From Field Sketch to Studio Painting

 Yesterday I painted this little landscape, and I actually ended up painting the same view twice.

The first one I did right there in the field. I only had a regular, non-watercolor-paper sketchbook with me, my tiny travel palette and a water brush. So I wasn't really trying to make a finished watercolor painting. It was much more like a quick visual note—trying to catch the shapes, the colours, the light, and just the general feeling of the place while I was there.

And I really love that kind of sketching.

There's something about painting outside that makes you work differently. You don't have all your supplies, the light keeps changing, there might be wind, you're balancing everything on your lap... so you make decisions quickly. You simplify. And sometimes those little imperfect marks actually say more about the moment than a carefully finished painting would.

Then, when I came home, I wanted to paint the scene again.

This time I used my landscape watercolor sketchbook with cotton paper, opened it across the full spread, used the same little palette, but gave myself much more water and much more room to paint.

And of course, the result feels completely different.

At home I wasn't trying to recreate every mark from my field sketch. I could slow down, think
about the larger shapes, let the washes move across the cotton paper, and remember what it felt
like to be there.

And I realized that I really love both parts of this process.

I don't mind painting the same place again at all.

For me, coming home and returning to something I saw outside doesn't make it less of a nature-journaling experience. In some ways, I find it just as exciting.

Outside, I'm responding to the place.

At home, I'm responding to my memory of the place.

The field sketch has that immediacy to it—the little observations, quick brushstrokes and decisions I made while everything was right in front of me. The studio painting is quieter. I have time to explore the colours and water, and maybe turn that first impression into something a little more developed.

And I don't really feel that one is better or more authentic than the other.

They are simply two different experiences of the same place.

I think this is also something I'm learning through nature journaling: there really aren't that many rules.

You can sit outside and make a five-minute pencil drawing. You can add watercolor with a water brush. You can write down something you noticed. You can take photographs and come home. You can paint the whole thing again later on beautiful cotton paper if you feel like it.

I also kept the little notes I made right on my outdoor sketch. There were so many gorgeous blue dragonflies around the pond that afternoon, and I scribbled down what I was seeing while I painted. I love keeping these imperfect little observations on the page. They remind me that the sketch isn't only about what the landscape looked like—it's about what was happening while I was there. Years from now, I might not remember every detail of that afternoon, but I'll see those handwritten notes and remember the dragonflies flying over the water. That's what makes the outdoor painting feel a little more like a field journal to me, and perhaps a little more memorable than a finished painting could ever be.

It all becomes part of observing and remembering a place.

And maybe that's why even very ordinary landscapes have started to feel so much more interesting to me.

Before, I might have walked past a little pond or a group of trees and thought, that's nice.

Now I find myself looking at the shapes of the grasses, the reflections in the water, the colours in the distance, or the way the light is falling across a patch of land—and suddenly that very ordinary place feels almost magical.

Nature journaling has made me want to look twice.

And sometimes, apparently, it makes me want to paint it twice too.

Let me know if something like that happens to you as well.

XoXo, Elena

www.ElenaArtPages.com