Willow Leaves on the Pond

One of the things I’ve noticed about plein air painting is that it’s very easy to get too concerned with finding the perfect subject.

Maybe the light doesn’t seem good enough, so I don’t go out.

Or maybe I’ll actually go out, walk around the fields a bit, and nothing will strike me as a good enough subject, so I don’t paint.

But I think that’s missing the point. I think I’ve been missing the point, sometimes.

The point is just to get out and paint something, anything. Even if it’s just a practice piece, a painting of a tree.

In less than perfect light.

This little painting was done on an overcast day, and it’s of the pond just outside our house.

I literally took my coffee out with me to paint.

I can see this pond from the kitchen window when I’m washing up, and it’s gradually dawned on me that I love it, and that I’m fascinated by the shifting effects of light on it at different times of the day.

Like most of the surroundings of this house, it’s a bit untidy.

Not perfect.

But it does mean a lot to me, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at it in the two years we’ve been living here so far.

So I thought, well, it’s an overcast, pretty grim day. But, why don’t I just paint the pond?

And gradually, as I painted, I started to become fascinated with the difference in value between the willow leaves on the pond against the dark reflection of the tree in the water.

And also against the water where the sky was reflected, where those leaves all but disappeared, except for the little dark shadows they made on the surface.

I also find that the more I do this kind of painting, the more I become interested in finding unconventional ways to put the paint down that might better suggest something.

Like these light yellow willow leaves, floating on the pond (the palette knife). And the blades of grass at the bottom right (a spatula on its side).

The more I do these little paintings, often just of the area immediately surrounding the house, the more I realise that there is no perfect subject, there’s just what you’ve got.

And the job is really to try to make something beautiful out of that.

Or perhaps not even that.

Perhaps it’s just to learn something through the process of trying.

Today I turned 60, and I find I’m increasingly optimistic and enthusiastic about where my painting might be going now that I’m heading out of the studio and into the fields.

It feels like a new chapter, and as a very good, old friend who’s birthday is the day before mine (and is the same age as me) said to me, this feels like the start of chapter three.

I hope you’ll find this new chapter interesting too.

Best wishes,

Paul

P.S. Even one of the dogs came out with me for this one. This is Teddy, our new-ish rescue. I’ve managed to get the phthalo blue out of his coat now.