In my mind, the outdoors is directly associated with plein air. I rarely go hiking without an easel. Oil is the medium I chose for painting in nature, as it brought the most satisfying way of expressing the scenery. Come think of it now, I exclusively use oil to paint live landscapes. It is just too therapeutic. Paintings can say much more about the air, a good plainting freezes the moment itself. When I paint, I am capturing the feeling of being there.
But why specifically oil? My primary subject is plein air landscapes. As landscapes tend to do, they do not remain calm and sunny. Pouring rain, snowfall, surges of wind. Oil can handle them all -- I once painted during a storm, with water all over my palette and canvas. The only predicament I faced was me getting wet, the painting remained unperturbed. Ah, and of course, the snowfall. I have a special place in my heart for Winter, so it would be a shame if the very nature of paint was water based. How can I paint with an icicle?
Pen and Ink
The ink is a lie. Every ink artist openly LIES to you, and you don't even notice it, you don't even suspect it. It is an extremely expressive and minimalist medium that truly forces you to think differently. To not paint the subject, but to paint the effect. To create the illusion of the subject from a mess of lines. Ink doesn't have a standard visual vocabulary, it has its illusion. Values, edges, textures, all expressed by homogeneous strokes, arranged in a matter where pattern recognition brain can identify the subject. Mastering these patterns and successfully creating a believable illusion is the objective of ink artist.
Now, all of this applies to pure ink. I tried using actual tone -- did not like it. I see other artists using it, creating astonoshing effects with it, but for me it kind of ruins the fun a little bit. My objective in an ink work is to solve the subject into an effect that can be expressed with strokes only. That is the thing I enjoy doing, I plan a lot of my ink paintings with value maps.
If you haven't yet guessed, ink is my preferred medium! I use a dip pen with India ink.
