Painting Outdoors
A photo essay by Tobi Rackers
Taking advantage of good spring weather
I mentioned earlier this month that I was going to paint outdoors as soon as the weather improved. I have rather large patio outside my studio under the shade of a large Maple tree but open to the north light, so it's quite ideal when it's not raining, (which would be half the year). Well that happened last week and on one day my good friend Tobi Rackers just happened to stop by and agreed to a spontaneous photo shoot. As a result I have some documentary evidence that I was indeed out in the fresh air painting away.
Painting outdoors is great because I can really throw the paint around and not worry about getting stuff splattered. (I'm not actually in the 'throwing around' stage here). It's not that I don't do this in the studio, but I usually have to move a fair amount of stuff out of the splatter range before I do.
Here's one that feels finished and good to me.
I also experimented with some really involved layering of texture and paint, trying to create rich backgrounds for further work. These two have me excited.
But of course now that they are precious it ups the anti for the painting session where I'll put something on top of this. I'll wait until I feel really in the 'zone' before I try anything. I may or may not use an isolation coat which gives me a little flexibility.
You might recognize that I've already used the lighter one digitally for the ongoing Kauai Night Dream
When Tobi started taking pictures the blue aquaform piece you see me painting here was mostly an abstract statement of water. I decided to make some more specific strokes on it as she took the pictures. At first I made fish like marks and flowers but pretty soon the figurative sprite arrived and I began to push in a mermaid like figure.
- Here is where the image got to by the time the photo shoot stopped. I'll blog it again when its finished.
Thank you Tobi!