Plein Air Watercolor Painting: A Beginner's Guide to Painting Outside
By Dalton Scolman
There's a version of plein air painting that looks incredibly intimidating. The artist has a folding easel, a sun umbrella, a professional palette with sixteen perfectly mixed colors, and somehow produces a stunning landscape in an afternoon while looking effortlessly calm about the whole thing.
And then there's the version that's actually accessible to real people just getting started. A small sketchbook, a compact paint set, a waterbrush, and a bench in a park. No easel. No audience. Just you, looking at something in front of you and trying to capture a piece of it.
That second version is plein air painting too. And it's wonderful.
This guide is for anyone who's been curious about painting outdoors but hasn't quite gotten there yet. We're going to talk about what it actually feels like, what you actually need, and how to make your first sessions feel fun rather than terrifying.
What Plein Air Painting Actually Is
"En plein air" is a French phrase that means "in the open air." It's the practice of painting outside, from life, in front of your subject. Not from a photo. Not from memory. From the actual thing sitting in front of you, changing light and all.
Artists have been doing this since the 1800s, when portable tube paints made it possible to leave the studio. The Impressionists were obsessed with it. Monet painted outdoors constantly. The movement completely changed how painters understood light and color, because painting in front of a real scene teaches you things that working from photos or imagination simply can't.
You don't have to be a professional to get those benefits. Even simple outdoor sketching sessions will sharpen your eye in ways that feel almost immediate. You start to really notice how shadows work. How the color of light shifts through the day. How a scene that looks complicated from far away is actually made up of a handful of big shapes.
Watercolor is one of the very best mediums for plein air work. It's lightweight, dries fast, and produces beautiful results even in loose, quick sessions. You don't need to finish a masterpiece. Even a small ten-minute study of a tree or a building teaches you something real.
The Fear of Painting in Public (Let's Just Address It)
Here's the thing nobody talks about enough: a lot of people don't start painting outside because they're worried about other people watching.
This is genuinely common. The idea of sitting in a park or a cafe, visibly making art, while strangers walk past and possibly look at what you're doing, is uncomfortable for a lot of people. It can feel vulnerable in a way that painting at home doesn't.
So let's be honest about what actually happens.
People do look. Sometimes they stop. Often they smile or say something nice like "wow, that's beautiful" when you're secretly thinking it looks terrible. Kids are the most interested and also the most honest, which can be both alarming and hilarious.
Most of the time though, people walk right by and don't notice at all. You become so absorbed in looking at your subject and putting paint on paper that you stop thinking about anyone around you. The anxiety that feels enormous before you start usually dissolves within the first five minutes of actually painting.
The trick is just starting small. Find a relatively quiet spot for your first few sessions. A local park, a quiet corner of a garden, a cafe where you can sit inside by a window and paint the street without being too visible. Give yourself permission to do tiny studies, not ambitious paintings. Postcard-sized paper means you can finish something in fifteen minutes, pack up, and feel good about it.
Once you've done it a few times it stops feeling scary and starts feeling like one of the better ways to spend an afternoon.
Your Plein Air Kit: The Simpler, the Better
Every experienced plein air painter says the same thing about their first sessions: they brought too much stuff. And every single one of them now travels lighter.
Here's what you actually need.
Paint. A compact, portable format is everything here. Pan sets are the traditional go-to for outdoor watercolor because they're solid, packable, and don't spill. The main downside is that direct sunlight can dry your pans out very quickly, which means colors don't lift as well and you end up with chalky results.
DryColor sheets are genuinely worth considering for outdoor work for exactly this reason. Because they're already dry, the sun can't "dry them out" further. You just touch a wet brush to the sheet and the color activates instantly, as saturated and bright as always. The Peerless Sidekick gives you 45 colors in something the size of a checkbook, which is about as portable as paint can get.
A waterbrush. For outdoor sessions specifically, a waterbrush is close to essential. No water jar to knock over, no cup to refill, no mess. You fill the barrel with water, it feeds through to the bristles as you paint, and you rinse between colors by pressing out a little water onto your paper towel. The Pentel Aquash is a reliable starting point.
