Observations: Painting En Plein Air in the shade

This last week, I did a two hour plein air painting of some trees. I was feeling pretty good about it, I thought I got close to capturing the values that I was observing in the scene. Most of all, I thought I achieved the quality of temperature I was noticing: a blue-tinged coolness brought about by the shade of the trees. However, upon bringing the painting indoors, the hues were a lot warmer than I thought, and the range of values seemed to collapse. So why did this happen, and what can I do about it in the future?

I have painted en plein air a handful of times before, all in different lighting situations. I was painting the scene from under the shadows of the very trees I was depicting, so here is my understanding of what happened. The coolness of the space around me was having a direct impact on my perception of the temperature, hues, and values of the paint itself in relation to what I was observing. The consequence of being in the shade meant that as it was making my painting only appear cooler (as a result of being in a shadow on a blue skies day), I was not using as much blue as I thought I was using. In reality, I was putting generally warmer paints on the surface, which was apparent upon bringing it indoors.

Interestingly, despite painting in the shade, upon taking it inside, it was far darker than it appeared outside. It is my assumption that painting in the shade, I might have compensated by making the lighter values even lighter than they ought to be, but the opposite was true in this case. The lighting outdoors might have been better dispersed, or it was hitting the surface from more angles. Whichever the case, it was bright enough that I accidentally made the painting too dark, or I at least compressed the values dramatically.

How can I combat this phenomena for future plein air paintings? I think a solution is to, when painting in the shadow of something on a clear skies day, to use more cooler hues, like blues, whites, and crimsons, than you think is necessary. In general, it is not a bad idea to exaggerate, especially when you're still learning and working from observation. As for achieving a better range of values under the same conditions as before, perhaps bringing the painting into the sunlight and testing it under different lighting situations will give you a better idea of the direction you're going. When in the shadow of a doubt, make it bluer!!!

-Gigi M.

outdoors

indoors