Eric En Plein Air

- Welcome back to "Eric En Plein Air".

I'm Eric, and today we're at Reeves Reed Arboretum in Summit, New Jersey.

This is my first time at this historic estate and gardens, and I can't wait to explore.

I'm gonna set up my watercolor paints, and then we'll learn more about this fascinating area.

Let's go paint.

(lively music) In the world of watercolor, there are really two main types of paper.

There's hot pressed paper, which is very smooth, and then there's cold pressed paper.

So cold pressed paper has to do with the way the paper is created on a mold and cold pressed paper ends up being kind of rough in texture.

There are degrees, so you can get very rough cold pressed paper.

The type of paper I prefer is a less textured, but still cold pressed, but not super duper rough.

I'm using a palette that folds, and this is really something that is for travel.

This one is a metal palette, which I also enjoy, and it has an enameled interior for mixing the color.

Brushes come in a wide variety of different shapes and sizes and materials, but the kind I prefer is the synthetic because they are a little bit more inflexible, so they're not as floppy as a natural hair brush.

We've got this great scene of this amphitheater here at Reeves Reed, and I'm excited to try to capture it.

I'm gonna do kind of a more spontaneous kind of painting.

A little bit quicker.

The light is kind of changing, and we're here in the fall, so the light doesn't shine as brightly as other times a year.

Another tip, which is really good for getting started with watercolor, is using a atomizer or these spritzer bottles to wet your color before you start using it.

So I'm gonna do that.

I have my paper towel.

I'm gonna do a quick sketch also so that I can get an idea of what I'm painting when I'm painting it.

And I have a kind of a softer graphite pencil.

This is a 2B, and I'm gonna use this to lay out some lines, and then we'll just start painting.

And I like the shape of this amphitheater because it has like the semicircle of stone.

And there are just specific shapes that I'm looking towards for the drawing.

And areas like this are so fun just to set up, do a painting, enjoy the moment, and really experience the area that you're in.

Up above are some really nice greens that are getting back lit by the sun.

So I'm gonna try to capture some of that too.

And there's a stairway that's up above that's more of an architectural element.

So I'll try to get some of that too.

Okay.

So that feels pretty good for the drawing portion.

I want to get the shapes accurate, and then we can move on and get going with paint.

Now's a good time to take a break, and let's learn more about Reeves Reed Arboretum and how it came to be.

- What's really cool about the arboretum is it used to actually be somebody's private estate.

- That's amazing.

Yeah.

- So as you walk around the grounds, you're always thinking about, well, the kids used to run here-- - Yeah.

It was a home.

- And all the way in the woods was where they'd go play, hide and seek.

- Wow.

- It was about 50 years ago last year that it actually became a public garden.

It became an arboretum.

- [Eric] Okay.

- And it was really kind of very fortunate because originally when the owners put the house up on the market, there wasn't any interest in buying it.

- Really?

Interesting.

- And so a developer came in and had received approval to subdivide the property into like, somewhere between nine and 10 lots.

- Oh, interesting.

- And the neighbors became really concerned about that.

And they realized that there was a lot of horticultural significance to the property.

Are you familiar at all with Frederick Olmsted?

- Yes.

Designer of Central Park.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

And the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

- Well, his firm was the firm that designed this property.

- [Eric] Wow.

- When it was first built in 1889.

- Oh yeah.

I mean, that's like, that's as well known as it gets with design.

- Absolutely.

And the second significant landscape architect that had kind of an imprint on the property was a woman called Ellen Biddle Shipman.

- Okay.

- And she was the first female landscape architect back in like the 30s or 40s.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And she operated an all female-- - [Eric] Team.

- [Jackie] Team.

- [Eric] Wow.

Okay.

- [Jackie] That's way back then was-- - That's a big thing.

- So between that and the significant trees that were planted.

The neighbors felt it was really important to preserve this and not let it be developed.

So they started this like friends group.

They raised a bunch of money, and then the city of summit came in and decided to purchase the property.

So they own the property.

But we operate as a not-for-profit.

We are the largest green space in Summit.

- [Eric] Wow.

- [Jackie] And people-- - [Eric] And it's open to the public.

- It's open to the public.

We ask for donations, but we do not charge admissions.

- That's amazing.

- And we just want more and more people to discover it.

- When I get started, I like to use big brushes.

And the advantage of using a big brush is that you can cover a lot of territory at one time.

So if I use a bigger brush at the beginning and then I use a smaller brush later on, it allows me to go from a bigger area to a smaller area.

And that's really helpful.

With watercolor, your water tends to get a little bit mucky as you work.

So if your water starts to get dirtier with color, rinse it out, and then give yourself fresh water.

