Here are a few recent larger landscapes. All done en plein air here in Italy.
Villa Argiano. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.
Benabbio. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.
Poggio delle Corti. 60 x 80 cm, oil on linen.
Sant’Angelo in Colle from Argiano. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.
Gualdo Cattaneo. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.
Bagni di Lucca. 60 x 100 cm, oil on linen.
Below are a few smaller sketches from a recent trip to Montalcino. I stayed at the beautiful Castello d’Argiano and the reason there are no early morning paintings is due to their great hospitality and wonderful wines.
Montalcino, Sunset. 25 x 35 cm, oil on dibond.
Convento dell’Osservanza, Montalcino. 25 x 35 cm, oil on dibond.
Pieve di Santa Restituta. 25 x 35 cm, oil on dibond.
These are a few of the paintings I worked during my free time over the past ten days. The first is from the same spot where I painting the same large landscape ten years ago. I got a bit worried at one point, “What if my painting has gotten worse?”
The Marsiliana. Oil on linen, 80 x 100 cm.
The next three are all from the same spot, just playing around with different light effects.
The Entrance to the Marsiliana, Back-lit. Oil on linen, 50 x 70 cm.
The Entrance to the Marsiliana, Overcast. Oil on panel, 25 x 35 cm.
The Entrance to the Marsiliana, Side-lit. Oil on panel, 20 x 30 cm.
I also did a bunch of little sketches while doing demonstrations, but they didn’t make the cut.
Many of the posts on this blog are about my travels, as I find it more interesting. However, I do live in one of the more picturesque places around and paint here quite often. The problem with plein air painting in Tuscany is that the Chianti region, where I usually stay, is actually terrible as far as subject matter goes. The small olive trees are fine if painted up close, but the little blue blobs are really unsightly when seen from afar. And don’t get me started on vineyards… parallel lines from a distance?
That said, Tuscany also has some of the best plein air subjects in the world, especially the rolling hills and wheat fields south of Siena. My other favorite spots are the Mugello, north of Florence, and Maremma, along the coast to the southwest.
Here are couple from a trip to the Val d’Orcia:
Vineyards at Poggio alle Mura. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
The Old Station at Bibbiano. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
The Gulf of Baratti has to be one of the more beautiful bays in Tuscany, though it can be a bit too pretty.
The Chapel of San Cerbone at Baratti. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
We stayed with friends on a couple of July weekends and I ended up painting around the house a lot to avoid the crowds.
Barbeque and Well at Torrenuova. (Needs to be cut down still).
The Bridge at Torrenuova. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
I also painted a bit further north, on the coast near Bolgheri.
White Road at Palone. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
Stone Pines at Palone. 30 x 40 cm, oil on panel.
Palone, the Beach. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
And lastly, I painted a bit in the hills above Lucca, which was new to me this summer and is an area I would love to paint more thoroughly.
Bagni di Lucca. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Clothes Hanging at Benabbio. 20 x 25 cm, oil on panel.
Something that is not discussed often enough in plein air landscape painting is the importance of landscape drawing. Looking through books on Corot or Levitan, you will see pencil, chalk, or ink sketches for nearly every painting they did, and a lot of landscape drawings that never became paintings. The Uffizi gallery in Florence has a large collection of landscape drawings. They used to allow people to copy directly from the original drawings for every artist except the major Italian Renaissance painters. I spent hours copying Corot’s landscape drawings as a student.
San Gorgio Maggiore from the Società dei Canottieri, Venice.
Often when I travel I’ll spend the first few days just going around with a sketchbook and pencil to scout out places to paint later. It is obviously much easier to move around, but I also find drawing the landscapes first helps me work out the compositions and also makes it quicker when I paint the subject later, having already done the drawing once.
A page from my Moroccan Sketchbook. Palm trees in Marrakech and the Fort at Essaouira.
The sketchbooks are also fun to look back over years later as many of the paintings are long gone (or were never painted to begin with).
For larger work I will often do multiple sketches as well as small thumbnails to try to figure out the best balance for the final composition. Since I can’t trust the perspective from photographs, drawings are a much better source for large studio landscapes.
Sketch for Sosta del Papa (over two pages in my sketchbook).
Battersea Power Station, London.
My favorite sketchbooks for landscape drawings are the 112 page, 8 x 11 inch Kusnt and Papier hardbound sketchbooks, I usually get them at New York Central Art Supply. I like the paper they use, they’re very durable, and the small amount of pages make the books very light and portable. The pocket-sized, blank-page Moleskines are good too. I use a kneaded eraser, any brand of HB pencil, and a small plastic retractable x-acto knife to sharpen it. Having a long, tapered, insanely sharp pencil lead is the trick to getting drawings to look decent (and lots of practice, of course).
