Plein Air Season Begins

How I prepped cradled birchwood panels for a week of outdoor painting

Tools I used to prep a cradled wood panel for the gallery: paper template for marking screw hole locations; D-rings for the hanging wire; a punch awl; a drill with tape on the bit to mark proper drilling depth.

Plein air season is upon us, and once again I am participating in a juried regional competition! Here’s how I prepared my painting surfaces, and thoughts on my vision for a cohesive and meaningful body of work.

What is “plein air”?

Plein air painting basically means “to paint outside.” Competitions like Plein Air West Reading (PAWR) invite artists to produce paintings outdoors and to win prize money. Typically there are geographic boundaries and time limits to each competition, and they usually happen in the warmer months.

A unified approach

Each year I like to give myself a personal challenge within the framework of the plein air competition; my hope is to develop a cohesive vision for each collection of paintings. Here was my philosophy each year in PAWR:

• 2022—Careful, studio-like paintings of well-known, historic, rural structures; lots of preparation, slow-drying acrylic paintings.

• 2023—More rural structures, but larger paintings and a faster, spontaneous approach with quick-drying acrylic paint and large brushes.

• 2024—Bold colors and bold brush work or knife work, more focused on subjects that are close to home.

• 2025—My most unusual plan so far is emerging for this week’s competition, which I share below.

Plein air painting, urban sketching

My goal this year is to combine the qualities of two, popular, outdoor art movements—urban sketching, and plein air painting—to share even more focused stories about home. The urban sketching movement is closely aligned with the plein air painting movement, but there are slight differences.

Plein air painting by Zoungy Kligge, Where Mumsy Gathers the Garden Water, 2023, acrylic on stretched canvas, 30 x 15 inches.

Plein air paintings are typically produced with traditional painting media like watercolor on paper, or oils or acrylics on canvas, to create refined landscapes and cityscapes with formal, framed, gallery presentations.

You’ll find most urban sketches inside of sketchbooks rather than on canvases, often including a mix of materials like pens, pencils, markers, and paints. The focus is on quick, visual reportage.

Urban sketching doesn’t need to happen in a city, even if the name implies that. Urban sketching subjects need not be outdoors, either; but in my case they will be, in order to adhere to the ‘plein air’ mandate of this competition.

Putting it all together

So, how can I combine the qualities of urban sketching (fast, experimental, journalistic) with plein air competition (formal, traditional, gallery-based)?

I envision presenting “pages torn from a sketch book” on the gallery wall. Not literal pages, but rather cradled birchwood panels prepared with a product from Golden Artist Colors called watercolor ground.

Zoungy Kligge, watercolor journal sketch. This on-location sketch is more typical of “urban sketching.” It was created in a sketchbook with faster, looser marks and a mixture of wet and dry media. Notes about the day are written directly on the page.

Watercolor ground, once dry, behaves like smooth, white watercolor paper—like the pages of a sketch journal! And on these “pages” I want to give myself the freedom to use a variety of art media to report on local happenings, just like urban sketchers do.

Gallery-standard framing is a requirement of the plein air show, so I’ve finished the 1.5-inch deep wooden sides of the cradled panels with natural-colored paste wax. I made a template (seen in the photo at the top) to drill holes for the D-rings that will hold the hanging wire. Altogether I’ve spent over 6 hours on canvas prep alone.

My subject matter will be scenes around the home. I look forward to sharing an intimate glimpse into my family’s life, and an accurate record of how things look and feel for us in this chapter of our story.

Nine panels, nine glimpses.

I think this will be the most fun I’ve had in the plein air event, and the work with the most meaning to me. Will I use the same media on each panel? Will the nine assemble to produce one, larger narrative? I don’t know yet!

Watercolor ground is a specialty acrylic medium which is applied in two or three coats using a wide, flat brush. (The top row in the photo shows one application.) Once dried, it acts like smooth watercolor paper.

What’s next?

Tomorrow the thirty PAWR artists will converge at Art Plus Gallery in West Reading, Pennsylvania, to have our blank canvases registered with a serial number and official stamp. This proves that the paintings brought to judging next week are indeed the same canvases!

Sketching and painting outdoors will follow. Literally hundreds of paintings will be produced, capturing six days in Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Along the way there will be an artist-sponsor social; framing and wiring of the artwork; titles and prices to submit; intake at the gallery; a private reception with judging and awards; and then a second, public showing under a tent at a huge street festival. It’s a real whirlwind of activity!

I am on the tent set-up and breakdown committee so there’s a bit of physical labor in my near future, too.

These ducks appeared in our yard this week, where I’ll be painting.

Why not give it a try?

If you want to give plein air painting a try, come to the Reading Public Museum on June 16 from 8am to 10am to register a canvas for the mini “Quick Draw” event, and paint from 10am to noon. There will be prizes given out!

Or join me for one of my upcoming sketch workshops.