Judd Mercer surveying the landscape.
For Judd Mercer, plein-air painting provides a perfect escape from his day job staring at a computer screen as a graphic designer in downtown Denver. Whenever he can, he’ll head into the Rockies, or further afield to favorite scenic spots like Canyonlands National Park in Utah or Laguna Beach, CA. He’ll even explore unlikely spots closer to home: When time is short, he may find beauty “no one would ever see” in the geometry of factories or in a spillway beneath a highway overpass. “I do a lot of exploring in industrial scenes. You abstract it enough that, if you do it right, the smoke from a factory can become just as interesting as the fog on the beach.”
The setting for Judd Mercer’s painting Socked In.
He chooses to work in gouache for his plein-air work, which provides him with “the best possible balance between all of the mediums.” It can be applied thickly for opaque effects or in thin, transparent washes. When he goes out painting, he says, “I travel super-light with a backpack. I have a tiny little case with paint, a collapsible water cup, and pencils, and I cut the handles of my brushes in half so they fit. I don’t use an easel, painting on my lap on illustration board or a heavy paper sketchbook.”
A page from Judd Mercer’s sketchbook.
Often on his excursions, Mercer will use masking tape to form a grid of two or four small, equal rectangles on one sheet of paper or board. Then he’ll set a timer for an hour and challenge himself to execute multiple paintings in one outdoor session; this practice helps to improve his proficiency for larger studio oil paintings. “For me,” he says, “plein-air painting is about training, not finished pieces, although people like to buy them. They like the spontaneity and the looseness. The built-in time limit forces you to make decisions. It’s all about setting an intention and capturing as much as you can in that moment.” To learn more, visit https://www.juddmercer.art.
The setting for Judd Mercer’s painting Balls of Sunshine.
Balls of Sunshine by Judd Mercer.