Over six weeks in June-July 2021 I attended an in-person landscape painting class at Woodmere Art Museum. We met each Friday for 3 hours and painted a scene from somewhere on the grounds.
Here’s another painting from the class for you to see.
Thank you to Marta, our instructor, and to all my classmates for a great experience.
In our second session, held in late June, I arrived a little early in order to choose a location (a practice I would continue for the rest of the sessions). I chose a grouping of trees along the edge of the front lawn – some were healthy and others not so much. I liked the look of the group – it was as if they were people assembled to wait for the bus, let’s say.
It was a very hot, very sunny day. There were harsh shadows and strong light. I tried to portray this feeling in my picture.
After this class I resolved to make sure I painted from a shady location from now on.
Here is the painting I did.
Woodmere Landscape Two, 6/21. 18 x 24, acrylics on Masonite.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
Now this seems like a scene you enjoyed a bit more. The trees are animated, even the dead ones! They are very human/figure like.
Yes. In this picture I think I started to regain my own momentum and not listen so much to the teacher. Not that she was not right in whaqt she was teaching, but she had a different approach than I want to take, and I was having to get a grip on what I wanted to get out of the experiences myself, not just follow along (any teacher would just LOVE to read this, right…the stereotypical know it all student talking all right!)
I agree with this approach, Claudia. I have just about reached this point myself. Maybe it’s a natural progression. I love the painting!
Thank you. I try not to be a difficult student, I don’t contradict and I try to follow class assignments but it’s also got to come from the real me every time.
It’s great! Love the colour choices. A real sense of atmosphere too!
Thank you. It was a really hot sunny day and I wanted to get that across more than anything (other than those interesting tree shapes!)
Pretty! Am loving your color choices and agree that the trees look animated.
They’ve had a fundraiser at our mini Monet garden downtown this summer, where artists set up and paint in the garden and pay to do it, then they auction off their paintings to raise money to maintain the garden.
Plein air painting is fun. I would like to do more of it, just not have the focus only be on landscapes.
Seems like it would be fun. I’ve seen it in a lot of movies but never in real life. You’re doing it, that’s cool.
The results don’t matter so much as the process, I found. I liked being outside and working in the fresh air, I would like to do more of that, even if I am not painting the scene in front of me but something else.
I definitely see the strong lighting reflected in your painting. I think those harsh shadows work well with your style, especially for your strong line work in your paintings. Your colour choices mean that I see a relationship between this painting and your previous one so I bet they look great together.
Thank you. Strangely enough the 2 doo look good together, not planned that way at all. But the two days were similar in their weather, so maybe that affected how I approached the 2 paintings from a similar starting point.
I love the colors you use here, and the trees look like they’re dancing. Sometimes when I look, the trees seem almost like crooked alphabet letters playing around with their own shapes. Very happy painting!
Thank you. Some class members thought the same thing about the idea of the trees dancing. I like that. They did look to me as if they were a group and that they were in some sort of interaction. I also love th idea of the alphabet shapes. That gives me the idea to be looking at trees in this way, this winter.