Darby Road

 This last Sunday the PPAP all headed out into Delaware County on a gorgeous day in the beautiful countryside to do some plein air painting. I had painted this spot a few times last year with the Dirty Palette Club, and we met the owner Allen who invited us back any time to paint on their beautiful property that borders and wanders along the Darby Creek. The other great thing about this spot is that it's only 15 minutes from my house.

 We arrived about 11 am and unpacked and we all marched out to find our spots to paint, and there are so many great views it took a while for some of the group to choose, but eventually we all settled down and got the gear set up and started racing the sun and the light. The weather started out great, but the forecast called for some possible thunderstorms in the afternoon, which did suddenly roll up around 3pm but passed us by with only a few stray drops and some thunder.

 Will Setman found himself a great spot right down on the creek to paint.

 Alina and Lexi set up a little further back along the nature walk which afforded them some shade to paint in. If you don't have an umbrella or a good hat it's vital to have some good cover to paint under.

 These are two of Kathryn Vaughan's small studies that she did during the early afternoon.

 Alina Osipov painted away as the sun past over the solar noon of the day.At this point it's a real race becaue all of the shadows will really change and the light start to reverse direction.

 Kathryn working on another one of her small studies pictured below.

 Will painting on the creek bed. Since its still fairly early in spring the bugs were not too bad .

 This is the first of two paintings that Alina did during the day. Below is Dave Wilson's painting of the Darby Road Bridge. Dave painted this bridge last year and sold the painting so he wanted to tackle the subject again.

 Here is my painting of the sheep barn with the one-eyed horse that I finished just as the sun changed the light and shadows too much. The hardest part was the horse who kept moving around, so I must have repainted him four or five times. I painted this same barn and horse last year and sold the painting in my show at Rodger LaPelle last March, so I thought it would be good to try the subject again for two reasons, the fist to compare the two paintings to see how much growth or progress I have made as a painter since last year, and the second to see if it will bring me a sale.

Below is Lexi's wonderful, bold composition! I love this paintings and one of the great things about painting in a group of good painters is to see how they also interpret the same or similar subjects. You can learn a lot from each other on painting trips like this.

Here is my set-up and my start of my painting which was over and old painting I sanded down.I will try and reuse old supports to save a few dollars and I like how the surface of painting over and old painting feels as well. Below you can see that Dave found himself a second spot down on the creek to paint the bridge from the opposite side.

Nancy Bea Miller works on her painting of the same Sheep barn with our friend the the one-eye'd horse. Dan Morano decided to do drawings instead of painting and Kathryn decided to take a nap. She reminded me of one of Sargent's figures in the grass. Dan with his drawing of the sheep barn which was a popular subject this afternoon. Dave painting the old Darby Road Bridge.
Patrick Neilson, a fellow PAFA student who just finished his first year in the master program along with Nancy Bea, found another great view along the nature walk and produced a few compositions during the paint-out.
Here is one of Patrick's paintings from the afternoon. Eventually hunger overcame everyone and we just couldn't keep going on apples or empty stomachs and packed up and headed over to the LLanarch Diner on Townshipline for some lunch or dinner. It was a great and very successful day for us as a group and just a lot of fun overall. Word has spread and so a few more painters are looking to join us on our trips out into the wild or into the urban to paint, paint, paint!

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!