Riot of irises - Oil on canvas

Riot of irises - Oil on canvas (14" x 18") by Benoit Philippe

After the yellow ones, some pale blue irises are now in bloom in the garden...

Yellow irises - oil painting

Making the most of the good weather we had last week-end, I painted these yellow irises that are in bloom in our back garden.

Yellow irises - Oil on canvas panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

Roses - oil painting

A quick painting done in the garden, before the flowers fade.

Roses - Oil painting (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

Coate Water Lake

Coate Water Lake - Oil painting (18" x 14") by Benoit Philippe

I did this plein-air painting on Saturday in Coate Water Country Park in Swindon (England). I sat on a bench sheltered by trees, which became convenient when the rain fell shortly after I started... I was also glad to work with oil and not watercolour.

Here is the palette I used for this painting. All paints are by Winsor & Newton:

• Titanium white (Griffin Alkyd paint)
• Cadmium Lemon
• Cadmium Yellow Deep
• Cadmium Red
• Alizarin Crimson
• Cobalt Turquoise Light 
• Cobalt Blue Hue (Griffin Alkyd)
• French Ultramarine (Griffin Alkyd)
• Phthalo Blue (Griffin Alkyd)

St John Baptist & St Helen graveyard - watercolour

I am not usually painting in graveyards and I only did it for a commission. That said, there is nothing sinister about the graveyard of St John Baptist & St Helen church in Wroughton (The village of Wroughton is located 3 miles south of Swindon, England).

St John Baptist & St Helen church graveyard - Watercolour (38 x 30 cm) by Benoit Philippe

The churchyard covers around five acres grass, trees (including some old yew trees with wide branches) and wild areas.

The historic church building contains a few features from the 12th century, was extended in the 14th and 15th centuries, and altered in the 19th century. Around the church are centuries old headstones.

The lower and newest part of the graveyard is located down a planted bank and looks towards a beautiful valley. This is the view I was asked to paint on location.

Le Regal - Watercolour

 I am in Le Regal, which is hamlet near the village of Antraigues-sur-Volane  (Ardeche, France). The weather is magnifiscent and I could sit outside on Sunday to paint.

Le Regal – watercolour (13.5 x 21 cm) by Benoit Philippe (click to enlarge)

My temporary studio (cup of coffee included)

I brought my Sennelier watercolour travel box with me, but my sister-in-law gave me some paper and lent me a round box of Pebeo watercolours.

The material I used:

• The paper is Montval watercolour paper by Canson – snowy surface, 125 lbs. A very nice paper to work with. It has a smooth surface and is sturdy enough not to buckle when wet.

• Pebeo watercolour – 24 half pans with central mixing palette: This is a very nice box of artist quality watercolours. All the colours you need are there logically laid out in circle. The clever bit is the reproduction of the pans with the name of each colour on the lid of the box. This way, it is child play to replace a colour when you need too (it saves you sticking all the labels on a card as I do to remember which colours I put in my watercolour box…). This box is light and would be easy to carry around in a bag.

• My pocket reversible brush from Rosemary & Co

Photograph of the view I painted

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The Hackpen White Horse

The Hackpen White Horse - Oil on canvas panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

This white horse has several name, probably because of the surrounding villages. It is named The Hackpen or Broad Hinton or Winterbourne Bassett white horse.

White horses are an ancient tradition in Wiltshire. There are made of chalk and you can see them from far away. You can read more on the subject on the Wiltshire White Horses website.

I did this painting on site last week-end, in the early afternoon of Sunday. I stopped the car on the side of the road and sat on an old tree trunk with my pochade box. The weather was splendid and I ended-up with sunburns on my forearms - noticeable incident considering the dreadful weather we had most of the summer in the UK.

I took a reference photo, just in case, but didn't use it.

Grass waves in the Lawn

Grass waves in the Lawns - Oil painting on canvas panel (8" x 6") by Benoit Philippe

Saturday morning was glorious and I went outside to paint in the park, at the end of our street in Swindon (England). At the moment, the overgrown grass has some purple grey seed heads.

