PAINTING WITH FRIENDS
Building up a practice of regular sketching excursions with friends is a great way to get motivated. There are Urban Sketchers groups and plein air meetups in almost every city, and you can paint together in a private garden if you're nervous about people watching you.
DEVELOP A COLOR-MIXING WORKFLOW
Some kinds of flowers and foliage are composed of small bits of color to make an impressionistic effect of variegated hues. Capturing that effect with opaque paint requires a palette that's set up for a lot of free mixing. With opaque pigments, I mix a bunch of batches of varied color and try to keep several different brushes in play at once.
BRING HIGH-CHROMA COLORS
I should follow my own advice, but sometimes I forget how intense colors can be. At the New York Botanical Garden's Plein Air Invitational, I wanted to do a close-up study of a tree peony, but I didn't have a strong enough magenta pigment. Luckily my wife came to my rescue with a tube of opera rose. In the deep recesses between petals, the chroma is heightened by transmitted light.
LEAVES ARE LIGHTER THAN SURROUNDINGS
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