Oil Painting - Plein Air Painting - watching two entire series of lessons in one day

When I had my first art lesson (I've only had two), the teacher, Kay, mentioned plein air painting.  I had never heard of it.  I asked what it meant.  It simply means painting outdoors - taking your paint, easel and brushes outside to paint scenes from whatever you find outside.  I guess it's usually something in nature, but it could also be city or small town scenes.   Kay had a magazine she showed me that was titled "Plein Air."  Being the absolute obsessive personality that I am, as soon as I got home, I looked it up.  I placed a 2-year subscription to the magazine that included use of the magazine's website which is paintoutside.com.

The website has a series of introductory video lessons.  The first series is an introduction to oil painting.  The second series is a introduction to plein air painting.  I've watched every video in both series.  HOURS of instruction, information and demonstration.  And it has helped.  I understand now what it means to "tone" the canvas before painting.  I know that I need to purchase some refined linseed oil.  Other than that, I've got what I need to paint - and the linseed oil isn't an immediate necessity.

I understand better how oil painting is different from acrylic paint.  I will have to start over with my painting of the girls sitting on the rock in Alaska.  I thought it was funny that the video instructor, Laurel Daniel, kept mentioning how squinting is so important to plein air painting.  My family teases me every year at Christmas because I like to squint at the Christmas tree so that I can see just the colors of the lights.  In the past (before pre-lit trees), it helped me see if the light strands were evenly distributed.  Now I squint at the Christmas tree because I just like the way the tree looks when I squint at it.

In plein air painting, squinting helps the artist see VALUE.  That's another big word in painting that I didn't understand  until I watched the videos.  It's all about light and dark - which is ultimately what art is all about.  Light and dark is how we show distance and shape and depth.

So it isn't quite 9:00 p.m. tonight, and I think I'll go up to my studio and do an oil painting.  Maybe I'll re-do the "Dirt Road Barn" painting.  I like the overall look of it, but since I had done it in acrylics, I couldn't make the changes that I needed to make.  So if I do it over in oils, I can make it more "mine" and also make the improvements I want to make.