Philly Rooftops

 The PPAP once agani gathered to paint on the rooftop of our friend Kathrine's apartment on Pine Street in Philly. The dog days of summer, or the Pittbull days or August have been replaced by the Poodle days, at least the past few days. I have been mostly painting at home the past month due to work and the crazy weather. Often it was just too  darn hot to get out and paint. I tried it in the heat and did get along for a time, but I always ended up having to pack it in becase of the weather. They say this is the wettest summer on record in Philly. I believe it--we had a huge storm this week which was flooding the region all over the, place including an F 0 tornado in Jersey. So like a few month's back Kat invited everybody to come over and paint off of the roof of her apartment which offers awesome views of the city to paint. I decide because of the time allowed and the wind to paint on a small  12 x 12 Ampersand panel. I did finish up the painting at home, adding a few little touches and especially reworking the chimney a bit.

                                                       Here is my setup--ready to go!

 You can see the process of Alina's painting in these two photos. they were smarter than me and stayed in teh shade.

 Aaron working on his first view for the day, but after his model left he ended up changing his view.

 As people came and went David Wilson showed up to race the sun and set up next to Alina.

 I had to stop it here as for one thing without and umbrella of coverage I was totally baked by this point and my eyes were done from fighting the glare.

 Lexi sketching away in her drawing pad like Kathrine and Narcissa did. That's the cool thing about these paint-outs, people come ,go and do whatever, from watercolors to pencils sketches, ballpoint pen to oils.

 It was just a glorious day and the sunset was just amazing! We all stayed late and ordered some pizza and watched the sun go down and the moon come up, what a great day!

Painting at the Philadelphia Art Museum

For the groups third outing to paint in the city last Thursday we ended up at the Philadelphia Museum of art at the Fairmount Waterworks, located right behind the PMA. Originally we had wanted to all head down to the Race Street Pier, but a phone call from Aaron, one of our group who lives near there warned us that the pier was closed for some wedding, or event. So Lexi suggested the PMA and the waterworks so we all detoured there which was a great choice. The Museum and the Waterworks are probably two of the most beautiful and scenic areas of the city, and the Waterworks has been a spot that many, many painting classes and workshops have taken advantage of to paint the beautiful landscape where you can see how beautiful the city can be. We had great cloud formations all day as the weatherman called for the increased possibility of thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening. But the day was so beautiful it sort of cast a spell on all of us.

Alina set up not to far from where I was so I was able to sneak over and snap pics of her progress on her painting as she worked on it. Once I got hunkered down myself I didn't get so watch the others as much.

This is Alina's final painting for the day, what a great little plein air piece! It's hard to simplify and design all that building and nature.

Dave Wilson climbed up to what seemed like the top of Mount Olypmus to work on one of the two paintings he did this time. Dave had an awesome view looking west, stretching out over the Waterworks and the Schuylkill River falls.

As the day wore on it became more cloudy with patches of intense sunlight that would suddenly fade from view then in something out of a Cecil B Demille movie come bursting back.

This is the last super-quick little painting Dave did of the PMA itself just before we all packed it in.

Here is a nice shot of Dave's great painting from the the PMA of the river and the waterworks.

Here is a pic of Alina and Lexi stretching their legs along the lagoon. Every once in a while you have to get up and take a break and refresh you view of your work.

This is a shot of what I called the "God Effect" as the sun started to set amongst the rolling thunderclouds.

Kathryn perched near the lagoon and sketched.

Here is Lexi's great bold painting of Boat House Row. Great use of the palette knife!

I decided to set up under some shade that gave me a nice dynamic view. I was also not far from the car or the bathrooms, which is something that is really important when you paint outside!

Here is my final painting of the waterworks and little lagoon. I decided to go for more of a square composition this time as opposed to the typical horizontal composition. I am happy with this painting, even happier than the ones I did last week as I feel the composition is much stronger and more interesting with the perspective of the canal leading us back.

Here is Rachel Constantine's rough block-in of one of the Waterwork Gazebos.

We all would draw a crowd of curious on-lookers as we painted, here you can see a few onlookers watching Rachel painting.

Eventually the storm clouds did force our hand and the light changed too much so we all packed it in and headed home as the wind started kicking up after a very successful day of painting. A big thanks to Lexi for some of the pictures!

The PPAP Kickoff!

Welcome to the Philadelphia Plein Air painters blog! We are a great mix of professional painters, teachers and students who are drawn together through our love and devotion to the tradition of landscape and figurative painting, but especially plein air painting. Many of us currently attend or have attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and teach there as well as other Philly based ateliers and schools such as Studio Incamminati, Uarts and the Wayne Art center.

At a recent party where many of our group was hob knobbing and chewing the fat with artists and painters in town to attend the Portrait Society of America’s annual conference. As the wine flowed and the good food was consumed, the conversation turned to a recent plein air painting trip I hand made a few days before along the Delaware with the DPC. Several of us were talking about how much we loved landscape painting and painting in the company of each other and how great it would be to do this as a group. I agreed and said that I have been already doing that with the Dirty Palette Club, a group of my friends and fellow students from PAFA. The DPC as we are known around the City and School formed a few years back for just this reason, to get together as often as possible to paint and draw together and learn from and support each other. Pennsylvania and Philadelphia is a great city and region for art and there have been many such gathering and groups of artists and painters over the last 150 years from the Philadelphia Sketch Club to the group of Impressionist painters who gathered up the Delaware in New Hope Pennsylvania featuring painters Edward Redfield, Daniel Garber, Roy Cleveland Nuse, William L. Lathrop and Walter E. Schofield. Many of these painters also taught at the Pennsylvania Academy. PAFA has been a launching pad for many similar groups of painters such as the Ash Can School and the group known as The Eight, which preceded it. So we are following in the same footsteps and tradition which is the richest vein of painters in the history of America, from Eakins to the Wyeths, and we feel that it is the best time in almost 100 years to be painters who are interested in carrying on in the grand tradition of painting started here in Philadelphia. So the PPAP has come together to carry our paints and palettes and easels out into the woods, rivers and onto the streets of Philly to paint, paint, paint!

To start off several of us were interested in painting an urban scene so Rachel Constantine suggested we try painting on the roof of the Whole Foods on South Street which would afford us a lot of great views of the city. We were also interested in doing some night painting as well, to try and catch a really different type of light and atmosphere. We all weaved our way through rush-hour traffic to our rendezvous and grabbed some food to snack on as we searched the roof to pick a spot to paint. The great thing about this spot was that there were several little picnic spots on the roof where we could easily set up and paint.

We painted until the sun was too low to continue on our first paintings and then switched up and found new spots to try our night paintings. Here I tried a time-lapse of Will Sentman setting up for his night painting.

Rachel Constantine searches for just the right view.

Kathryn Vaughan and Dan Murano draw and paint.

Here is a picture of Rachel's night painting, she had under an hour to try and get it done before we had to leave or be locked in on the roof!

This was my first painting on the day, a composition of the rooftops on South Street as the sun set, I had to really race this one as the shadows were on the move. In the end I did have to rely on memory to finish some of this.

This painting of the little red compact was my second painting of the day, or evening and this is about 45 minutes of painting time. By the time I chose my spot and got going I had under an hour to finish before we hand to scoot or be locked in till the next day. I popped this in the back of the jeep and we made it out just as the door was coming down just like in an action movie! It was a great day and I think we all got some good painting out of it!