Watercolor is an excellent medium to paint landscapes outdoors from life, in what the French refer to as en plein air painting. En plein air translates to: outside. Painting on location is very different to studio painting. Painting en plein air forces you to assess the situation, make some important decisions quickly, and distill what you are seeing and experiencing into a single moment in time.

When drawing and painting from life, it is important to generalize shapes of any landforms and foliage so that they can be blocked in quickly. This is especially important if the subject is an outdoor scene where light is in constantly evolving. There is no time to be drawing individual leaves or trying to sketch each and every thin branch of a tree sitting across the yard. A typical plein air watercolor might take between 10 and 30 minutes, depending on complexity of the subject and the interest (or the ability) of the artist to see it through. It is not uncommon for the artist to grab a sketch and first impressions sitting outside and then spend some follow-up time with the piece in the studio afterwards. However, the most satisfying - and arguably the most accurate - painting process will come out of sitting in place, smelling the air, hearing the sounds, and experiencing the natural world while recording a small piece of it in real-time.

The painting above was done during a trip to the slopes of Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state. On this particular afternoon the clouds and mist closed in and this artist retreated to do a painting from the porch deck of a B&B. Notes that I wrote that afternoon mention the strong smell of hemlock trees and of the marsh across the road. It's useful to write notes to yourself along the margin of the painting or separately in a journal to bring back the full experience of remaining perfectly still outside and taking the whole experience in.