Growing a Landscape

I complete painted studies, perhaps rough pencil sketches, on location. I may begin an underpainting in the field, but larger work is completed from memory using the smaller study as a reference. Barbizon painters of the early 19th century considered this ‘plein-air’, not necessarily done in heavy impasto or wet-in-wet, or quickly, but returning over a period of several days using observation to develop a painted sketch.