Since plein air is my favorite way to paint, I thought I'd start my first blog since 2020 with a demonstration of how I start. I'm happy to be back doing a blog, because I want to share some of my thoughts and techniques with you that I have developed over the past 40 plus years of painting in oil and watercolor. This blog will not just be about painting aspen trees, as my other blog, "An Aspen a Day" was dedicated to.

Plein air is a French term which basically means painting your subject out in the open air. I didn't used to like painting outdoors many years ago. That's putting it mildly - I hated it! Bugs, heat, wind, changing light, carrying your supplies around, you name it - I wondered why people did this! However, with coaxing from other artists in the newly formed Outdoor Painters Society, which I joined soon after its inception, I painted outdoors over and over, and have come to love it. I have always loved being outdoors!

Step one is basically creating a "pink blob" that is in the outer shape of the rose, disregarding any petals or details and painted much darker than the rose actually is. All I was concerned about was the placement of the rose on my panel, its size and overall shape. The rose is painted without any white added and is a combination of magenta and a touch of quinacridone rose. I decided to add some warm color (yellow ochre) to the background with a little green mixed in because I saw that the light pink in the rose had a little very light ochre tone in the pinks in the "older" petals. My green is viridian, transparent oxide red and a touch of cadmium lemon, just scrubbing in where the leaves will be.

Step 2 basically shows how I proceed with the "dark pink blob" I started with. Over some of the background, I add a greenish (viridian and touch of white) to the yellow ochre. The rose petals are varying combinations (trial and error) of quinacridone rose, yellow ochre, white, permanent magenta, and ultramarine blue. The blue and yellow ocre are very necessary to take the edge off the rose color. The petals are painted on top of my dark block-in and some of the dark remains as the shadow interior darks of the rose. Sometimes I go in and push then more violet with ultramarine, rose, grayed with yellow ochre. 

Step 3 shows that I've added an additional leaf or two on the upper left to try out because I thought it would be better for the design. You'll see later that I take them out again. I work on developing the leaves a little more, mostly by painting the background behind them to bring them out. I'm just trying for placement of them without detail at this point. This photo turned out with a blue cast to it - sorry!

Finished rose with details on the leaves and I've also added more of a "pinkish yellow ochre" just to the top left of the rose and to the bottom right of the rose (just softening what I had done in the previous step), and I have softened the top right petal's edge where it meets the background.

After painting it, I picked the rose and here is a photo of it. As you can even see in the photo, the petal on the left has a lot of warm ochre color in it, compared to the petals nearer the center of the rose, which are much pinker because they are younger.