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Accelerate your Skills with Thumbnails

Do you ever get nervous or frustrated hauling large canvases to various plein air locations? This tip is for you: small studies are perfect for plein air! Ellie takes a step back in this tutorial, focusing on tiny, thumbnail canvases with a specific purpose: capturing light and color for later studio work. In this four-piece series, you will paint mountains, spruce trees, aspens, and an monumental rocky ledge. As perfect exercises for developing your sketching techniques, it's important to remember to stick to the illusions of shapes, value, edges, and colors, instead of high detail. Then, when you get on site of your next plein air trip, you'll be ready to take more notes and sketch compositional ideas instead of create your masterpiece then and there. (2 + hours)

  • Ellie Wilson

    Instructor

  • Fundamental

    Difficulty
Meet your instructor

Ellie Wilson

Ellie's life as an artist started at a young age and the path to her art career seemed to have happened effortlessly. She was born and raised in the Wasatch Mountains, which instilled in her a passion for nature and beauty. The first time Ellie went Plein Air painting with the mountains surrounding her and a brush in hand she was hooked, and decided to specialize in landscape painting. When she graduated with a BFA, she sold out her solo show and launched into her career as a professional artist. Since then she have been painting tirelessly, working to master a variety of scenes in over 6 states and 18 countries around the world. 

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