September 13, 2020
En plein air and studio
By Joseph Weinzettle
For a plein-air painting or drawing most work takes place on location. However, some steps, such as adding an intermediary layer, is conducted in a studio setting.
This drawing of a swamp in the East Lake-Brooker Creek area was made on site in silverpoint with some touches of natural red chalk.
The silverpoint will be the underdrawing for a painting. I applied a layer of “Ultramarine Pink”, thinned in turpentine, as an imprimatura – meaning “first paint layer. This will serve as a warm, and hopefully complementary undertone to the cool local colors I will later paint in.
After the imprimatura had a few days to dry, I took the panel back out to the cypress swamp. I started on the sky and ground layer in the foreground. I’ll let this dry a few more days, before developing the tones of the trees in the midground and background.
