Plein Air Painting > On the current cover of PleinAir Magazine (Oct/Nov 2024), the cover features the work of Jill Carver.
“I thought it would be fun – and hopefully useful – to share with you the preparatory sketch for the painting that made the cover of the current issue of PleinAir Magazine,” she said.
“Much of the language of designing foregrounds surrounds describing how the viewer might literally ‘walk into the landscape’, but you don’t necessarily have to create a literal path or way through. That said, some underlying organization, some way of moving the viewer front to back is useful.
“In this case I used linear perspective to organize the numerous sage bushes, rather than just scatter them around the canvas. In this case, adding an element like a path or road would have distracted from what I wanted to say. A little time thinking about design is an integral part of my process.
“The scene is sourced from the Bluff area of Utah. It had just rained overnight and the earth was an intense saturated orange. Slithers of light flashed across the distant horizon, and the desert floor was covered in thousands of sage bushes, all seemingly regularly placed, all of the same era or age, indicating that this land had been grazed or maybe stricken by severe drought at some point. They appeared to be a merry band in formation, marching towards the light.”
Bonus Inspiration: In the issue, she shares this advice: “Show up every day. Don’t just think you’re going to do it when your muse feels like coming around.” Browse Jill’s art video workshops at PaintTube.tv.
Connect with Jill Carver at https://jillcarver.com/.
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Blog post prepared for the web by Cherie Dawn Haas, Editor of Plein Air Today
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