During the amazing 7 months I spent living in Queenstown, New Zealand, I started to learn landscape oil painting.

Image above; This was my second 'plein air' painting at Lake Hayes, in Queenstown, NZ

Epic Queenstown.

Imagine waking up, opening the curtains to your window, walking outside of your house, and being surrounded by mountains, forests, lakes, breathtaking nature all around. The surrounding areas of Queenstown, such as Glenorchy, was were used as filming sites for The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

During winter, thousands of people fly into Queenstown from all over the world to experience ski-season.

No matter the season, Queenstown really is a stunning and beautiful place to live. And a great place to practice landscape painting if you are an artist!

Not long after I arrived, I discovered a studio space inside a local gallery which I was able to share with a brilliant local landscape artist @samuelearpartist and join him painting out in the stunning surrounding, natural environment. Some days I would stay in the studio and practice doing value studies, mixing colours, and working on longer studio paintings using photo references that I took when I travelled around the South Island of New Zealand in a van.

'En Plein Air'

For those of you who don't know, 'plein air' painting basically means painting outside in French. In contrast to traditional studio painting, by practicing en plein air, the artist takes his/her canvas outside into the open, exposed to the elements and rapidly changing landscape, and aims to capture an artistic impression or representation of what they see.

The comforts of an artists studio which are easily taken for granted, are once again appreciated when the artist returns from a plein air painting session. The difficulties of battling the elements such as wind, rain, and constant change in lights & shadows, make a very difficult and engaging challenge for the artist.

But all the more rewarding.

En plein air painting forces you to focus 100%, entirely in the moment, it's just you, nature, and your painting materials. Anything can happen, and you must make every mark count if you are to have a successful painting.

The feeling of satisfaction after finishing a plein air painting, is far higher than making multiple returns to a studio painting before completion. There is no room for distraction unless you are totally comfortable with what you are doing and the direction you are going in. And even then, your 'flow' could be easily disrupted by a simple "hello" or comment by an onlooker.

A timeless visual memory.

Once happy with what you have captured down on canvas, it becomes another tricky task of cleaning up and packing away all of your paint materials, and keeping the painting itself protected from dust, dirt, wind and rain.

But if you can manage this final step successfully, you can return home with a nice little painting, which will serve as an intense and more vivid memory of where you were and what you were experiencing through not just sight, but all of the 5-senses, at that particular point in time.

What an amazing thing to have, to look back on, to appreciate and remember your life experience on that particular day.

My oil painting studio development. Where it all began...

I hadn't found a place to live yet, but amazingly I had found a shared art studio space in the center of Queenstown, NZ where I could get focused working hard on my art development and be around other amazing, inspired artists!

On top of oil painting, I was working on traditional sketches, digital art and design. I was advised to star off with a few oil painting value studies using only 3 colours 'Titanium White', 'Burnt Sienna' and 'Ultramarine Blue' as advised by my artist friend Samuel Earp (mentioned above) *The reference I used was from landscape concept art from an unknown artist.

Working on the fundamentals... A three colour only value study of the surrounding natural environment I worked on in Queenstown, New Zealand!

The development on my second landscape oil painting study on a small board. Once again sticking to 3 colours for the values.

This was a quick 'alla prima' oil painting study of Walter Peak, Queentown on board. 3 colours only for this study.

This was my fourth 3 colour/value study of the surrounding mountains in Queenstown Gardens, NZ, with a focus on finding a strong composition. I painted this in one go and I was tempted to go back to it and add detail, but I think I managed to get enough down to leave it as an oil sketch study.

*image above; My Thomas Moran oil painting study.

Master Colour Studies.

Before I started painting outside, I had to learn how to mix and 'create' the colours I could see in the landscape outside. One of the best ways to do this, along with learning technique and style, is to study previous works from master artists, and do copy's (studies) of their works.

This was my 16 hour oil painting Master Study on canvas, of landscape artist Edgar Payne's work.

Image above; The early stages to our plein air oil paintings in Glenorchy, New Zealand with @samuel_earp_artist.

Into The Wild

After spending hours practicing in the studio, it was finally time to take the oil paints out in nature, and attempt to paint the environment as well as I could.

Painting nature whilst in nature. An incredible feeling and experience! I'd happily do this all day. Plein air oil finished by me in Glenorchy, New Zealand.

To be continued...

Thank you all for reading, upvoting and commenting!

I will create the second half of this post showing my development in 'en plein air' oil painting soon.

Merry Christmas to all steemers!