Morning Light Albert Bridge, From Battersea Bridge, Oil on Board, 6" x 8" ( The Plein Air Process)

This is a plein air piece I embarked on on a breezy Saturday morning last week.

Morning Light Albert Bridge, From Battersea Bridge, Oil on Canvas, 6" x 8" SOLD

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I tried my best to take some stage shots to explain the "Outside -in" technique (where I cover the whole surface fairly quickly and work into it). I mostly use the "Inside-Out" Technique (where I start from the inside of the surface and work my way out)

Adebanji painting the scene- I sometimes sing while I paint!

This was quite tricky because the scene started with lots of water around the boats then all of a sudden, most of the water disappeared and I was left struggling to adjust the scene and painting the mud. But the light shone through and its effect on the mud made the piece interesting.

Stage 1- All the colours lined up, fresh and nice. Order is vital, it helps to know exactly where each colour is.  Sometimes I increase the speed at which I work and it's always nice to know I'm dipping into the right colour. I have a some drops of Liquin to help in fast drying. It's a grey day and I'm not really bothered about this, I'll try to work in some colours into the piece.

Stage 2- With very diluted Liquin I quickly start the sketching of the basic structures -the bridge, the boats and the background foliage and foreground trees. This is just about putting things in the right places.

Stage 3- Here I begin to cover the surface with the larger elements, which are sea and sky, all the surface is covered at this point.

Stage 4- At this stage I start making each component more definite. The little details that matter

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Stage 5- The water started vanishing away from around the area where the boats were positioned and kept drying up as the sun came out! I had to quickly adjust my painting to suit the change. This is not something I do very often but because this surface is so small, I could take the risk.

Final Stage 6- with the Full Set-up-This is when I had to stop, you can see that the river  has completely gone far back and the boats are almost on dry land. It's always good to be flexible in handling these tricky changing events while painting outdoors

SPECIAL QUOTE
Just get out there and paint, forget about the wind, the rain, the snow or the biting cold! They all seem to vanish when we start painting!"-Adebanji Alade