Painting outside!

Last summer I decided to finally try my hand at painting landscapes outside. I've done it once before whilst on holiday in Scotland but it was winter and freezing cold and I had to keep going back inside every ten minutes to warm my hands up!

The first thing I painted was a practice sketch of the bird bath in my garden. I wanted to see how the paint reacted differently to being indoors. I used acrylic paint and found that it dries a lot quicker outside. I also noticed that dark colours seem brighter outside, which means when you take the painting indoors it looks darker, so I had to try and paint everything brighter than it looked.

Bird bath - acrylic painting

Dinas Bran arches - acrylic painting

My first trip out was to Castell Dinas Bran in Llangollen. I made this little study of one of the castle walls using acrylic paint on canvas paper. It was pretty windy up there so I had to chase my paper down a hill a couple of times but I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I also tried out a chalk pastel sketch but I found that wind and pastels is a messy combination!

My next painting adventure was up the panorama near Llangollen. I took a couple of canvases with me this time. My first painting was a view of Castell Dinas Bran. Then I found an interesting row of trees surrounded by heather. It was a lot less windy up there this time which made things much easier. Sometimes when painting I can be a bit too rigid and picky with the details so I made a real effort to be looser with these. I'm really happy with how they turned out and I'm going to try and paint more like this in the future.

Dinas Bran from the panorama - acrylic painting

Purple Trees - acrylic painting

I would have liked to do more of this but unfortunately we didn't have a great summer in terms of weather. Hopefully this summer will be better because I love painting outside!