PleinAirpril - April art challenge

I'm thinking of giving PleinAirpril a shot this year.  It's an art challenge where we attempt to do one small painting or other art project, outside in the open air, each day for the month of april.

To celebrate Earth Day and connect pleinair painters around the world, Warrior Painters launched the #PleinAirpril Challenge in 2017. Now in its 10th year, this global painting challenge continues to bring together thousands of artists to observe, explore, and create throughout the month of April.


This year’s theme is Harmony in Contrast ✨

I'm going to give it a shot this year, and see where it goes.  I'm not going to do the whole instagram thing, but an important part of this challenge is to share our attempts and keep accountable.  If anyone wants to join in, please feel free to post your art here.  

How to Participate


Paint one painting every day in April

Share your work on Instagram and/or other social media platforms of your choice ... (like permies)
...

Guidelines


Any medium is welcome - traditional or digital

Painting from life is encouraged, but photo studies or virtual pleinair are welcome too

The goal is consistency, exploration, and growth!

This year I have two focuses:  Composition and Trees.  

As for the medium, that's the harder bit.

My original plan was to use oil paint as I've dabbled a bit with en plein air oil painting last year.  There is a lot of room for improvement.



I feel like I got worse as the summer progressed.

A lot of that is composition issues combined with nerves.  

This year, life is strong and I have no idea if I could find 2 hours a day just to paint.  So I've simplified my kit to a small 4x4" watercolour sketchbook, a tombo mechanical pencil (mentioning the brand name because it has a massive eraser built in that is one of the best I've ever tried), and my fude fountain pen (looks like someone dropped it nib down, but it makes amazing marks).



This is the minimum kit for making a picture a day.  

I'm going to try to focus on simplification and composition - and values.  The ink should make it easy enough... in theory.  

Basically, it's a set I'm comfortable with, but have a lot of skills to improve.  

My sample art took 20 minutes to decide what to paint, 20 min to do the sketch and line work, then 2 hours to paint with watercolours (because drying time sucks).  Hopefully, things will speed up to just do the ink stuff.  If time allows, I can add in some additional mediums (thus the watercolour paper).  

I might try a few days with photos.

I have an idea for the first day, then maybe I'll get inspired to try a few more.

I will attempt to keep the photos dragon free, but I can't guarantee anything...

I love the dragons.  

As it's still frost and rainy season, and health is intermittently good, I'm going to expand my guidelines for myself to include bringing nature indoors to paint from, or painting my houseplants.  So long as I'm attempting to make art from life, that should make me happy.  

I'm not sure how much inspiration I'll have to do many of these, but this is the one that sprang to mind when I saw the theme of Harmony in Contrast.

It's a cherry tree we planted a few years ago. We had perfect growing weather when we planted it and it grew far too fast, putting out huge amounts of foliage and not bothering about its roots because it thought there would always be abundant water. And then summer arrived with a vengeance and the poor thing had a reality check and keeled over and died.

Only it didn't quite die. Somewhere deep below ground there was just enough life left in the roots for the little tree to try again. The main 'trunk' was dead, but a couple of shoots grew from low down and just about survived. We had been thinking of ripping the tree up and trying again with another one, but I'm a big softie really and thought that maybe, just maybe, the little tree had learned its lesson and we should give it another chance. And lo and behold, this year there are abundant white cherry blossoms bursting with life around the dead trunk of the young tree. A bit of me wants to cut the dead trunk right back, but those blooms wave to me every time I step outside and say 'Look at us mum - I told you we could do it!' and I smile at them and see the dead, splitting bark on the old trunk and am glad I gave it a second chance.

I am trying something artsy but not sure if it will work.

I got a plotter so I can print big pictures and took some of my better ones and resize them to make…. Wait for it…. A backsplash in my kitchen. I then cover the pictures with glass to protect the pictures and for easy cleaning.

My thoughts are that at $30 a backsplash it is cheaper and more unique than white subway tile. It’s also easy to change out the pictures. This house is on an island so I went with pictures of a coastal theme. (The pictures are all island pictures from here)

But you guys and gals can be the judge on whether it works or not.

