The following story features a leader in the art community who will be joining us on the faculty of Realism Live, an online art event taking place November 11-13, 2026. (No tech skills? No problem! If you can click a link, you can participate!)
Plein Air Painting Tip: Plan By the Seasons
by Stephanie Birdsall
www.stephaniebirdsall.com
My experience has become very personal through the years, as I plan by the seasons. In spring, my subjects will be vignettes in my garden, with its lovingly tended flowers and trees. In the fall, I search out the ripening fruit on trees and vines. As I stand in nature, I am overwhelmed and grateful that all this color even exists! I know there’s a scientific explanation for everything, but I find myself completely fascinated by it. I drink in the beauty.
This peach painting (above) is 18 x 24 inches, so it necessitated my taking my French easel rather than a pochade box. I started a number of paintings at Fur and Feathers Farm in Redding, Connecticut, about five minutes from my house. Going at different times of the day to capture the varied light gave me lots of opportunities to study through multiple paintings.
This particular painting is later in the afternoon. I seem to do this every year; start at a certain time of day and if I don’t finish, I return to it the following year. Some of my paintings take me two or three years because I want the same visual experience again.
Very sadly, we had torrential rains this year and when I wanted to take this back to the site, the peaches had mostly been knocked off the trees before ripening. It was a tough year for fruit trees in Connecticut. When I can find a similar location, I’ll take the painting to it and recapture what I felt in the original one. Didn’t happen this year.
This painting remains in the same state, as when I left the farm last fall, along with probably five other starts/block ins.
My experience in painting from a photo or screen just isn’t the same. The energy surge, delight and awe, I experience when I’m surrounded by nature’s colors is such a visceral experience. I’m prepared to wait for it to happen again next year, and I don’t feel discouraged because I can look forward to it all over again!
Take your realism art to the next level when you attend Realism Live ~ a multi-day virtual art conference led by 20+ world class artists. (No tech skills? No problem! If you can click a link, you can join our event!) Learn more at RealismLive.com!
Blog post prepared for the web by Cherie Dawn Haas, Editor of Realism Today
