The Artist's Road Painting the World's Beautiful Places

Painting the Feel of Summer

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Summer II     32 x 48"     Oil     John Hulsey

   When I am out painting a landscape in any season, I’m trying to capture not just the light on the subject, but also the temperature of the air around me as I paint. I want my viewers to experience, as much as possible, what I feel when I’m outside. If I’m painting a snow-covered scene in winter, I want the experience to look and feel frosty. If I am painting summer, then I want them to not only see the heat of summer, but also sense that intensity of light and heat pouring down on the somnolent landscape. It is a big challenge and I don’t know any way to achieve it other than painting directly from nature. So how is this done?

   I can offer a few pointers here for those plein air painters who would like to try it. My own experiences with painting temperature were not intentional, as such. I was just out in all kinds of weather trying to make paintings. I think what helped a lot was that I was painting almost solely in watercolor at that time, trying to teach myself how to complete a picture on site in an hour or two. I was working in the amazing landscape of the Hudson River Valley, so inspiration was all around me. The great benefit of the watercolor medium is that one can rapidly create a feeling of atmosphere with thin washes of color. Establishing that atmospheric effect was always the first thing that I focused on and that decision guided all the other decisions for the rest of the painting. There is no going back and fiddling or correcting big errors as one can in oil or acrylic. This was foundational training for my subsequent efforts with oil. For example, if the cold, snowy air of winter tinted everything slightly blue, then those washes went down first and accurately. All following strokes either shared some of that cool tint, or were mixed to support that temperature. This not only harmonized my palette, but led to a sense of coolness in the final painting. I found that even if I got the lighting slightly wrong, the painting lost none of its feeling.

   This same process served me well in painting summer scenes, especially on glaringly hot July and August days. I found that summer painting also benefited by some exaggeration of colors. For example, I could start by painting the entire sheet or canvas with a bright warm yellow to effectively create the feeling of almost oppressive summer light and heat. Over that I would glaze in lighter values of background objects and receding planes to create an impressionistic, mirage-like effect.

   Today I work primarily in oil outside, but I often start with a small watercolor study to capture the atmosphere. I encourage you to try this process of capturing the feeling of the air in a study and then moving on to an oil painting of the subject. Start small. Don’t give up. It will improve your painting immensely.