(Note: I have yet to build my cabinet doors or drawers)

I've been clearing the weeds out of the next area of the GAMCOD bed that I want to plant up soon. The idea was to clear it and then lay a strip of landscape fabric over it to make sure it stays weed-free until I'm ready for planting.

Only I've been 'Ruth Stouting' it, taking kitchen scraps and tucking them under the mulch. I'd already dug out and transplanted an avocado seedling that had grown in a different bit of the bed and although it's struggling after the transplant I'm very much hoping it will survive as it's already survived the hardest frost we've had since we moved here six years ago. And then as I was pulling some of the bigger weeds up, I noticed that one of them looked very much like a peach seedling. As it happened, it was growing right near the edge of the bed so I weeded around it and laid the landscape fabric so it could keep growing. One 'weed' triumphantly claiming the right to grow.

I might dig it up and put it in a pot so I can nurture it a bit because I really want the GAMCOD bed to be for veggies and there are other places that peach trees could grow, but now it's sitting there looking smug at having not been pulled up like the real weeds.

There is a big heap of twiggy trimmings from a cherry tree that my neighbours pruned. I've already rescued the big pieces that need to be sawn, but there are still a whole load of small bits left that can be snapped or cut with snippers or loppers.

They want to clear the heap next by next week because of the fire risk.

I want tubs of kindling for the rocket mass heater, and for emergency fuel for cooking just in case of power outages and gas shortages.

So the heap of fire-risk material is gradually being snapped and snipped and lopped into tubs of kindling and cooking fuel.

I think the phrase "fallen at the first" is my motto for this event.  Not sure what that means, but I do feel bruised for not managing to sketch.

Day one, bad health, bad storm, life happened, for some reason, thought it was March 1st.

Day two, attempted to sketch, gander mistook me for a goose, when that was delt with, got overwhelmed by so much stuff and didn't sketch anything.



Apple blossom from a photo I took last year.  

The watercolours are a travel set I put together a few years ago but haven't had a chance to use (we might be seeing a lot of paints with that story).  It turned out okay.

Wow, that would be beautiful as a stained glass window as well!

Have you ever got into that form of art Raven? You would do well drawing your own window designs for sure!

It's raining today, with heavy rain forecast.

The prickly pear are bursting into life as the weather warms up, but the rain is encouraging the brambles to take over.

That corner of the garden is exceedingly prickly...

Pointy but pretty.  

100% of the energy I have for being outside is going into the garden.  It looks like summer is arriving a month early, so I'm in a bit of a panic.

Resting on the sofa, i can see the top of the peach tree.  The blossoms are past their peak, but it's a fun tree to paint.

Same fude pen, with inktense for the colours.

The sun is getting stronger, which gives not only brighter light but deeper shadows.

The parsley is bursting with life and throwing up flower spikes, which means it will likely soon die. Its crisp, vibrant stems have dollops of white froth, each concealing a tiny froghopper nymph. Or maybe, just maybe it has something to do with the cuckoo singing incessantly up on the hill behind me. I swear he comes down and spits all over my parsley to clear his throat before he starts driving us all cuckoo with his calls.

Of course, I find myself singing back at him. This is the song we all learned when we were kids - it starts about 30 seconds in to the video - Y Gwcw - Dafydd Iwan

And here is a page with the lyrics, including an English translation. Though all the translations I've seen seem to completely miss the point of the chorus. Holi means searching. It's about searching for the cuckoo. Searching as in the sort of search you do on google, looking for answers.

Here's a short video about cuckoo spit.

And a little ditty I learned as a kid...~

The cuckoo comes in April.
He sings his song in May.
In the middle of June
he changes his tune.
And then he flies away.

Though he arrives a bit earlier in Portugal than he used to in Wales and he's already singing in April here.

I didn't manage to harvest all the rose-hips last year and there are loads of them still on the wild rose bush above the house.

It doesn't care though, and it's flowering again anyway!

I'll do better this year rose, I promise...