Breathe Fresh Air Into Your landscapes!
With a synergistic combination of indoor and outdoor painting, NLBC Member Favorite, Kevin Macpherson, shows you how to create personal, poetic landscapes infused with a sense of being there. Kevin will be your guide to reliving the outdoor experience inside, enlarging your ideas and refining your compositions so that you work will be enhanced and fresh and full of life and emotion.

Innovative Exercises to Keep You Primed!
Kevin has packed this book with favorite tricks he's learned along the way. He offers up fun and innovative exercises to keep you primed and pumped for your landscape-painting adventures, including:
* Exercises to sharpen your ability to distinguish nature's rich and wonderful color variations, even in landscapes that may at first appear overwhelmingly green.
* 10 outdoor painting challenges to develop your plein air skills. (Day 4: Paint tiny color studies, Day 5: Paint with a primary palette, Day 6: Paint by the pound...)
* 6 studio "stretches" designed to help you stay fresh and non-formulaic, including painting from a random palette of colors, and inviting some kids over for a painting party!

"React in the Field."
Nothing puts you in the mood or brings greater authenticity to your landscapes than direct observation. Step out, take it all in, and let your intuition rule as you preserve your emotional reactions in the form of sketches, field studies, reference photos, and other visual mementos of nature's inspiration. Kevin offers seasoned tips for painting on location, including how to gear up, scout out subjects, and capture the fleeting qualities of weather and light.

"Reflect in the Studio."
Back in the solitude of your studio, you will explore ways to relive the outdoor experience, enlarge your ideas, and refine your compositions without losing the vitality associated with painting outdoors. Step by step, Kevin shows you how to translate your artistic notes into a fully realized studio painting that has all the hallmarks of painting from life.

Simple Techniques for Expressive Paintings!
Emphasizing simplicity of tools, colors and application, Kevin's approach will free you to focus on expression and creativity. Learn how to:
* Filter the complexity of nature through your own unique way of seeing, paring it down to a precise, poetic statement on your canvas.
* Use a limited palette in a way that is more liberating than limiting ... mix lovely, lively grays without even trying...and other simple strategies for color harmony.
* Draw viewers into your landscapes and add drama and energy to your compositions.
* Incorporate impressionistic touches of broken color to give your landscape a depth and vibrancy that enhances its realism.
* Approach your painting as a layering and corrective process that encourages non-formulaic solutions and delights the eye in unexpected ways.

The Best of Both Worlds
Landscape Painting Inside & Out will guide and encourage beginners, while challenging more accomplished artists to bring greater vitality and a more individual, less formulaic finish to their paintings. As the techniques put forth in this book become second nature, you will be able to paint more creatively and impulsively, reacting to the moment, making the most of you time inside and out.