Painting Watercolours En Plein Air on a Beautiful Autumn Morning

There are some mornings when an art lesson becomes about far more than the finished painting.

This was one of them.

We were fortunate to have a beautiful autumn morning in Cornwall, with sunshine, calm air and enough shelter from the breeze to sit comfortably outside and paint en plein air.

My student settled down with his watercolours surrounded by trees, grass and soft autumn light. In the distance we could hear a cockerel calling. There was no rush. No pressure to produce a perfect picture. Instead, the morning became about looking carefully, understanding what was in front of us and enjoying the experience of painting outdoors.

Why Painting Outdoors Changes the Way You See

Painting en plein air asks you to become much more aware of your surroundings.

You begin to notice how light changes across a tree trunk, how distant colours become quieter, how edges disappear into shadow and how one area of a scene connects visually with another.

A photograph freezes everything. Real life does not.

Outside, light shifts, leaves move, shadows change and colours respond to the atmosphere around them. That makes painting outdoors a wonderful way of learning to observe rather than simply reproduce.

This is one of the reasons I have always placed so much importance on visual awareness in my teaching.

The Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation of Art

I often describe the fundamentals of art as its grammar, spelling and punctuation.

If you understand how visual information works, you are not restricted to one subject or one medium.

You begin to understand:

• shape
• tone
• colour
• perspective
• edges
• depth
• composition
• light and shadow

These are the foundations beneath almost everything we draw and paint.

Once those foundations begin to make sense, you can translate them into watercolour, acrylic, oils, pastel, pencil, charcoal, collage and many other media.

You are no longer dependent upon someone showing you how to copy one particular painting.

You begin to understand what you are actually seeing.

Moving from One Art Medium to Another

Of course, every medium has its own personality.

Watercolour behaves very differently from acrylic. Oils have different possibilities again. Pastels, pencils and charcoal each require their own handling.

There are also practical differences in the order in which you work.

With one medium you may work from light towards dark. With another you may build from dark towards light. Some methods encourage working from the background forwards, while others allow far more freedom to change and repaint areas as the picture develops.

Those technical differences matter.

But underneath them, the same visual principles remain.

A tree still needs believable structure. Perspective still affects size and distance. A focal point still needs to be considered. Colour still changes depending upon light, atmosphere and surrounding colour.

That is why learning the fundamentals gives an artist so much more freedom.

Watercolour Is Not Simply About Technique

Watercolour is often presented as a collection of techniques… washes, wet into wet, dry brush, lifting out and layering.

Those techniques are useful, but technique alone does not necessarily help you understand what to paint, what to leave out or why one area should be stronger than another.

That comes from learning how to see.

During a lesson I may be talking about the softness of a distant hedge, the change of colour across foliage, the weight of a tree trunk, the relationship between positive and negative shapes or where the viewer's eye is being drawn.

The brush and paint are the tools.

The real work begins with observation.

Learning to Look Rather Than Copy

One of the most common problems I see when teaching is that people have become accustomed to drawing what they think something looks like rather than what is actually in front of them.

We all develop visual shortcuts.

A tree becomes a symbol for a tree. A window becomes a neat rectangle. A face becomes a collection of familiar features.

But real observation is far more interesting.

The moment you begin questioning those assumptions, you start to see different shapes, unusual angles, changes in tone and relationships you may previously have missed.

That is where drawing and painting begin to become much more individual.

Rather than teaching everybody to produce the same picture, I want each student to gain enough understanding to develop their own way of working.

The Value of Slowing Down

There was another element to this particular morning that I loved.

It was peaceful.

We were outside in the sunshine, protected from the breeze, listening to the sounds around us and concentrating on the scene in front of us.

Painting has an extraordinary ability to make you pay attention to the present moment.

You begin looking at tiny shifts in colour, the spaces between branches, the movement of water or the shape of light across a surface.

For a while, everything else becomes less important.

It is one of the reasons people often find art so absorbing.

Art Lessons in Cornwall and Mawgan Porth

I teach private art lessons in Cornwall, including art lessons at Mawgan Porth, as well as other locations depending upon the student, subject and weather.

Mawgan Porth has been an important part of my work as an artist and teacher for many years. Its beach, cliffs, changing tides, skies and rock formations provide an extraordinary range of subjects for anyone wanting to understand landscape, perspective, colour and atmosphere.

Some students work with me outdoors. Others prefer a studio setting. Lessons can concentrate on drawing, perspective, painting, colour or a particular difficulty within an existing piece of work.

I also teach by Zoom, which means the same principles can be explored with students much further afield.

Understanding Before Technique

My approach has always been based on the idea that understanding gives you freedom.

If you understand why perspective changes what you see, you can apply it to thousands of different subjects.

If you understand how light affects colour, you can make better decisions in any painting.

If you understand how the eye travels around an image, your compositions become more intentional.

And if you understand the difference between what your brain assumes and what your eyes are actually seeing, drawing itself begins to change.

That knowledge can then travel with you into whichever medium you choose.

A Morning Worth Remembering

This particular lesson was not about producing a grand finished masterpiece.

It was about learning, observing and enjoying the process.

A quiet autumn morning.

Watercolour on the table.

Sunshine through the trees.

A cockerel calling somewhere in the distance.

And the pleasure of sitting outside, looking properly and painting what was there.

Sometimes those are the art lessons that stay with us longest.

Photographs shared with permission.