and place it on your canvas.” (IMAGE LEFT)

“Here the sky holes in the tree on the right side of the painting are done very well,” commented Thies. “When you see sky through a tree, some sky holes appear darker than others, even though we know intellectually that the sky is the same color on the other side. Yet when the sky holes are smaller, the color appears darker. When you paint them this way, you then start to see more volume in the painted tree. There’s good use of edges here too, both hard and soft. Edges have a lot to do with how we see the world. Human beings can only focus on thing at a time, so it’s important to limit the number of edges that will distract the eye.” (IMAGE RIGHT)

INSTRUCTOR: John Budicin
ARTICLE: “Making Mountains Subtle,” by Bob Bahr
ISSUE: Spring 2006 Workshop

“The pond should have been in the near foreground,” Budicin said about this student’s painting. “Add a few more trunks in the background to help support the vegetation that is there. Mass the shapes and trunks underneath it—you can break up that big mass later by adding various temperatures of green. On the bottom right, pay attention to your design—that area is divided in half between vegetation and ground plane. I would think about introducing more shrubs to eliminate that half-and-half feel.” (IMAGE LEFT)

“Crop the foreground,” Budicin suggested for this student's work. “Just cut off the bottom three inches of the composition and it will be stronger. Paint out the small hill on the bottom right; it’s taking the viewer’s eye off the canvas. Nice value and temperature changes in the distant mountains. Those whites in the middle ground are the roofs of houses in the city reflecting the setting sun. Add warmer lights to those highlights.” (IMAGE RIGHT)

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Comments

I relate to Budicin's comment about cutting the bottom three inches of the composition to strengthen it. I've let the size/shape of my canvas dictate the composition, and it should be the other way around. The hill on the lower right does lead the eye off the canvas. But everything else is quite well done.