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PLEIN AIR ARTISTS
An Online Artist's Coop for Artists who Paint on Location
Sketching at San Diego Zoo - SAA 2010
To me I do not use the term plein air as much as DFN/Direct from Nature. The reason is that of late the term plein air has come to mean "painting outdoors". But in fact, when I work directly from Nature I first study & evaluate my subject, then I sketch, then I do small fast watercolor studies, and I then do more concentrated watercolors. But in addition to these rather classic watercolor skills... I also take digital photos and video... all of which is done directly from Nature. This group of sketches was from a recent group outing of over 100 artist members of the Society of Animal Artists. We had all gathered in San Diego for the 50th Anniversary of the Society and its famous exhibition opening, Art and the Animal, at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Sketching is the primary skill I use to try out ideas on site. It is also a skill I use to keep my eye-hand coordination solid and fluid. I sketch using a 9B Woodless Graphite pencil on smooth papers. And in my terminology, "sketches" are images I create in 5-6 minutes or less. Anything over 5-6 minutes is too slow to be considered a "sketch". These are all done under 5-6 minutes... many of the smaller sketches were done in less than 60 seconds. "Sketching" to me is as different a skill from "drawing"... as the piano is from the violin.
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Comment by Jennifer Evenhus on September 13, 2010 at 11:28am -
David - I love these sketches - partly because my daughter and I were just there in July and enjoyed the wildlife - but mainly because you have captured the character of the animal - the movement - If I were you, I'd contact the zoo marketing people and see if they'd like to use some of those sketches somehow - these are truly little gems!
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Comment by David Rankin on September 13, 2010 at 11:31am -
Thank you very much!
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Comment by Donald Maier on September 17, 2010 at 2:00pm -
David, I agree with you that painting/drawing doesn't matter to me. As you see I have a lot of drawings on this site. I actually hate labels.
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Comment by Cecile Hines on January 30, 2012 at 7:04pm -
Wonderful! And I agree, sketching is a whole different deal as you must react to your subject quickly, often for me there is more truth in a sketch and more accuracy.
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