I liked the path going through the long grass and the yellow opening in the background. The texture of the foliage offered a good contrast with the smooth grass waves.

I added two walkers to give a sense of scale and perspective and to provide a focus point. The figure in the foreground also helps to break the yellow pane of yellow.

Walk in Coate Water park

Walk in Coate Water park - Oil on canvas panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

I painted this scene in Coate Water park in Swindon. A path goes around the lake and, in this area, it is shaded by old trees.

The buttercup meadow

The buttercup meadow - Watercolour (31 cm x 39 cm) by Benoit Philippe

I painted this watercolour on site during the Eater break we spent in the North of France. This spot is located in Vertain (France), a village not far from Valenciennes. There is a stream surrounded by meadows which offers many scenes to paint. I though I would paint the river itself with the willows but found this scene.

The buttercups were glowing in the afternoon sun and the wind, bending the grass, was making the foreground interesting.

Queen's Park stairs - oil painting

Queen's Park stairs - oil painting (10" x 14") by  Benoit Philippe

With spring, it's time to go outside to do some plein air painting. First one of the season. The weather is still uncertain in England, so you have to pick the right time.

6 tips when painting on location in the city

This article was first published in my newsletter "Notes From My French Easel" – January 2011. Follow the link to subscribe to the newsletter.


Here are six tips to take on board next time you go paint outside in a city:

Rue de Rivoli – Oil on linen canvas (24 x 18 cm) by Benoit Philippe

1. Avoid the rush hour: In big cities, it is better to avoid commuting in public transport during rush hours (in particular if you are bringing back your fresh oil painting). The same goes for setting-up your material on location. Get-up early and start to paint early. Not only you will benefit from the morning light, but you will avoid an army of tourists going in your way.


2. Choosing the right spot: Michael McNamara gave an excellent tip on where to place your easel when painting in city areas: “Look for a stationary object to paint next to or behind, such as a mailbox or a lamppost that pedestrians will have to go around anyway,” (Michael McNamara's Urban Plein Air Tips – published in American Artists magazine)


3. Anticipate where the sun is going: How much time do you have before the sun disappears behind one of the buildings around you?


4. Keep your valuables at home: take the minimum with you. Have some cash in your pocket, but don’t carry around your credit card, jewellery or expensive equipment. Once you are concentrated on painting, you could become an easy target for pickpockets. If you have a bag on the ground, secure it by putting the front leg of your easel through the bag handles.


5. Take a couple of snapshots: I generally try to take some photographs of the spot I am painting as a safety net. It is also a great way to capture passersby in order to add them later in your painting. This way, you avoid painting a ghost town.

6. Take a few business cards with you or, even better -- take some blank cards and a pen: Many times, when painting on location, I have been asked if the painting was for sale or if I was exhibiting. This could be a great opportunity to add someone to your mailing list. Ask the person if he or she wants to give you their name and email address so that you can tell them when the painting will be exhibited. If they don’t want to give you their details, you can still hand them your business card.


Plein-air painting Cityscapes

Autumn walk in Clouts Wood - my week-end plein air session

On Saturday morning, I drove to the near-by village of Wroughton (Wiltshire - England) to paint in Clouts Wood. The trail starts at the top of the hill and leads into a nice secluded valley. There is a stream and, with the recent rain, the path was muddy.

Here is the finished painting at the end of the session.

Autumn walk in Clouts Wood - Oil on canvas panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

There is nothing like painting plein air. It is hard to recapture in the studio the atmosphere of a place, unless you sketch or make a small painting to fix your memories.

First I wanted to find the right spot. I had to cross a field where cows were eating some shrubs. One of them started to run in my direction and I had to reach the gate faster than I planned to...

After that, I stopped several times, watching in all directions: your best view may be in your back. There was an old elm with yellow and orange foliage. It was tempting, but I wanted to capture a view of the valley. I crossed the shallow stream, walking carefully on some dead branches.

