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Mountain Farms
Watercolour
©1994 Charlene Brown
I painted over a dozen postcards of
the awesome surroundings of our hotel about three hours (straight up) from Islamabad – even improving
upon the location by spreading out on a table in the outdoor dining area. Here
are a couple of things I’ve learned about The Drama of Painting Plein Air in Pakistan:
Almost everyone who sees you painting
will want to watch, and if they speak English they will want to discuss what you're doing. (They
know just by looking at you that you understand English, so I no longer even
consider the rude notion of pretending I don’t) and most will have questions.
Here is the only safe answer to the first one…
Roving Art Critic: How much do you get
for these?
Artist: I can’t sell them. I’ve promised to mail them to my friends.
And here's how I handle the inevitable questions about my ‘inaccurate’ compositions...
Critic 2: Why is this so big?
Critic 3: Shouldn’t this be in
front of this?
Critic 4: Why have you left out those
terraces over there?
I try dazzling them with
paperwork by working on more than one painting at a time. This actually works fairly well -- and is a good idea for lots of other reasons as well.
A very accomplished artist friend, Vivien Blackburn, would
have less need to worry about questions like these… Posts like Working plein air – the hazards strengthen my belief that any roving critics examining Vivien’s plein air work are
more likely to be hoping to pick up a free art lesson than to offer helpful suggestions!
