A Plein Air Painting Picnic

{ Photographs by Plurabelle Calligraphy }

Here in Los Angeles we are in the thick of picnic season – the weather is breezy and warm, but not yet too hot. This is great news for me since packing picnics is one of my favorite activities ever. When I used to live in Paris, I would picnic on the grass at least twice a week in the spring and summer, and then sketch or write in the shade for hours. But for one reason or another, I haven’t continued the practice in L.A. Last Sunday, however, with my good friend Katie, I revived my Plein Air Painting Picnic tradition at a park in Santa Monica.

Sunday’s farmer’s market yielded some wonderful picnic ingredients: melt-in-your mouth speck, aged gouda, and perfectly ripe cherries, nectarines, and avocados. Those finds, combined with the fact that I’ve been on a baking kick lately (and recently baked, with great success, my first batches of homemade donuts and baguettes), made for an amazing lunch. We popped some prosecco to celebrate a few recent cheers-worthy events in our lives, and passed five lovely hours on the grass.

My lettering design – “I am the impression that will change” – is a quote from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke. It is one of my all-time favorite books, which I’ve reread once or twice a year for the past eight years. My life is in a period of transition, which made the quotation feel especially appropriate to paint en plein air – the practice popularized by the impressionists themselves.

{ L’ombrelle verte by Berthe Morisot – one of my favorite impressionist paintings }

halta definizione

 { Bacco by Caravaggio, 1597; close-up image from Halta Definizione }

Forget working – for the past 24 hours I’ve just been obsessively looking at paintings on Halta Definizione, an Italian website devoted to sharing some of Italy’s most magnificent paintings in resolutions so high it would be hard to get a better look if you were standing just half an inch from the painting itself. I read here that Da Vinci’s Last Supper, for instance, took over nine hours to photograph, takes up about 2 terabytes of  disk space and consists of 1,677 separate photos stitched together. You can literally see every speck of dust, every brush stroke, and every crack. I can’t get enough!

To view the images you have to set up an account, but it’s free, easy and offers an e-mail opt-out option. It’s truly worth it.

{ The Annunciation by Da Vinci, 1472;  close-up image from Halta Definizione }

tim flach photography

{ photography by tim flach }

i am so taken with the tremendous work of british photographer tim flach. his animal photography is stunning, especially those of horses and dogs. the above images take me back to my visit to iceland, where i met the most amazing horses. they really make me want to go back in the winter!

lilian day photography

my sister is an amazing photographer. and i’m not just saying that because she’s my sister.

jaime coffey bateman

{ “Perito Moreno II” by Jaime Coffey Bateman }

mail art

collections trend

missed connections

images via sophie blackall’s missed connections blog.

fantastic illustrations by sophie blackall of missed connection ads from craigslist new york city.

camilla engman

images via camillaengman.com.

Why oh why do I keep discovering all these cool 2010 calendars when we’re already two months into the year!? This one by Swedish artist Camilla Engman is so beautiful that I may have to buy it anyway. Her illustrations are also lovely.

inspiration

images via ffffound.com