Workshop Critiques: Tips From Top Instructors

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. Here we’ve compiled critique sessions from top plein air painters featured in our quarterly publication Workshop, to help you learn from both the instructors’ feedback and the students’ progress.

Plein Air Pointers: Values

Attend any realist art class in any medium or genre, and at some point the instructor is going to bring up the topic of values. Here’s what two historical artists and two contemporary artists have to say on the subject as it relates to landscape painting.

Landscape Painting Tips

During nearly 30 years of interviewing landscape artists for American Artist, M. Stephen Doherty has watched hundreds of painters use a variety of materials and techniques. Here, he takes the best of that gleaned knowledge and distills it into seven helpful tips for plein air painters.

Plein Air Painting Equipment

Ross Merrill, the chief curator of conservation at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, wrote an article for our premiere issue of Workshop magazine on the equipment necessary for successful plein air painting. Here is an excerpt of that article, along with a sidebar on some top sources for plein air supplies.

Plein Air Pointers: Composition

Featuring excerpts from some of the most revered books on landscape painting—including John F. Carlson’s Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting and Edgar Payne’s Composition of Outdoor Painting–this month’s Plein Air Pointer offers time-tested, authoritative advice on selecting and arranging the most important elements of a plein air scene.

Plein Air Events: Tips on Participation

Lori Putnam—a Nashville-area artist, instructor, and a regular participant and organizer of plein air competitions—offers landscape painters pointers on how to prepare for and get the most out of outdoor-painting events.