Plein Air Painting in Black Mountain, NC

OooooOooo I just love plein air painting in the summertime. Nothing marries my need for my adventure with my love for painting more than painting outside.

I first started painting plein air in early college with my dad when I would come home to Columbia or when we would head to Blowing Rock, NC for vacation. He would set me up with one of his old easels and share his process and what he was seeing. Those instructions still filter through my thoughts as I capture the scene in front of me and I am so so grateful for his teaching.

This Sunday, I packed my gear and carved out some time for myself to head down to a swimming hole in Black Mountain, NC. I didn’t totally know what to expect as I put on my hat and hiked down the steep bank to the river. I passed people bathing in the sun and hanging in enos and heard big splashes as kids took turns jumping off the bank into the cool river. It as a really hot day for Asheville so it was a sweet relief when I had to take my shoes off and wade through knee high water to get to the spot I wanted to paint.

The river wrapped a few curving banks before pushing straight for a while, piling rock beds on either side of the bank. Large boulders guided the swirling reflections as they flowed onward to a future soaked in sun. I pulled out the legs on my tripod and pressed them into the creek bed and stood there right in the water, barefoot, the creek cooling my feet. It smelled deep and earthy and the sound of the river rippling by brought me focus.

River scenes, or really anything with water, are really challenging to me. Judging the rock placements and reflections and somehow making it actually look like water is always astonishingly hard. There are so many moving, swirling colors, so much depth and greenery. Its hard to focus on one thing. This day, I didn’t even think about how hard it was going to be, I just fell into my process to have fun, not caring about the result.

I started with a toned background in a bit of a gold color. I always tone the background so that yummy color can show through in the background and bring the painting together. After that, I blocked in the shadows of the rocks and larger shapes and a few overhanging trees to get the general composition. Then I worked on filling in each layer of muddy green brown and taupe and emerald, and umbers. Looking at the finished painting, the colors feel like that I want my home to look and feel like—deep, earthy, moody and natural.

My plein air paintings are always more impressionistic than my studio paintings and I always love this difference. I’m certainly painting faster because of the time constraint of changing light but there’s some magic sense of seeing the landscape in front of my that allows me to put a brushstroke down working to change it and shape it into something more perfect. There’s some aspect of play that goes missing as soon as I walk inside. Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling the life that’s happening in front of me opens something up inside of me, inviting me to move with it and capture it and be filled with it. My perfectionism gets quieted as I accept the current perfection of the scene as is and know there’s nothing I can do but enjoy it and capture a fraction of its feeling making marks on my canvas as the landscape makes marks on me.

What is your favorite landscape? The one that has ‘marked you’ the most? I’d love to hear from you, just shoot me an email at ashleyozmintart@gmail.com and introduce yourself, I’d love to connect!