A Studio Painting from plein air paintings

Being primarily a plein air painter, I don’t do many studio paintings. One of the reasons is that I have limited time to devote to my passion. There use to be a time when I could go out and paint no matter what time of year it was. Now its come to the point where I can’t tolerate the cold anymore. I guess age is creeping in. Because of this, I find that I’m not painting outdoors during the winter months, so I set a goal to start to develop studio paintings from my plein air work. My goal is to use the plein air paints that I completed, and develop a more finished type of painting.

St. Paul’s in Garden City, NY is one of my frequent painting subjects. It is a historic building in Garden City, that was a boys school in its hey day. Unfortunately now it sits empty and the community is divided on what to do with the building.

Over the years I’ve done many paintings of St. Paul’s. However I never did the building after it snowed, so I decided to created a snow painting. The following are the plein air paintings I used as reference for the completed studio painting:

St. Paul’s Winter oil on linen 12" x 18" by Noel Darvie

St. Paul’s oil on linen 14" x 18" by Noel Darvie

St. Paul’s Clock Tower oil on linen 16" x 12" by Noel Darvie


St. Paul’s Summer oil on linen 14" x 18" by Noel Darvie

Below is the finished painting. It was a good exercise because it forced me to be creative and imagine what the scene would be in the snow.

St. Paul’s Winter # 2 oil on linen 14" x 18" by Noel Darvie

Getting Started

It's been a while since I did my profile. I just haven't had the time to get started on my blog. I guess a good starting point is to discuss my painting process. My major joy in painting is painting on location (en plein air). I've started working en plein air over thirty year ago before it came back into fashion. When I went out painting thirty years ago, I never saw another artist outside painting. Now plein air painters are a common occurrence. I do studio painting as well, but at least 90% of my work is plein air.

I like to work alla prima (without preparation) working wet into wet, and completing my paintings in one sitting. I will do some finishing touches in the studio. My painting mediums are oils and pastels.

What I am going to do is post a progress set of images of a painting I did at Old Westbury Gardens in Old Westbury NY. It is one of my favorite locations to paint. There are a variety of subjects to paint. Whats nice about it is every year the Gardens are different. My web site has a collection of my Old Westbury paintings. I did this painting several years ago. It is a back view of the mansion "Old Westbury House". It is an oil on linen 14" x 18":

Initial sketch


Block in stage

Completing final details

Completed Painting

Old Westbury House Rear View

The total time it took me to complete this painting was approximately 3.5 hours. It was a fairly complex painting, but a nice challenge.