The Spot below was good. The overcast weather made the colours grey and it would have been difficult just to work from a reference photograph. I shot one with my digital camera, just in case the rain would come.

I sat on my folding 3-legged stool. Not the most stable seat on soft grassy ground...

Ready to paint

I get ready to paint. Colours are laid on the palette and I have a pair of mittens (it's cold and  I need to be able to move my fingers).

Below is the initial under-painting. After that, I did not stop until the end.

I did not see any rambler. The only visitors were a couple of grey squirrels, a noisy bird and a sheep with a black head that watched me from the other side of the stream and then went away.

11:00 a.m. I have finished the painting and head back to the car. I can hear the first drops of rain hitting the leaves.

How to set-up your French easel (on your own)

This will seem very basic if you've owned a French easel for a long time, but can you save you some guess work if you just acquired one.

First extend the back leg which is folded under the box of the easel.

Then comes the tricky part. I balance the box on my knee and hold one side of the box with my hand.

I unfold one the leg opposite to the side I am holding with my hand.

Standing on two legs, the easel is more stable and I don't need the support of my knee any more. I can now unfold the third leg.

I make sure the box is level and adjust the extension of the leg if necessary (if the surface is bumpy).

Now I can open the box and get ready to paint.

Snow in the garden - oil painting

This is a view from the kitchen's window. The snow makes everything look pretty and somehow magical.

Snow in the garden - oil on canvas panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

Painting the sky

This article was first published in "Frequency Magazine" – November 2009.


If you are a landscape painter, you already know that the sky plays a major role in your overall painting. In order to avoid a bland division of space, I would advocate not placing the horizon line right in the middle of your painting. This means that, if you choose a low horizon, the sky could take more than two third of the painted surface and, if you go for a high horizon, around one third of the surface. The last thing you want is a boring sky.

Weymouth Bay - Oil painting by John Constable - National Gallery (Source: Wikimedia)

The sky is more than a backdrop on a theatre’s stage because it conditions the quality of the light and therefore the brightness and tone of all colours. A blue sky reflects on all objects in the landscape. In the same way, a stormy sky will shed a grey light on the land and bring out very specific colours. If you work from photographs, you cannot just take a scene captured on a sunny day, change the colour of the sky to grey and hope it works as a rainy day scene. The whole palette is affected by the quality of the light and this artificial juxtaposition would just feel wrong.

There is nothing like a blue sky. What I mean by this is that you will find many types of blue colours in the sky, many nuances and variations; and this is what makes the sky so interesting to paint. An excellent way to analyze and compare the colour of the sky in different areas is to take a sheet of white A4 paper in portrait format and cut out two small square windows (one square inch will do) ; one two inches from the upper edge and another one two inches from the lower edge. Then, hold the piece of paper against the sky you are observing and compare the two “samples” of sky in the square windows. Because you isolate these two areas, you can see the difference in colour.

Imagine that the sky is like a high ceiling that goes down as it recedes and merges with the horizon. The colour of the sky fades and its intensity lessen as it goes towards the horizon.

Let’s now talk about clouds. They are the most interesting features as they bring diversity, volume and movement to the sky. They also have an abstract quality that fires the imagination. Do you remember looking at clouds as a child and finding all sorts of figures, animal and objects in these morphing clouds?

Clouds come in various forms and shapes. Be aware that different types of clouds are found at different altitudes: high level clouds include Cirrus; medium-level clouds include Altostratus and Altocumulus. Stratocumulus, Stratus, Nimbostratus; and Cumulus are all low-level clouds. Finally, a Cumulonimbus is a cloud that develops vertically. As painters, we are interested in different texture and clouds can be transparent like Cirrus or opaque and creamy like Cumulus.

Here are some pointers when you paint clouds:

• Clouds are not flat but three dimensional objects subject to the rules of perspective. Think of them as rounded objects lit by the sun.