A small sketchbook or watercolor block. Smaller than you think you need. A5 or even postcard size for your first sessions. A hard cover sketchbook does double duty as your painting support so you can hold it in your lap without needing a board. Look for paper that's at least 140lb so your washes don't buckle badly.
A pencil. For a light underdrawing before you paint. You don't have to do this, but most beginners find it helpful to sketch the main shapes first so the painting has some structure to follow.
Binder clips. For windy days. Paper becomes a kite faster than you expect.
A small piece of scrap paper. For testing colors before they go on your painting.
That's genuinely a complete outdoor kit. Everything except the sketchbook fits in a jacket pocket. The sketchbook fits in any bag. You can be fully set up in under two minutes from wherever you decide to sit.
Picking Your Spot
For your first few times out, choose a scene with two qualities: something you actually find interesting to look at, and somewhere you feel reasonably comfortable sitting for thirty minutes to an hour.
Interesting doesn't mean dramatic or picturesque. A single interesting tree is a great subject. A quiet street corner. The view from a cafe window. A garden. A harbor. A courtyard. The inside of a bookshop. Anything with some light and shadow happening.
Comfortable matters more than beginners expect. If you're perched awkwardly on a curb with the sun in your eyes and strangers walking directly behind you, you won't enjoy yourself and the painting won't go well. Find a bench, a wall to lean against, an outdoor table. Position yourself so your paper is in shade, even if your subject is in sun. Direct sunlight on white watercolor paper creates glare that makes it nearly impossible to judge your colors accurately.
Try painting during the "golden hours," the hour or two after sunrise and before sunset, when the light is warm and directional and shadows are long and interesting. That said, midday light is actually more stable and easier to work with as a beginner, because the shadows don't move as fast. Starting around mid-morning or after lunch gives you relatively consistent light for a session.
The Biggest Challenge: Light That Doesn't Hold Still
Light changes. This is the central challenge of plein air painting and the thing that trips up almost everyone the first time.
You sit down, you start painting, and twenty minutes later the shadow that gave your scene all its interest has moved somewhere else entirely. The beautiful golden light that made you stop is now flat and ordinary. The tree that was backlit is suddenly front-lit and looks completely different.
The single most useful thing you can do about this: establish your light and shadows in the first ten minutes and commit to them. Don't update them as they change. Decide what your painting is about in terms of light direction and stick with that decision, even as the real world shifts around you.
This is also why small studies work so well for beginners. If you're aiming to finish something in fifteen minutes, the light doesn't have time to change significantly. Give yourself a timer if it helps: fifteen minutes from first mark to last. Whatever's on the paper when the timer goes is the painting.
As a side bonus: the "paint quickly and stop" approach almost always produces fresher, more spontaneous results than the "work on it forever until it's perfect" approach. Something to think about.
Painting What You See vs. What You Think You See
This sounds philosophical but it's actually very practical.
Most beginners paint what they know things look like, rather than what they actually see in front of them. You know a tree has a trunk and branches and leaves, so you paint a trunk with branches and leaves. But what you're actually looking at might be a dark mass of foliage with a few lighter patches where the sky comes through, and a warm shadow on the left side.
The exercise that helps most here: squint at your subject. Squinting blurs detail and simplifies a scene into its essential shapes and values. Big areas of light. Big areas of shadow. A few midtones in between. Those big shapes are what you paint first, and the details (if you add any at all) come last.
Most watercolor plein air paintings are more successful with less detail, not more. The medium is transparent and luminous and it works best when you let it breathe rather than overworking it. A loose, confident wash over a simple shape often looks more like a tree than a careful, detailed rendering of every leaf.
Practical Tips Nobody Mentions
Sunscreen on your hands will ruin your paper. Sunscreen is oil-based and oil repels watercolor. If you get sunscreen on your paper, paint will bead up and not adhere. Wear an SPF shirt on your arms if you can, and wipe your hands carefully before touching your paper.
