Here’s a list of everything I use to paint plein air, with a link to Amazon. Artcoe 12×10″ (254 x 304 mm) Pochade Box Manfrotto Compact Advanced Aluminium Tripod with 3 Way Head Tripod Mounting Plate Large Mouth Double Dipper Palette Cup Lowe Alpine Airzone Camino Trek 40:50 Backpack Portable Stainless Steel Leak-Proof Premium Brush Washer with Lid and Filter Screen Jackson’s English Distilled Turpentine 500ml Michael Harding Refined Poppyseed oil Roberson Cobalt Siccative 60ml Roberson : Dammar Retouching Varnish : 250ml Thixotropic Alkyd Oil P ..read more

When you’ve been painting for a few years, you start to see patterns forming. Cycles of interest, that keep coming back around. What at first seems like a linear path through various adventures and obsessions, one subject to another, soon ends up with you back where you started, albeit a little bit wiser and more skilful. Ideas and processes long abandoned suddenly have relevance again – a bizarre thing to experience, especially after they were unequivocally denounced, 12 months prior. It seems that we have a sphere of interest that we explore through our lives and the only way to eke out ..read more

Sometimes the studio actually does need tidying. Sometimes you should spend the afternoon doing your books, answering those old emails, shopping online for materials or doing an audit on your stock of frames. More painting isn’t always the answer. Sometimes procrastination is underrated and it’s time to put the brush down. The post Something Else appeared first on Tom Hughes Painting ..read more

Creativity is terrifying. It’s a lonely place, not a soft, fluffy, familiar bed, but a big dark forest, with no friends and a lot of monsters. Your lizard brain wants to keep you safe and it’s done that job very well for tens of thousands of years. It doesn’t want you to take risks, stray out of your comfort zone or challenge any preconceived notions, but we must do all these things if we are to move forward. And if we’re not moving forward, if we are stationary, then in reality we are falling behind. Stay too long out of the comfort zone and we become traumatised, paralysed and useless. Bu ..read more

How many brush strokes went into your last painting? Each one a tiny decision, be it subconscious, deliberate, or happy accident. How wonderful to create a visual record of a silent, internal thought process. Time-lapse films of paintings being painted are a wonderful thing to behold. Frantic in their sped-up appearance, they take us on journey rarely seen. Like a “making of” DVD extra, we get a glimpse behind the curtain to watch how the sausage gets made. In a way, this ruins the magic – knowing how a trick is done is fascinating, we yearn for an explanation, but there’s often a part of ..read more

Going outside is important. It’s what drew me to plein air painting in the first place. I loved being outside before I remember loving Art and drawing, plein air just seemed a good opportunity to combine the two. Do you need to be with someone to enjoy it? I’m happy either way, but I can highly recommend some solo endeavours if you haven’t partaken in while, if ever. When there’s no one to talk to, you notice more. You feel more. Our attention, so easily diverted, can reveal wonderful things when focussed on simply how it feels to be outside, in weather. Go walk up a hill. A big one, if y ..read more

Painting small is easy. There’s something about the length of the human limb, the angle of articulation of the wrist and the length of a standard brush that makes creating gestural, exciting marks on a small scale natural and intuitive. Scale that up. You can’t. Not in the way you think you can. what once was a wrist flick, has now become an arm sweep. That little dab that left that perfect little cat-tongue-shaped mark now requires a brush many times winder, so the spring rate of the bristles is now stiffer, it feels different, the marks aren’t the same. It’s interesting to look at artis ..read more

I took a big step forward in my working practise recently. I’ve been getting frustrated for a long time with the limitations, constraints and drawbacks on painting from life, plein air specifically, and have been trying to work out a way around it while still maintaining some core principles. Painting on location, outside in the landscape is a wonderful thing. I maintain that there is no better way to learn. And by “learn” I mean everything – How to draw, how to pick a composition, how to see, judge and recreate the tones of reality with the limited range of paint, how to mix realistic colo ..read more

I recently started a new project called the Mini Collection. The impulse came to me a few months ago when I was drifting off to sleep. I had become frustrated with painting just one theme for weeks on end, be it London or Bristol and wanted to find a way to stay motivated and excited about painting every day. I get a lot of ideas throughout any given week and I’m constantly thinking “oh that would make a great painting” or “I’d love to explore how light breaks through trees at sunset” but have always been committed to doing something else. After my four recent shows were over, I decided to giv ..read more

I’m really excited about this upcoming show of paintings of the Clifton Suspension Bridge showing at the lovely Clifton Suspension Bridge Visitors centre. I’d really love to see you there. I’ll be posting more images of the paintings in the show over the next few weeks. Stay tuned. So, put it in your diary or simply join the Facebook group for live updates. 29 Sep – 7 Oct Clifton Suspension Bridge Visitor’s Centre There will also be a free prize draw to win a framed 28 x 22cm painting “Sunbeam in the Gorge”. All you’ll have to do is sign up to my mailing list at the show. I’ll draw the lucky ..read more