A few weeks ago I taught a plein air workshop in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. We all had a great time, great food, wonderful views, and lots of hard work.

Here are three works I painted there, my afternoons were free to do my own work. 

Plein air painting, is a genre of painting direct from life--you basically hike out in nature with a movable studio. One of the hallmarks of plein air painting is quick, fluid strokes. They are more like radically quick sketches. The reason for this is simply that the sun moves, hence the scene you start with changes with the movement of the sun--if the artist works slow, they end with a confused mess of contradictory lights, shadows, colors.

I pretty much painted all of these in under 45 minutes. My comfort level has normally been with pastel on paper, but on this  trip I had tremendous ease with the technique, and flew through the works; they felt like I was painting by pure feeling.

Green Stripe

Tres Senores

The Door

When I got back to New York I quickly made five interiors, based on variations of the technique in Mexico. I was so excited about the outcome that I decided the time was good to re-visit Rhodes, Greece. So I booked my flight a couple of days ago, and I will be having lunch Mediterranean seaside this coming Tuesday. 

In the Pink

Wedge

I will be painting 3 to 4 paintings everyday in Greece for the month of September, I will probably come back with about 60 to 80 small plein air paintings. 

Cheers,

Michael