Digital Painting Outdoors
28th June 2025
In: Art
In a recent post I posed a question about painting outdoors with the iPad (22nd June 2025) and this week I decided to give it a go at the Blickling Estate in Norfolk.
I tried to follow the same Procreate process that I have used recently - the quoll brush, one painting layer, and a reference photograph. This is what I learned…
It was hard to shield the iPad from the direct light. This made it difficult to see the painting surface through all finger marks! It also made it harder to judge colour and tone (although, I find this to be true for any outdoor painting medium).
Painting outdoors from a reference photograph seemed somewhat pointless, so I only used it for an outline drawing, working from life for the main block in of colours. I then started the process of adding details but found this hard work, leaving most of it to complete later.
When I returned to the painting I had to adjust most of the tones and correct a few of the colours choices - see below.
Overall, it was an interesting experience and one I will try again. There is definitely less to carry with digital art and the set up is very immediate but like most outdoor art, the pleasure is in the doing and not the result!
This was my initial painting:
This is the revised version:
I tried to follow the same Procreate process that I have used recently - the quoll brush, one painting layer, and a reference photograph. This is what I learned…
It was hard to shield the iPad from the direct light. This made it difficult to see the painting surface through all finger marks! It also made it harder to judge colour and tone (although, I find this to be true for any outdoor painting medium).
Painting outdoors from a reference photograph seemed somewhat pointless, so I only used it for an outline drawing, working from life for the main block in of colours. I then started the process of adding details but found this hard work, leaving most of it to complete later.
When I returned to the painting I had to adjust most of the tones and correct a few of the colours choices - see below.
Overall, it was an interesting experience and one I will try again. There is definitely less to carry with digital art and the set up is very immediate but like most outdoor art, the pleasure is in the doing and not the result!
This was my initial painting:
This is the revised version: