There’s something refreshingly old-school about picking up a brush and painting the world exactly as it stands in front of you — no filters, no screens, no shortcuts. That’s precisely what happened at Rono Hills when the Artists’ Guild of Arunachal brought that tradition alive for a new generation of students.
The Artists’ Guild of Arunachal (AGA), in collaboration with Rajiv Gandhi University’s (RGU) fine arts and music department, held a two-day plein air painting workshop on September 18 and 19. Plein air — French for “open air” — is the practice of painting outdoors, directly from observation. It’s an age-old technique, and in the context of Arunachal Pradesh’s breathtaking landscapes, it couldn’t have found a more fitting home.
The workshop kicked off with a frank, face-to-face interaction between AGA members and fine arts students — the kind of conversation that rarely happens inside a classroom. Students were split into three groups, each paired with a mentor from the Guild. From there, the sessions moved into the nuts and bolts of landscape painting: composition, preliminary drawing, pictorial planning, and colour theory. A watercolour demonstration brought it all together, giving students a real-time look at how concepts translate into brushstrokes.
The afternoon took a more reflective turn with a presentation called Landscape as Practice, which walked through the five Ws — what, why, where, when, and which — as they relate to landscape in contemporary art. It wasn’t abstract theory for the sake of it. Through examples of historical and modern artists, and even a photographer, the session pushed students to think about landscape not just as a scenic backdrop, but as a living, evolving subject with real conceptual weight.
Day two was where things got truly hands-on. Watercolour sheets were handed out and, for five hours straight, students worked outdoors — painting what was in front of them, guided in real time by their mentors. What made this session stand out was a small but meaningful detail: the AGA mentors painted too. Right alongside the students. That kind of shared vulnerability — where the teacher is also a learner — creates a different energy in any creative space.
By evening, the works produced by both students and mentors were put on display in the department. The viewing was followed by an open discussion where students talked about their paintings, their choices, their struggles, and what they took away from the experience. Those conversations, honest and unfiltered, are often where the real learning happens.
The AGA itself is a young but impressive collective — largely made up of RGU fine arts alumni who have gone on to earn postgraduate degrees from some of India’s top institutions: Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, the University of Hyderabad, Manipur University, and Tripura University, among others. One of its members, Punyo Chobin, holds the distinction of being the first indigenous academic from Arunachal Pradesh in higher education — a fact that adds extra meaning to what this Guild is building.
At its core, this workshop was about more than painting techniques. It was about reminding students that art lives outside the walls of a studio — and that observation, patience, and the willingness to sit with nature are skills just as vital as any brushstroke. In a world that’s constantly speeding up, that might be the most important lesson of all.
