Painting without lines

[Plein Eire Administrator]

Here's a blog by Eric Michaels on painting without an initial drawing; the advantages and method used. 

http://enpleinairpro.com/EnPleinZone/newsletters/oct11.html

In it, Michaels talks about carving out the subject (2 swans) by painting the background.

This seemed apt because anyone who watched the Art in the Open 2011 video will have seen Lori Putnam painting a crowd scene on Main Street, Wexford. At that stage it was a brown mass in the middle of her painting but Lori reassures the puzzled interviewer that she is ,'gonna carve 'em out.' And carve 'em out she did, painting the negative shapes before adding some details and accents to produce a lively, cohesive crowd of shoppers as if by magic.

A further coincidence is that Lori posted this little beaut recently. I have to confess I like it even more than Eric Michaels' pair of swans.

What do you think?

[Plein Eire Administrator]

And while I'm plagiarising Eric Michaels' blog, 'Plein Air Zone', we mentioned one possible winter project of exploring ways of working from  your plein air pochades, including finding ways to scale up without losing the freshness, how to prevent making a slavish copy or a laboured version of the original.

Well here is another of Michaels' blogs which has his 'take' on this problem.

Why not give it a try when its too bad outside for painting?