a wry smile, Jacob told him to get his paint box together, saying,
“We’ll go up in the hills and do some painting.”
Whitcomb laughs at the memory of his first landscape painting.
“I never felt so lost in my life! It was a thoroughly humbling experi-
ence,” he says. “I didn’t even know how to start. I didn’t know what
to mix to go where.”
After that first disastrous effort, Jacob gave Whitcomb a copy
of the classic book, Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting. “And then
he told me to go out and practice—and to take it in small bites,”
Whitcomb says. “I realized there was a whole lot more to this thing
than I could have ever imagined.” Over the next four to five years,
the artist transitioned from figurative to landscape painting. “I’ve
always loved being outdoors,” he says. “I love the landscape—my
landscape—the Western landscape.”ON THE SPOT
“The seed of the concept behind a more orchestrated piece,”
Whitcomb says, “is always going to be an on-the-spot piece—or
several on-the-spot pieces.” He doesn’t refer to painting outdoors
as “plein air” painting. “We were doing this before it had a name.
We just called it painting outdoors,” he says, laughing. “It’s where
you get your raw material.”
The sprint to the finish that one encounters at various plein air
events “isn’t what painting is about,” says Whitcomb. “It’s a good30 Pastel Journal AUGUST 2019