And sometimes when you're painting, it can be a little tricky to figure out where should I start.

And for me, starting on a painting is always kind of different with each painting.

I like to start on areas where I feel comfortable to get started.

I don't wanna do anything really complicated right away.

So I'm going to start with these stone bands that create the outer perimeter of the amphitheater.

And that color is really variegated, but I like to show kind of a neutral color that can capture more of a feeling of it.

And remember, just think at the beginning of a painting, just think big.

Think of big shapes and big colors and textures.

Don't worry about detail at the beginning.

(piano music) I'm gonna need to get that shape as accurate as I can.

But remember, you can always change things as you go along with a painting.

And I usually talk about, an important part of painting is focal points.

So focal points for me are the area where the painting is directed.

So for me, I'm looking at this stairway that's up above, and I think that's really where my focal point will be.

So I may paint in that shape of that stairway.

Which is a little bit more gray in color.

So now let's start working with some of the impatiens, because the impatiens is sort of a light lavender color, and using a lighter value up above.

And then we can start to build in some darker values.

Remember, value is just light and dark.

So I'm gonna simplify everything into one sort of area.

One sort of note of color.

There we go.

Thinking big, big shapes.

Still using a big brush too.

Very abstract right now.

I wanna start adding the greens, because when I start to add the greens into the painting, it will be a little bit better for creating the general shape of everything.

Let's take a break and learn more about the arts program that's here and the beautiful gallery space that they have in the house.

- We typically hold two to three exhibitions per year.

- Oh, okay.

That's a good amount.

- Yeah.

We have both indoor exhibitions, and then we do outdoor sculptural work as well.

Right now we have a show called "Nature's Tapestry", which you can tell by the name is all tapestry work.

- [Eric] It's beautiful.

And I love the clothing and I love the quilts.

Yeah.

- Yes.

Yeah.

So all of this artwork is by a local artist here in Summit, New Jersey.

Her name's Carolyn McKibbin.

And she does a style of quilting called improvisational quilting.

So it's a little different than the typical patterned quilts that you typically see in someone's home.

- Yeah.

With like squares and grids.

- Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

So she does work that's a little more improvisational, a little more spontaneous, and a little bit more creative in some regard too.

- [Eric] Yeah, yeah, definitely.

- [Marilyn] Yeah.

- [Eric] They're beautiful and the colors are amazing.

- Yes.

She uses a lot of colors that are inspired by nature and gardens.

So actually this piece right here, if we wanna take a look.

This piece is inspired directly from Reeves Reed Arboretum.

So it has the colors of the different garden spaces.

You can see the lawn space, but also the color of the flowers and the beautiful sky.

And it kind of alludes to that garden space.

To me, I think art and nature are very connected, and I think making art about nature and appreciating art about nature just helps deepen our connection with the environment.

- Definitely, yeah.

- To me, they're very connected and both play off of each other.

We get ready for our Art in the Garden gala, which happens every year in June.

- Oh, that sounds fun too.

- Yeah.

So that's when we have a larger exhibition in the gallery, and then also bring in new sculptural work to the grounds.

Right now we have a wicker horse piece by a Kentucky artist named Justin Roberts, and then a piece by Jos Criollo, who's an Ecuadorian artist and does metal sculpture.

- [Eric] We saw that with the turtle.

Yeah beautiful.

- Yeah.

So he does those metal sculptures.

- So let's start to get some of those spring greens up above.

Oh.

Don't worry if this happens.

If this happens with a watercolor, just take your paper towel and dab it and bring it back.

The reason that happened is because both of those colors were wet and they just merged into one another.

But don't worry if that happens, it's not a big deal.

And just use those colors as big shapes.

You can think of it like a big jigsaw puzzle.

There we go.

Add a little bit of variety where you see it.

If you see more yellow, add more yellow.

If it looks more blue, add more blue.

There's a bench up above, but I have the choice.

I can either put that in or leave it out.

For the time being I'm gonna leave it out, but I could always add it later.

And then to the left hand side is a little bit of a cloudy sky.

I want to add a little touch of blue.

So I'm going to look at it and try to make a best guess of where that blue is going to be.

And then we can continue and put some more greens down below.

So I'm just using a very simple cobalt blue.

And cobalt blue is really like a sky blue, and I just want a part of it that peeks up above.

So let's add some more green down below, because between the steps of these stones is a green lawn.

So because it's dry, I can go back.

I don't want to have happened what happened before where they merged together.

That's just a little too yellow.

So let me add a touch of blue.

You'll find a lot of enjoyment and relaxation with a painting.

Just covering the white.

If you're covering the white of the paper, you're in a good position.

It's generally good.

Just cover everything and then you can start thinking about detail.

