My first time plein-air painting

Hi everyone!

This post was a long time coming and I am sorry about that!
These paintings go back to when I went home to my hometown in France in April 2018!
I am from a biggish town in the middleish of France, right next to the Alps, and I have always wanted to go paint in the mountains. So when I went home in April, I took my paints, camera, and my dad's ridiculously heavy tripod, and when trudging through the forest to paint from life.
I spent a beautiful afternoon in the alpine forest walking around and painted 3 pieces.
You can see my attempts at filming my paintings in the video above.
In hindsight, I think it was a mistake to try and film myself, since I had the wrong gear to go walking with, and worrying about where to put the camera, how to get the right angle, and whether my battery was running or not just added unnecessary complications to a situation I was already vaguely uncomfortable in, since I had never painted in plein-air before.
Lesson learned.

That said, the whole experience was rather enjoyable anyway, and I wish I had taken the time to try again while I was home! 

I wouldn't say the actual paintings were particularly successful, but I learned tons, and I was forced to face my own shortcomings and weaknesses, which is a good thing for improvement in my books. :)

I never really realised quite what the difference between working from a picture and working from life was, and this experience was very enlightening, as it showed me how my eye had gotten used to the 2D quality of a photograph, and I was struggling to pick out what made the scenes I was looking at in the forest 3D and reproducing it on paper. I also struggled with picking out values, and choosing which details were essential or superfluous. It was such a great exercise. 

You can see my results below : 

This one was my first try. I ventured deeper int the forest, off the beaten path, and found a small clearing with the remnants of a patch of snow. The light was shining through the trees and the contrast and values were amazing, and obviously very enticing to paint.
I think I may have been somewhat too ambitious for a first time though, haha!
I didn't finish this painting, as I was getting frustrated, which doesn't ever lead to good results, and I didn't want to ruin everything for myself from the start, so I decided to move on. 

This second attempt I am happier with. The lighting was changing ridiculously fast, which is obviously something pretty common to contend with when plein-air painting, so I had to extrapolate slightly, as I am not quick enough to catch that, haha.
I basically tried to learn the values, colours, and light play while I painted, so that I could still reproduce the scene on paper even once the lighting had completely changed. Does that make sense?
I also tried to extrapolate on the colours I used, to reproduce the feeling of the scene rather than simply its original tones. So I added warmth and brightness, to try and capture just how bright and serene the place felt. 

Again, I don't think this painting was very successful, but I did feel like I'd already learned a bunch from my first attempt, and was now a bit more relaxed, confident, and warmed up on this second one. I tried my best to keep to big broad strokes, fighting my tendency to go too much into detail, and trying to capture the essentials of the scene before anything else.  

And finally...my last attempt...
This one failed COMPLETELY, hahaha!
My first issue was that I had no idea how to handle this scene. For some reason, I struggle with painting dense forest, and this time was no exception. My values were off from the get go, my colours are just...nope (Why I decided the mountains were brown is beyond me). And my proportions...damn...XD. A classic example of my eye focusing too much on a particular element (the mountains) and not embracing the scene as a whole.
I thought the scene was gorgeous, but was utterly incapable of reproducing it! It was very humbling, haha!
Oddly enough, I feel more confident I could paint this scenery from the photograph, but in person, I was stumped.
Add to that that a guy decided it wasn't right for me to be completely absorbed by something that wasn't him and started chatting at me about everything and anything, and did not get the social queues I was throwing at him by barely responding to his questions and desperately trying to keep painting, and that was me done for the day. 

In conclusion, I LOVED this exercise, because, not only did I get to spend an entire afternoon in my favourite type of nature, it was a big challenge, and a great learning curve. I felt productive, and like I'd thrown myself into the deep end. I was disappointed with my results, but at the same time energized to try again. I always find that I always feel better failing but trying than not doing at all. Because at least I'm proud of having tried. :) And it didn't kill me. So it de-dramatizes the fear. 

As far as what I used to paint, I painted all these in gouache, with my trusty W&N and Daler Rowney and Linel, and my usual dagger paintbrushes. I used a new sketchbook I'd purchased while in France, the Hahnemuhle Bamboo Travel Journal.
The paper is made from 90% bamboo, and 10% rag, acid-free, 265gsm and is supposedly better for the environment.
I really liked the paper, although will need to use it some more to really get a feel of it. 

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this little look into my first attempt at plein-air painting! I realise this isn't what my usual work looks like, but I hope you don't mind me showing you some practice and studies every once in a while. I strongly believe that they are an integral part of one's development as an artist, and they are definitely a practice I want to keep up with, and, if you are so inclined, I'd love to share them with you as I go along!

I hope you are all well, 

Take care,
M