Wind is a real enemy. It dries your paint faster than you can work wet on wet, it blows your paper around, and if it's strong enough it can tip your water jar. Binder clips on your sketchbook, a lighter kit, and a sheltered position all help.
You will get curious onlookers. It's lovely, mostly. Have a phrase ready: "just playing around" or "it's just a little sketch" removes any expectation of professionalism and usually makes for a nice brief exchange. People are almost always kind.
Take a photo when you start. Light changes, scenes change, and having a reference for what things looked like when you began is surprisingly useful. Use the photo as a memory aid, not a thing to copy.
Small paintings are almost always better than big ones outside. They're faster, they're easier to keep in shade, and finishing something feels good. A completed postcard-sized painting is more valuable to your development than a half-finished large one.
What You'll Get Out of It
Plein air painting teaches you things about light, color, and observation that are genuinely hard to learn any other way.
You start to see color temperatures in shadows. You notice how the same green tree looks completely different in morning versus afternoon light. You understand value relationships in a way that becomes almost intuitive because you've had to make fast decisions about them over and over.
Beyond the skills, there's also just the experience of sitting somewhere and really looking at it. Not glancing at it, not photographing it, but genuinely studying it for an hour. Places you've walked past a hundred times become interesting in a new way. Traveling somewhere new and painting it connects you to that place more than almost anything else you could do.
It doesn't matter if the paintings are good. They often won't be, especially at first, and that's completely fine. The learning is in the doing, and the doing feels really good once you get past the initial wobble of getting started.
FAQ: Plein Air Watercolor Painting
What does plein air mean?
"En plein air" is French for "in the open air." It refers to the practice of painting outside, from direct observation, rather than in a studio from photos or imagination. It's a tradition going back to the Impressionists and remains one of the most effective ways to develop skills in observing light and color.
Do I need an easel for plein air watercolor painting?
No. Most watercolor plein air painters don't use a traditional easel at all. A small sketchbook with a hard cover works as its own support. You can hold it in your lap, prop it on a bag, or rest it on a wall. An easel becomes useful if you want to work on larger pieces standing up, but for beginner-sized sessions it's genuinely more hassle than it's worth.
What is the best watercolor setup for painting outside?
Something compact, light, and with no spill risk. A waterbrush eliminates the need for a separate water jar. A DryColor sheet format like the Peerless Sidekick is especially good for outdoor work because the dry format means sun and heat won't affect the paint, and setup is essentially zero. Add a small hard-cover sketchbook and you have everything you need.
How do you deal with changing light when painting outdoors?
Establish your main light and shadow pattern in the first ten minutes of a session and commit to it. Don't update your painting as the light shifts. Work small so you can finish before things change too dramatically. Taking a photo at the start gives you a reference for the original light if you need it.
Is it weird to paint in public?
It feels weird at first and then it usually doesn't. People are mostly kind and curious. Working small and quickly helps because you're not sitting in one spot for hours. Finding a relatively quiet spot for your early sessions takes most of the pressure off.
What should I paint first as a plein air beginner?
Something simple with clear light and shadow. A single tree, a building facade, a garden corner, a harbor with boats. Choose a subject that genuinely interests you more than one that seems "paintable." Interesting to you equals more sustained attention and usually a better result.
Ready to Go Outside?
The hardest part of plein air painting is honestly just starting. Once you're sitting somewhere with your paint out and your brush in hand, it takes over from there.
Start small. Stay comfortable. Commit to your light. Squint a lot. Let the paint do what it wants to do. Bring snacks.
If you want a paint setup that makes the whole thing as low-friction as possible, The Sidekick is genuinely worth looking at. Forty-five colors in your pocket, no water jar needed, no setup time. It's the kind of thing that makes "I'll just bring it just in case" completely realistic.
Explore The Sidekick at peerlesscolorlabs.com
Go find a bench. There's a painting out there waiting for you.