Augusta Plein Air Festival

Every year, the little town of Augusta sponsors a week-long Plein Air Painting Festival. Plein Air means painting outside, which in Missouri can be a crapshoot, weather-wise, especially in the spring. Every day, the artists set up in a different location. Often in Augusta, that's a winery. The artists have to complete their paintings in a specified period of time, frame their work, and then turn it in for judging. There are some very nice prizes awarded.

I went over on Sunday to the paintout at Mount Pleasant Winery. Some of the St Louis and Kansas City urban sketchers were going to be there, so I thought I'd try painting the painters (I was not doing this for judging). I give the artists a lot of credit, because it was very cool and windy. I stayed a couple hours before giving up and heading home. They had 2-1/2 more hours to go to complete their paintings.

It was interesting to me to note some of the differences between plein air painting and urban sketching. True plein air painting is always done outside on location. Urban sketchers also paint on location, but they can be indoors or out (personally, I prefer the inside of a coffee shop if it’s cold out). Plein Air painters take longer and more care with their work. Urban sketchers tend to move quickly with a looser, more dynamic style.

I noticed the plein air painters using a variety of media – acrylic, oil, watercolor, and pastels. They usually set up on easels and their final pieces are often framed. Urban sketchers usually record their drawings in sketchbooks and use more portable supplies like pen and ink, colored pencil, markers, and pocket watercolor palettes. Some urban sketchers even use digital media on their tablets.

On Tuesday, I signed up for one of the plein air painting workshops, partly for the experience and partly because it was being held at Kate's Coffee and brunch was included. The class was taught by Linda Wilmes, an award-winning artist from Wentzville. I was a tiny bit disappointed that we were going to be using acrylic rather than watercolor (my preferred medium), but Linda felt acrylic would be much easier for people just learning to paint, especially in a limited time frame outdoors.

We were all supposed to paint a picture of a stone statue sitting in the corner of the garden. We started with a quick pencil sketch directly on the canvas. I should have taken a tiny bit more care with this step, as I made the classic mistake of drawing the legs too short. Then we mixed up our colors using a limited palette of the 3 primaries (red, blue, and yellow) and some white.

Plein air painting has been around forever, but it really gained popularity during the time of the French Impressionists. Impressionism emphasizes the depiction of light and its changing qualities on the landscape. Linda stressed this to us as we executed our paintings. “Always look for the highlights,” she said. “Even though it is a cloudy day, you should emphasize the dark and light contrasts in your subject.”

I’ll have to admit that her simple comments were like a lightbulb moment to me, because I feel like my urban sketches lack drama – not enough contrast in the paint. While my workshop painting wouldn’t win any awards, I thought I did a decent job of “capturing the light” and hopefully I’ll be able to remember this the next time I’m out urban sketching.