• As they recede towards the horizon, clouds appear smaller.


• Introduce variety in the shape of your clouds, while maintaining the characteristics of the family they belong to.


• Take note of the position of the sun and make sure your light and shadows are consistent in all your clouds.


• Clouds are not white. They also reflect the colour of the sky. Reserve the white for highlights.


• Clouds have shadows in them. The difference is sometime subtle but you will always have some type of shadow areas with slightly darker tones. I like to use a mix of ultramarine with a hint of Yellow Ochre and Carmine Alizarin to create shadows in clouds.


• By default, you should treat the edges of clouds as soft edges. Even if you see a well defined outline of a Cumulus, chances are that some blending happens on the edge due to the misty nature of clouds. Also observe how the tone at the base of clouds is very close to the tone of the sky touching such a base, so that an optical blending happens between the two.
  

The best way to capture the variety of the sky and clouds is to go out and do some plein-air painting. During windy days, clouds move fast and if you are inexperienced, I would recommend that you take a couple of reference photographs for your peace of mind. When you paint from nature, quickly draw the general shape of the clouds, mark their position and outline their shadows. You can make some adjustments and refine them after you have painted the colour of the sky.




Painting technique Landscape painting Painting skies

The diving board

Last week-end, I went to Coate Water Country Park to paint. The first painting I did was blown away by the wind and flipped-over on the grass. Not too much damage to the fresh paint, except for the lower right corner that is smudged with eath. This is the risk of working outdoor. I will show it to you later, once I have reworked the damaged part.

I then did a second painting. The lake is a 56-acre reservoir that was built in the 1820s as a headwater tank for the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal. I am not sure when the diving board was built, but it is not used anymore.

The diving board - oil on linen canvas (27 cm x 22 cm) by Benoit Philippe

By the Lez river - watercolour

This a watercolour was done in plein air, by the river Lez. Under the cover of the trees, the summer temperature was bearable.

Near the Lez river - watercolour by Benoit Philippe

Irises and peonies - oil painting

During May, we went to the North of France and I had time to paint outside. The “Walled garden”study is the first painting I did during the week. This was a quick painting done with the intent to come back to the garden and paint a bigger and more elaborate work. It was also a sort of warm-up, as I had not painted from nature for some time.

The walled garden is only a few metres from the house we were staying in. It is a beautiful place with fruit trees, irisses, peonies and a well maintained vegetable patch. There are always birds flying around.

“Walled garden” study - Oil on board by Benoit Philippe

The second work was painted at the end of the week. By that time, I had worked on several small paintings and it shows: I was "in the flow". I chose a different angle to use the path as the device to lead the eye towards the house behind the wall.

“Irises and peonies” - Oil on Canvas by Benoit Philippe

Find the right location for you plein-air painting in advance

You can wander for hours and hope to find a good spot for your plein-air painting session; however, you can end-up walking more than you paint. It is much more efficient to explore the area in advance and take note of the different potential painting spots. It won’t solve all your troubles (for instance, you find a big van blocking the view you planned to paint), but it will help to prevent most issues.





How to get the most of your preparatory expedition:

• Explore the area at the same time that you plan to go painting the next day. This way, you will check the place under similar lighting conditions. This is particularly important if you paint in a city where buildings can block the sunlight.

• Take practicalities into account: it won’t work if your ideal painting spot is in the middle of the road. If you know that the place you want to paint is full of tourists, aim at painting early in the morning, before the place is invaded.

• How easy it is to access the place? Can you park your car nearby or would you have to carry your material over a long distance?

• Are there any amenities you wish to have? If you paint in a public garden, you can enjoy a cup of coffee and take a break in the middle of your session.

• “Open areas” versus “closed areas”: If you paint in the middle of the countryside, with fields and only a few trees, the course of the sun should not be a major concern. If you are surrounded by mountains, hills or tall buildings, how long will you have before they block-out the sun?
  

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