Umbrella days

These are sketches from my brief stay in Paris in November, on a rainy day at the Louvre gallery. The reason I'm showing you them now is that I've been busy last week writing a new article for The Artist magazine and I'm using these sketches in the article. It's about painting a new studio painting from a plein air painting, which is something I've only really got to grips with in the last two years. I still have a lot to learn of course, but I am getting more intuitive and noticing where techniques used in the studio are changing my plein air work. For me the two really go hand in hand. As Kevin MacPherson says in his book 'Landscape painting inside and out' -

"Indoor and outdoor painting are complementary experiences. As memories of nature breathe life into your studio work, the disciplined approaches and principles you practice indoors will enable you to attack the canvas outdoors in new ways."

I will let you know when the article gets published :-)