I returned to the site where I did 2 of the sketches from the previous post and started this plein air painting while standing in the back of my pickup truck. Here it is in two states:
6″ x 8″ oil on canvas
It’s the same scene as the middle sketch in the last post but the ship is gone. I thought this would be a good scene to paint because I wasn’t familiar with anything I was looking at and would therefore have an easier time seeing only the shapes and values rather than objects. I was pretty far away from it too, so it was really impossible to make out much detail.
I was really disappointed in what I did plein air and continued to work on it in the studio working from my sketch and photo. I was originally attracted to this kind of jumble of stuff sticking up into the atmospheric sky and I captured that but struggled to resolve the bottom/foreground.
This brings up the question of when a painting is plein air and when it’s a studio painting. I suppose since I didn’t complete the painting on site, it can’t be considered plein air.
Bill Sharp - paintings blog 
Bill – terrific resolution of foreground and midground. This is a delicious painting. I think this qualifies as a plein air. What is amazing is that you kept the touch consistent and didn’t tighten up in the sstudio portion of the work. I could live with this little painting. 🙂 G
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Bill,
Nice colors…and some nice abstract solutions.
I don’t know of a single professional artist who completes ALL his Plein Air outdoors. Can it be done? Sure!
For me…I would rather finish 7-10 paintings that are 90-95 complete outdoors then 2-3 that are 100% complete. That last 10% can be so easily completed indoors under controlled lighting conditions.
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Great painting bill. I enjoy your almost “abstract detail”. And yes. I agree with elio..I actually think there is far too much obsessioin and and far too many “purists” walking the world.
ronell
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Thanks for the encouraging words, everyone.
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