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Why Paint Outdoors?

Painting outdoors can really help to improve your painting skills as it makes you look at the landscape you are painting. It will help you to get a better understanding of tones and values in the landscape as well as the chroma of the various colour. Most importantly, plein air painting teaches you to paint quickly as the light and weather conditions are changing and it will give you more confidence in your painting especially in the studio.

In this painting tutorial I will show you how to paint this countryside scene featuring an old barn. This painting is inspired by the south island of New Zealand.

Suitable for oils and acrylics.

In this painting tutorial I will show you how to paint a mountain lake sunset inspired by Lake Wanaka in New Zealand. This painting features autumn trees, mountains, a lake and the evening sunset as it peers through the clouds.

Throughout this painting tutorial I give you tips on painting autumn colours, sunsets and clouds as well as how to create colour harmony.

In this painting tutorial I’m going to show you how to paint a landscape with a sparkling mountain stream as depicted in the painting above. This painting was inspired by the rugged landscape in southern New Zealand.

I painted this art work in oils but you could also use acrylics instead.

In this painting tutorial I show you how to paint a landscape as featured in the image above. This painting is inspired by a rural area in southern New Zealand. This painting features a rural landscape at the end of summer where the fields and hills are dry, the grass is yellow and the trees are casting shadows in the soft evening light. All good ingredients for a landscape painting.

In this blog post I will show you how to paint this seascape that features a bright sunset. I will also show you how to paint the bright sun in a way that it looks like it’s popping off the canvas.

This painting is inspired by a place called Port Soif on the island of Guernsey which is located in the English Channel.

In this blog post I will show you how to paint ocean waves and cliffs in this painting inspired by a place called Houghton Bay, New Zealand.

In this blog post I am going to show you how you can create atmospheric perspective in a landscape painting as I show you how to paint this mountain valley scene.

What is Atmospheric Perspective?

Simply put, using atmospheric perspective is a way of creating the illusion of distance and depth in a landscape painting, for example making distant hills and mountains look like they are far away.

In this blog post I will show you how to paint a poplar tree with particular focus on the trunk and leaves. This painting started off as a plein air painting (painting outdoors) and then I added more details in the studio.

Trees are a great subject to paint and they can be very impactful when they are the main subject of a landscape painting.