Art Tutorial

Have you ever tried painting outdoors on location? Let me tell you it’s really good fun, it’s challenging but it gets you outside and it really improves your painting skills especially if you’re a studio painter. 

Recently I took my paints and easel on a little road trip to Fiordland National Park in the South Island of New Zealand. Fiordland is a very mountainous region of New Zealand and is perfect for painting outdoors on location which is also known as painting ‘en plein air’.

Painting seascapes is one of the subjects I love to paint most. Every so often I visit the island of Guernsey which is the place I was born. Guernsey has amazing coastline, dramatic cliffs and the wild Atlantic Sea, the island is located in the English Channel and is very inspiring for coastal scenes.

In this step by step painting demonstration I will show you how to paint this seascape of a little place called Port Soif, located in the west of Guernsey.

I love painting mountains, and one of the great things about living in New Zealand is plenty of them to paint! One of my favourite mountains to paint in New Zealand are Mt Talbot and Mt Crosscut, located in the Fiordland region of the south island.

In this step-by-step painting tutorial, I will show you how to paint a serene mountain valley. Suitable for oils and acrylics.

This painting was inspired by an area called Dalefield which is located in the Wakatipu Basin, just outside of Queenstown, New Zealand. I frequently come to this area to paint as there are so many subjects to capture on canvas including trees, fields, mountains and animals.

I came here to paint in March the day after we’d had a cold spell of weather that left snow on the mountains. Given that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere the seasons are reversed and so February is a summer month. Anyway I thought it would make for an interesting painting with trees and fields juxtaposed against some snowy mountains.

I love landscape art, especially traditional realism painting and I have been painting landscapes for many years. Whilst I paint a lot in my studio one of the things I love to do is paint outside on location in the great outdoors. This is called painting ‘en plein air’, which is a French phrase meaning to ‘paint outdoors’. Plein air painting is not only thoroughly enjoyable, and great for the mind, body and spirit, but it also helps immensely with improving your studio work.

Plein air painting teaches you to really look at the landscape, its forms, colours and tonality. It teaches you to loosen up your painting technique, improves your use of colour and understanding of composition. It also teaches you to paint quickly as the light and weather conditions are always changing.

In order to create an engaging seascape first of all we need to plan our picture so we can determine what the painting is about. Depth within a painting can be achieved by having strategically placed focal points and effective use of colour to create atmosphere and space within the painting. 

In order to create the story of this painting I decided what elements I wanted in the scene and where I wanted my main focal point to be. Before I even began painting this picture I compiled many pencil sketches in order to plan the composition so I could see what would work and what wasn’t going to work in the picture. This is essential so I don’t run into problems with composition issues later on when I am painting the picture.