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“Remember that it is the general structure and movement of the tree that is important to your painting, not every twig.” – Joanna Carrington, Landscape Painting for Beginners, 1971

With the warm weather and long days, it seems only right to be outdoors with my paint palette. Escaping to the shade, away from the aggressive sun and heat, I can make watercolor studies of trees that I just couldn’t accomplish otherwise. And I really think that the speed which these dry outdoors, with the sunlight and warm breeze, give them a different quality somehow than those that dry slowly indoors.

I concentrated on the general shapes of the trees, their masses. The sunlight breaks them up, reducing them to fairly abstract things. Sitting on The Long Meadow in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, I just focused on the relationship between large areas and smaller areas, and between light and dark tonal values.

I used to get hung up on small details when working on these plein air studies. The idea is to work in a quick, broad manner and to concentrate on the larger, more general masses. Details have their place, but usually not here where they are actually really easy to let go of once you know how. Initially, though, that is a difficult thing to learn.