So I'm gonna add a little bit of a darker green using a mixture.

And they've got some beautiful shapes to these trees.

I love seeing the variety in the trees.

It's so beautiful.

And if you're going darker with a green, use black, because black is basically like a dark blue.

You don't wanna use too much black because it can look kind of gray and muddy.

But I like to use black to mix greens, because you can get a lot of variety with the green.

And just keep working, keep building it up.

You can think about painting like building a house.

You start with a foundation and then you build it and you build it.

And one day you'll be able to put up that wallpaper and make it all nice and decorated.

And paintings like this are just kind of free and easy.

I'm not really going for exact details and anything fancy.

I just want a feeling of it to kind of remember the place.

So now that the paper's all pretty much covered with some level of paint, some areas are not painted because I'm leaving it as a white.

I want to go back and start to add a little bit more detail.

I'm gonna add some details and see where I am.

And then probably call it finished once I reach a point where I'm happy with it.

They have a lot of great art programs here at Reeves Reed.

And we're gonna speak with the director of education to learn more.

- Here at the arboretum, we offer a lot of programming.

I think we do hundreds of programming.

- Wow.

Really?

- Annually.

We offer programs for ages zero to 12.

- [Eric] Wow.

A whole age range.

That's great.

- Yeah.

Programs like let's Little Wonders, is for the zero to three and Oaks and Acorn for the three to five.

And Let's Get Growing, Kids Can Cook, Nature's Creation.

- [Eric] There's like a full school there.

- There's this full spectrum.

So under the, Let's Get Growing, we've been teaching children about square foot gardening, which is a type of gardening method that was invented by Mel Bartholomew years ago, back in the 70s.

And it's a really simple, efficient way to garden that.

- Square foot gardening.

- Square foot gardening.

Exactly.

And it makes gardening easy for anyone, whether you're two or 92.

- [Eric] Yeah.

Wow.

- We're always creating new programs.

We recently are providing a program for homeschoolers.

So parents who are homeschooling their children.

They can come here and have an entire year.

- I'm going to switch to a smaller brush.

Using a smaller brush will help me get smaller details.

And if your paint starts to dry out, just give yourself a little bit of a spritz from your atomizer.

And I'm just looking at the underside of where these impatiens are growing.

And I like seeing shadows so that I can create a more definite form.

And when you start putting down your shadows, don't worry if it looks too light.

You can always make them darker later on.

I'm going to try to get as much detail in those flowers as I can, but it's better to get the big impression of it instead of all those little details.

And for me, I paint in areas at a time with a watercolor.

If one area is wet, I'll go back to it later on once it's dry.

Remember, painting is more about feeling.

It's not always representational.

It's more about the atmosphere and the environment that you're in.

Here.

Just add some of that stone work.

I love the texture of stone and the variety that it creates.

And when I'm painting something like this, I'm getting the general impression of it.

I'm still looking very closely, but it doesn't have to be exact.

Don't worry about creating an exact replica of what you're seeing.

But don't be intimidated by watercolor.

Watercolor is a very free and easy material if you want it to be.

And it can be very exacting or it can be very loose.

It depends on how you want to do it.

Let's get more details on this stone down below.

I love paintings like this because they're a little bit more free and easy.

And a lot of times you'll find with a painting, the thing that makes a painting interesting isn't so much the details.

And I guess it's kind of a personal opinion, but I like paintings that are more atmospheric and show a bigger area instead of just all small details.

And for me, I'm very used to the palette I have.

So I just instinctually go towards the colors I have.

Almost like keys on a piano.

But if you're getting used to a palette, don't feel like you have to rush.

Let's get some more detail on those steps.

And this is an area where I'll be a little bit more careful and a little bit more precise because those steps are very specific and they're very flat.

And now let's let that dry.

Let's add some more foliage details.

And then I'll go back and add a little bit more stone work.

And I think we're just about done.

So painting these beautiful plants, let's take a break now and learn more about how these plants grow and the beautiful way that they're organized in these gardens.

- I have what I think is the greatest job in the world.

I get to design gardens, I get to plant them, I get to maintain them.

And I have a staff of people that are creative and talented and love gardening as much as I do.

Gardening is a way of doing art.

So I look at the plants that I design with the plants that I put into my garden plantings, sort of as paints.

And then the garden is like a palette.

So what's really great about a garden like this, for example, is that we can change this palette every year.

And so this year we decided to do lavender and purple.

And next year we may do something, we may do orange and red.

So this area of the garden is where we do a lot of annual plantings, and that just simply means plants that we use for one year.

And then that's why the next year we can do something different.

Now, mixed in with that, we also have trees and we have shrubs and perennials.

