Landscape Painting Weekend Workshop (Cahir, Co. Tipperary)

Workshop Description

This short intensive workshop covers all of the key aspects of landscape painting, both in studio and en plein air.

We will briefly overview the landscape and plein air painting traditions, and learn different painting concepts and their practical applications. You will have one full day of en plein air (or ‘in the open air’ i.e. outdoor) painting where you will create vivid and accurate painterly sketches directly from the motif. We will then rework and develop our outdoor sketches in studio. The use of outdoor and indoor settings for landscape paintings has been a common practice for centuries even amongst Impressionist landscape painters – most of their landscape paintings were finished or even reworked in studio.

Painting demonstrations will guide you step-by-step through the painting process, and practical issues including my own personal and professional tips for painting outdoors will be covered. You will also learn the most important compositional aspects of landscape painting, beginning with how to select suitable scenes. Some of the learning features of this workshop include:

• Working from pencil sketches to monochromatic painted exercises to limited colour palette paintings to expressive full colour paintings
• Seeking out spatial cues in any scene that will lead to a successful painting: volume, scale, overlap (or interposition) and linear perspective
• Interpreting shape and mass
• Simplifying and characterising trees and foliage
• Dealing with problematic subjects such as dappled, or non-conforming patterns of, light and shadow, or how to accurately depict the myriad variations of the colour green
• The importance of value and tonal relationships, which document the fall and effect of light and shadow on the subject matter, will be emphasised at the beginning
• Introduction to many landscape painters, schools and styles
• The benefits of working sight-size
• Learning how to mix colours so that they remain true to their subject
• Reviewing the basics of colour theory, primary colour biases, colour temperature, and transparencies and opacities of paint colours, and in different mediums
• Developing strategies to help you to respond quickly to light and colour, helping you to simplify value, hue and chroma, and to heighten your awareness of temperature changes in the scene

Finally, we will gather all of the inspiration, colour notes, painted sketches and photographic references that we’ve amassed over the weekend and conclude by developing a large highly finished painting in studio.