Sketching St. Louis

Grand Basin, Forest Park

Walkers, golfers and even a few artists got to enjoy some mid-morning sunshine on Sunday in Forest Park. Cast shadows made zebra stripes on the gravel path next to the Grand Basin. The effect was short-lived as clouds moved in forcing the half-dozen plein air painters gathered nearby to make adjustments to their artwork already underway on their easels. In John F. Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting originally published in 1929 the artist states, “I have seen students attempt to complete on a rainy, dismal day sketches that were begun on a sparkling, sunny morning.” He advises it is bad practice “because the very things that prompted you to paint a given thing on one day maybe totally absent on the next, and your sketch becomes a pictorial hodge-podge.”