So they're more of like the permanent backdrop.

But we use the annuals as like the, again, the paints.

And then it's fun too, I like to do gardens that you don't typically see here in New Jersey.

So this is our desert garden over here.

And so we have plants, we call these Xeriscape plants.

So they're plants that are native to the desert southwest, or to Africa.

- And that's all throughout here.

- Exactly.

Yes.

- Wow.

Wow.

- So all the plants that are here, we literally plant these in May, water them, fertilize 'em, take care of them over the summer.

And then the following fall, like next week, we dig them up and put 'em into the greenhouse.

- Wow.

- So it's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of work, but it's also-- - Yes, of course.

- A lot of fun.

Spring here, the first thing we start to see are the electric greens, and then the pinks of the cherries, the pinks, the salmons, the darker hot pinks, darker pinks, the lavenders, the purples.

So it's basically like you see color coming back into the world.

- [Eric] Right, right, right.

- And what's fun is that our permanent trees and shrubs are this backdrop.

And so in the spring for example, where we have our flowering red buds up there on the hill, they come in all different shades.

So we have purples and lavenders and even even hot pink.

- Wow.

- And they all kind of paint this picture together.

And then in front of them, or below them, we have daffodils.

So we have all the yellows.

- Daffodils are very well known too, right?

- Yes.

Yes.

We're probably most well known for our daffodil bowl.

Flowers only last for so long.

But we use a lot of foliage plants like this Dracaena here, it's a Cordyline actually.

And these Cordylines they don't bloom at all, but the leaves are so beautiful.

- They're beautiful.

Yeah.

Look at the color.

- You really kind of can't... It's just amazing.

So this will actually grow into a small tree eventually.

In this garden we also have our Elephant Ears.

So these are from the Amazon.

- [Eric] Are those the big ones?

- These big guys right here.

These are called Colocasias.

Colocasia Macrorrhizo, that's the botanical name.

And so to have that nice green backdrop behind these purple salvias.

- Oh, it's beautiful.

- You know, or these are really blue.

I guess they're more of a royal blue.

Another one of my favorite plans is this Alternanthera.

It's a ground cover.

And a lot of people are sort of ask us, why do you have these plants up in these things.

- Yeah.

It's up above.

Yeah.

- And the reason for that is very simple.

It's because the rabbits in the groundhogs would eat them in the ground.

So that's why we did this.

But when we did it, people sort of really seemed to enjoy the structure.

Yeah.

So we had a little fun, we spray paint the rebar.

- The rebar.

Yeah.

- And nothing can get to that.

So it's sort of a, it was a necessity, but now it's become a little bit of an artistic-- - That's great.

- Endeavor.

- There's a beautiful tree back behind there that's getting hit by the light, and it creates this beautiful, warm light effect.

Watercolor is a lot like stained glass because it's transparent and you can see through the layers.

I'm still thinking about color and shape and value.

That's really where my mind is all the time.

If the shape isn't right, I'll adjust the shape.

If the color's not right and same thing with value.

Let's go back.

The stone is still a little wet, but that might give us a nice effect for creating the texture of that stone work.

Yeah.

You can see that the watercolor bleeds a little bit and will create that nice texture to the stone.

And if it's dry, it won't bleed because the paper is dry.

Of course, if it's bleeding too much and it's way too wet, just let it dry.

Give it a moment.

I do feel like those flowers need a little bit more detail, so I'm going to work on that.

And then I think we'll just be about finished.

We learn about these flowers and then it helps you paint them by learning about them.

It gives you more insight to what I'm painting and what I'm trying to paint.

I'm just adding some variety within the foliage.

Add a little bit more into these rocks now that it's a little dryer.

And just let your brush sort of dance around and create marks.

And that sun is shifting quite a bit.

So I'm always kind of aware of that.

Where is the sun?

How am I doing?

Set your time once you start painting and then you're finished.

And then try to get an idea of how long you spent.

Usually you get about an hour and a half on a painting at the most.

Okay.

I feel good about that.

I feel like that captures the scene.

I'm really more interested in the atmosphere for paintings like this.

I really love being able to come to a place like this, learn about it, explore it, and then capture a painting that shows what it is, and it creates a memory for me and I can share it with others.

I hope you enjoyed today's visit to Reeves Reed Arboretum here in Summit, New Jersey.

Places like this are so important, and Reeves Reed really does a great job of engaging and educating its visitors.

I hope it inspires you to go out and explore nature yourself.

I'm Eric, and I'll see you next time "En Plein Air".

(lively music) - [Narrator] Visit us online at EricEnPleinAir.com to learn more about our program, workshops with Eric, or to purchase original works of art and prints featured in this series.

Thank you.

(lively music)