Visit the New Plein Air Blog

Check out the new Plein Air blog at the American Artist community site!

Striving for Atmosphere & Detail in Landscapes

Californian Dennis Doheny creates stunning oil landscapes by emphasizing atmospheric conditions, dramatizing the pattern of light and shadow, and “playing” with color as he sharpens detail.

Landscape Painting Inside & Out

This excerpt taken from Kevin Macpherson's popular instructional book Landscape Painting Inside & Out explains how to best use on-site studies to create finished studio pieces.

Anatomy of the Landscape: Clouds

In this new series of the Plein Air section of our website titled "Anatomy of the Landscape," we will be helping landscape painters develop a deeper understanding of nature by exploring some of the scientific explanations behind what they observe. This month's series offers an overview of the seven most commonly encountered cloud formations.

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.

Jean LeGassick's Plein Air Tips

Put these useful plein air painting tips in your pocket from summer 2008 Workshop featured artist Jean LeGassick.

Frank Serrano's Step-by-Step Plein Air Painting

California landscape painter and instructor Frank Serrano was recently our Featured Plein Air artist for the month of May and was also profiled as an instructor of plein air fundamentals in our summer issue of Workshop magazine. Here he shares two step-by-step explanations of outdoor landscape painting, taken from his popular book Plein Air Painting in Oil (Walter Foster Publishing, Laguna Hills, California).

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 Painting in the Far East

In the summer 2008 issue of Watercolor, Andy Evansen shared stories from a recent painting trip he made to China with several other top landscape painters, and also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of watercolor as a plein air medium.