Patrick Okrasinski

Casa
Italia
Florence
Patrick Okrasinski

Plein Air Oil Painting
(3)

03/06/2026

Here’s the still image of a really fun door painting from the other week in Florence. It was a very quick sketch on a morning I wasn’t sure I even wanted to be out painting. I’m happy with how it came out though!

It might stand out that the shadows look really red. There are two reasons for this.

First, this image was taken while the sun started shining on an indirect light, and that makes all of our pigments look much lighter and washed out than they actually are. The decision making while painting was a bit different.

However, the more important reason is that even when I am mixing dark shadows, I’m looking for ways to push the color within them. One of the fastest ways to have a dull Painting is by having grey or neutral shadows. The simple trick is to never use black for your shadows, and always mix your shadows from more chromatic colors!

01/06/2026

Coming Friday - new video on my Patreon! Check it out for tons of full length, plein air painting tutorials already!

31/05/2026

🇵🇱👇 some of my favorite plein air paintings done in Poland

Ostatnio chcę mi się przyjechać do Polski w lato, żeby malować. Zastanawiam się jeszcze, gdzie i kiedy. Myślę też, że fajnie byłoby ogarnąć jakiś warsztat czy plener z większą grupą. Jeśli ktoś byłby zainteresowany, możecie zostawić komentarz albo zapisać się na warsztat w PL mailing list 💁‍♂️

25/05/2026

I think this painting is finished. I’m not sure. In some areas, the dark tone of the canvas is still peaking through. So far this larger canvas has seen three days of work. I’ll let it have a few days off.

I made a smaller version of this piece, and o had so much fun with the subject I thought it merited a larger study. What I don’t realize was when working on the small format, my body blocked out most of the reflected light coming from behind.

The larger canvas was higher up, and I had some trouble capturing the color. Working on multi day paintings is helpful in part because you are able to bring the painting back into the studio and check whether things are going well in a neutral setting.

Some day, months from now, I’ll likely have a studio sale with whatever else I end up creating on this trip. If you don’t want to miss it and any other announcements, consider joining the mailing list for early access along with hires images and a digital catalog!

24/05/2026

How should you set up when painting outside?

That’s one of the biggest questions people have when beginning to paint out doors

Here is a quick painting I made today. The colors look a little extreme, but there’s a reason for that.

When your easel is in the shadow, your painting looks dark compared to the scene, so it helps you subconsciously mix a lighter set of colors.

If you set up in direct light, all of your colors will look extremely light and saturated - like in the video. But I didn’t set up this way

The cast shadows in Florence can look extremely contrasted, so I made sure to set up in shadow and make them as colorful as I could. It was only at the end of my session that the sun rose high enough to cast my easel in light and make things look a little crazy.

Had I set up in direct light and tried to match those colors from the start, I might have come home with black shadows.

But believe it or not, looking at the painting indoors, it came out a ok for a 40 minute painting.

Also out to for the great idea for the location! I almost quit before I started today, but then she showed me this door right next to Santo Spirito. You never know what panting will throw at you

23/05/2026

l’ve been falling behind on posting some of the newest work. Here’s one from Piazza Santissima Annunziata. I always enjoy trying to capture the Frescoes. The lighting here was interesting as there was an interchange of value between the stone columns and plaster walls - at the base of the column, they are darker than the wall behind it, but as the columns rise the wall and arcade become darker than the stone work.

Not much else to say, no idea when the next studio sale will be. Thinking of how I want to spend the summer right now. The past few days I feel like I’m getting back into the flow of painting

12/05/2026

This was the demo from the last day of the workshop in Florence. It was a really fun group - equal amounts of hard work and laughter!

This demo helped show the advantages of sight size, and was a deeper dive into pushing the sense of material and refinement in any painting, even something as simple as the steps of a door.

I think the rest of the workshops for this year are all sold out. Best way to not miss next years is by joining the mailing list 💁‍♂️🙌

11/05/2026

Here’s a timelapse of latest video tutorial posted to my patreon. Some od the topics covered in this portrait of a sugar maple include:

Painting Trees at a Middle Distance - When trees are really far away, they easily simplify into a mass of just a few brush marks. And when we are in the thick of foliage, we can be overwhelmed with detailed noise. In this painting the tree is at a middle distance where we can still simplify the large masses, without being overwhelmed by all the detail at first

Masking and Simplifying Foliage - The start of the video shows what you really need to look for when painting trees. It’s not about finding all of the tree trunks and branches underneath the foliage, but it’s about the abstract simplification of the largest shapes first

Sky Holes and Transparent Foliage - Perhaps the most important aspect of the video is showing an example of foliage where there are a lot of sky holes of different varieties. The secret is to be able to identify even when there are leaves, the transparency between the sky and the foliage colors. Finding the softness, and asking yourself whether what you’re looking at is mostly sky or mostly foliage, or the reverse, is what gives our paintings of trees a feeling of air instead of a feeling of them being paper cut outs

Subdividing the Masses - Once you have an accurate block in, even a single color value for the entire trees, you can then cut out the lights and darks, to build the foundation for which the detail eventually finds itself on

And as always, there’s a bit of detail, there’s a bit of drawing, there’s a bit of color mixing - and the rest of that good stuff! The reference and finished paintings are also available for anyone wanting to follow along!

11/05/2026

A spot just opened up in my workshop in Rome next month, June 4-7th! Head to my site to learn more details!

Been enjoying landing in Florence this week. Seeing old friends and currently working with a great group for the Florence workshop!

Talking to one of those friends, I think I’ve counted that I’ve only painted 10 times this year. And within the workshop, I’ve noticed I definitely seem to have gotten rusty. OOPS!

Anyway, it’s always great to be back in Italy, and I’m looking forward to getting a lot of personal painting time in very soon. Here is a favorite home run from the first time I was in Rome, back in 2023. I’ll probably never be able to paint in that spot again.

Indirizzo

Florence

Sito Web

http://PatrickOkrasinski.com/, https://www.patreon.com/patrickokra, https://linktr.ee/PatrickOkra

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