Day 4675: Balch Creek Plein Air Photo Essays &. Disposable Plastic?

       

"Escape": collage, ink drawing, digital.

  

Want music?

    

Click: Roberta Flack, Feel Like Making Love.

Balch Creek Plein Air (New Ways of Seeing)

 by Chad Crouch, Artist

Click here for sound-walk recordings in concert with photo essays

"This week I’m trying something new. I’ve been leaving my camera at home, packing my iPad on my walks to do some digital plein air landscape painting. (Plein air: of or being a style of painting produced out of doors in natural light.) You’re invited to click play above to hear the sounds I heard while crafting these images. I edited the recording for length and calm lis enability. The most charming layers of anthropogenic soundscape have been retained."

"So I’ve been reminding myself how to “paint”. I started with good old paper and oil crayons, but it was pretty clear that wasn’t going to work for my aims. Eschewing the fussiness of Guache, I moved on to digital image-crafting on the iPad. I’m slowly finding my aesthetic. I dabbled with an app, Tayasui Sketches, seven, eight years ago. I remembered it being fun.Fun is important,"

'So I’ve  been reminding myself how to “paint”. I started with good old paper and oil crayons, but it was pretty clear that wasn’t going to work for my aims. Eschewing the fussiness of Guache, I moved on to digital image-crafting on the iPad. I’m slowly finding my aesthetic. I dabbled with an app, Tayasui Sketches, seven, eight years ago. I remembered it being fun. Fun is important."  "I think the biggest thing I notice in plein air painting is how colors are not what you think they ought to be. In the abstract, creeks and sky are blue, right? Not always so in real life. And green! What an enigma! There are so many hues of green in the woods; stacking them and puzzling them together is a challenge."

"No big deal. This is all just for practice; for kicks. It was fun to wrestle with it. The best things in my creative life have always sprung out of approaching a challenge with curiosity and a playful approach. For now it seems to tick all the boxes."

I am currently a free subscriber to Soundwalk. 

© 2025 Chad Crouch

• I hope you will be able to take 29 minutes sometime to experience the sounds that this artist heard as he was creating, it's very peaceful. 

  

 

A  2+ minute video, Doggie Day Care, here

 

 

 

  

 

Just because ...

Zebra Finch

 

Saturday's Smiles ...