Painting in Nature

Two artist friends and I got together for the weekend. It'd only been three or so years since we hung out, and in that time all three of us have discovered art. Rather amazing! So we decided to spend a whole day together in nature and do some doodling or whatever we wanted. 

We piled in their car and went to a hidden gem of a waterfall about 20 minutes away (Suok Waterfall in Goesan, S. Korea), but not connected to public transportation, which is very sad. During the whole time we were there, a few Koreans would come, take some pictures and almost immediately leave. Kind of like go to a culture spot, take a picture to prove you were there, and then go get something to eat. 

Meanwhile, the three of us were enjoying the beauty of nature. One friend used her plein air setup for the first time, the other took an artistic day off and just slept in his inflated chair-bed, and I took my inflatable chair-bed to the water's edge and painted in my tiny traveler's watercolor pad while soaking up the sun. Absolutely a perfect day!

My friend and I both like watercolor painting but our styles are so interestingly different. She prefers thick paints, preferably opaque and loves to paint in large designs. I like the transparency of watercolors and choose thin washes while using only transparent and semi-transparent pigments. I also tend to paint on much smaller paper, but that is partly because I like detail and partly because I frequently tuck my watercolor pad and altoid paint box in my purse or day pack.

The lesson I learned from this painting experience is NEVER PAINT FROM MEMORY! In my inflatable chair, it was awkward to access the Internet to keep looking at the picture I'd chosen to paint. Also with the sun so bright I couldn't see the screen clearly anyway, so I decided to just paint from memory, and what I remembered was a large frond over the toucan's head, so painted what I remembered .... however, the angle was totally different and the leaves were definitely in more muted tones. This frond turned out embarrassingly garish and overly broad and misshapen. Ugh. Other than that, I did kind of capture the essence of a jungle with light permeating through the foliage ...  so I did have some success.