Painting En Plein Air: When the Smile Says It All

🎨 Sometimes the smile really does say it all…

I absolutely love this photograph. One of my lovely Cornwall art students took her paints away with her on holiday, found this beautiful view above Les Carroz, Arâches-la-Frasse in the French Alps, and settled down to paint en plein air. ⛰️🎨💙

And what a result.

There is a wonderful sense of depth in her artwork, taking your eye from the flowers and winding path in the foreground, through the trees and valley, and right back towards those distant mountains.

But perhaps what I love most is the smile. 😊

This wonderfully extended summer has brought so many beautiful artworks from the people I teach, both here in Mawgan Porth and across Cornwall, and further afield. But alongside the finished paintings have been so many moments like this… people becoming completely absorbed in painting, enjoying where they are, what they can see and what they are creating.

Learning to see rather than learning to copy

There is something very special about being able to take your paints anywhere, look at the world in front of you and have the confidence and independence to make your own decisions about how you want to capture it.

For me, that comes from understanding far more than art techniques alone.

The psychology of how we see, the maths of perspective, the science of light and colour and even the geology of the landscape can all help us understand what we are actually looking at, rather than simply painting what we think ought to be there.

Once you begin to understand those fundamentals of art, they are yours to take with you. The subject can change. The landscape can change. You might be painting with me beside the sea at Mawgan Porth in Cornwall one day and looking across a completely different landscape somewhere else in the world another day.

The important thing is that you are learning how to make those decisions for yourself.

Painting, mindfulness and being present

There is another wonderful side to painting en plein air too… the sense of mindfulness and wellbeing that can come from becoming completely absorbed in the moment.

In our increasingly fast-moving world, painting can give us something rather precious.

Time to pause… to really see… to notice… to experience… and simply to be present.

The landscape, the paints, the concentration and the pleasure of working something out for yourself can take over for a while. Everything else becomes quieter.

That is one of the reasons I love teaching art. Whether I am working with a complete beginner, an experienced artist, a child or an adult, my aim is not to teach someone to reproduce my painting. It is to help them understand the principles that allow them to develop their own artwork and their own technique.

My art lessons are available face to face in Cornwall, including Mawgan Porth, through one-to-one Zoom tuition, and through my online art teaching, for different ages and abilities.

And when somebody takes those skills away, finds their own view, sets up their paints and creates something entirely their own… that is rather wonderful.

Perhaps that combination of creativity, independence, mindfulness and being present is why sometimes the smile really does say it all. 😊🎨💙

Photograph and artwork shared with the artist’s permission.