Part 1 How to paint in an urban environment. Rodney Kingston begins a three-part series to inspire you to sketch and paint outdoors

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ The equipment you will need

■ Try Rodney’s four-step confidence-building exercise

■ Paint a bus with minimal brushstrokes

Inspiration

On many weekday mornings between March and October my alarm is set for 4.45am. I get ready quickly, leave the house with a backpack full of art equipment and head to the train station. I arrive at Waterloo not long after 6am and within minutes I find a location perfect for plein-air painting. I set up my equipment, paint a scene, pack down and get to the office of my day job by 8.30am.

In January 2017 I had a strong desire to spend more time painting. I’d spend hours thinking about and talking about it, but my level of productivity was nowhere near where I’d have liked it to be, because of the demands of daily life. One evening I watched a YouTube video of artist ‘Tom Hughes’ Thoughts on Painting’ series. He spoke about starting out as a plein-air painter and the passion he had and commitment to improve. At one point during the video he showed examples of his first efforts and compared it with his current work. My jaw dropped! I couldn’t believe how much his work had developed in a relatively short time. His advice to improve as an artist was to get out there and paint.