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Author: Carol L. Douglas

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“24 Reasons Everyone Should See Maine Before They Die” includes a lot of mid-coast Maine

Back in Rochester, I’m a bit dazed from an exceptionally long day of travel yesterday. I did find myself perking up tremendously from this: “24 Reasons Everyone Should See Maine Before They Die.” I’ve been to almost every one of these places, and they’re iconic and beautiful. Rather more surprising is how many of them are on my shortlist of places to paint on my workshop:

Owl’s Head Lighthouse

I painted this as a demo for my July workshop and framed it Monday before leaving Maine. How fine it looks in an elegant black frame:
Owl’s Head Light, 8X10, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me. Available.

Marshall Point Lighthouse

Every time I’m there, someone tells me about Forrest Gump, but I’m probably the last remaining American who hasn’t seen it. I’ve never painted the lighthouse, but the setting is one of my favorite spots to paint in mid-coast Maine.
Sunset at Marshall’s Point, 8X6, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me. Private collection.

Camden

Camden harbor is never boring, with its big fleet of wooden schooners moving in and out of the harbor. There are also gazillionaires’ yachts, which aren’t as lovely but are equally entertaining. But I probably love the old dinghies and modest dories as much as anything—certainly for painting.

Monhegan

Monhegan has more artists per square inch than any other place in Maine. Despite that, it’s still charming and still beautiful.
If I were in charge of this list, I’d ditch Freeport, because I’m not much of a shopper. I’d add in Eastport (with its ethereal ghostliness) and Castine (about which I’ll write tomorrow).
However, it’s pretty amazing that a sixth of the places they chose as iconic are on my Maine workshop itinerary, isn’t it?

Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click herefor more information on my Maine workshops!
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Monhegan

Painting on a porch overlooking Manana Island. It’s a tough life.
On the road with fruit smoothies in our bellies and egg sandwiches in hand (courtesy of the fantastic chef at Lakewatch Manor) we were queuing at the Monhegan ferry at 7 AM in a steady drizzle. Our plan was to paint from the deck of a private residence, but that plan changed when we met George, a multiple-generation islander who kindly drove down to the dock to fetch us and our painting gear.
Matt in touch with his inner pirate.
George offered the use of his porch, a roaring fire, his coffee-maker, his dining room, and a second-floor painting aerie.  How could anyone resist on a chilly, misty day?

Preparatory to painting.
It was a fantastic day, but all too soon the ferry’s inexorable schedule called us back. From Port Clyde, I was on the road to the 2013 Castine Plein Air Festival. It was hard saying goodbye to my students, but they all promise to be back next year.

George and I compared aprons.
Nancy was a veritable painting machine–three paintings in less than eight hours.
Nancy’s painting of daylilies and the sea.

Nancy’s painting of Manana Island.

Nancy’s second painting of daylilies.

Matt’s painting of Manana.

Pamela’s painting of Manana.

Pamela’s painting of rooftops.
We finishing up on a real high note! August and September are sold out, but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.
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How to recover from a fail

Pamela’s lovely painting of Camden harbor. Yes, the sheds across the harbor are completely cockamamie.
Nobody goes to a painting workshop expecting to do brilliant work, but my students have been painting at a high level. But into each life come a few tough painting days, and today was one of them.
Pamela’s sketch for the above. Her first try on canvas lost this lovely composition.
Camden is a busy harbor and one never knows where and when the boats will be moving. A commercial fishing dock, a fleet of wooden schooners, a mix of pleasure boats, and international luxury yachts all vie for space. It’s no surprise that painters find it a reach, but a reach is always better than the same old same-old.
So we used her viewfinder to grid the drawing and she was able to accurately move it to canvas.
I prefer to paint from floating piers, but that isn’t possible at Camden (or most other working harbors). Viewed from the landing, the curves of the hulls are constantly changing as the tide comes in and out. (They start out being devilishly difficult anyway, so it hardly seems fair.)
Sue painted half this dinghy before the owner moved it on her. A cell phone camera and a matching dock made for a nice save.
Each of my students came up against a difficult problem today. Pamela’s was the easiest to solve. She did a terrific drawing. In moving it to her canvas, she unconsciously changed the crop. It was a simple matter to wipe out that first draft, and then I showed her an easy way to make sure her drawing stayed in scale.
Matt’s buoy was symmetrical, yes, but static, no.
Matt’s was a problem of composition. He was drawn to the reflections under a buoy, but “knew” he shouldn’t center it on his canvas. However, the buoy itself is strongly symmetrical needed to be centered on the canvas. A few sketches later, it was apparent that the floating dock and background would give the composition energy.
Sue’s problem was more exasperating. To avoid the overwhelming clutter of the harbor, she concentrated on a single dinghy. Out of dozens there, what were the chances that someone would choose that one to take out? But choose it they did, after she was half finished. Her solution was to work partly from memory and partly from a photo on her cell phone along another patch of dock.
Nancy did a lovely sketch, transcribed it faithfully to her canvas, and blocked in her color successfully. Then she took a look at Pamela’s painting and pronounced her own effort “boring”. Hours later, she was still very unhappy. I liked her treatment of the boats; she emphatically didn’t. Perhaps restating the darks with heavier paint would help, I thought, but no.
Nancy’s lovely sketch.
Half an hour later, she was ready to scrape it out. She walked down the landing to scope out a different painting. “Well,” I reasoned, “if she’s going to wipe it out anyways, I might as well see if I can rescue it before she comes back.”
But Nancy didn’t like where the painting went. She pronounced it boring. (I loved the little boat with the lateen sail. Very Van Gogh. But she didn’t agree with me.)
Sometimes students resent their teachers painting on their canvases, but sometimes teachers paint on them because it’s the only way they can figure out what’s going wrong. The first thing I realized is that Nancy wasn’t using enough paint. I pushed some thicker paint against her boats, and immediately they were stronger and livelier—and I never changed a thing on them. (That lateen sail is my favorite part of her painting.)
Just a few things changed, and one can see the route to salvaging this painting. Still not perfect, but it is definitely doable.
When Nancy did her sketch, I imagine she saw the foreground water as having form. That didn’t transfer to her painterly version. So I lengthened the reflections of the background buildings, and built in patterns of ripples. I tied the floating dock to the water by using the same highlight color (a diffuse blue-violet). Lastly, I pointed up the buildings a bit and simplified the treeline.
I still see a lot more that could be done, but it’s well on the way to being salvaged.
When it’s all going wrong:
  • Step back and look at it from a distance;
  • When you’re nervous, you’re probably not using enough paint. That results in an anemic painting;
  • Restate your darks. It often happens that you hate your painting because you lost the overall value pattern that attracted you in the first place;
  • Take a break. Have some coffee. Flirt with the lobstermen. You will usually come back to your work in a far better frame of mind.

Tomorrow: Monhegan! We’re finishing up the workshop session strong! August and September are sold out, but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.
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Misty

Winslow Homer, The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog (1894)

We set out today to discuss Winslow Homer’s use of the diagonal in his coastal paintings. Could there be a more lovely example than The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog(1894), which is owned by Rochester’s own Memorial Art Gallery? And yet this painting proved even more appropriate than I anticipated, for we painted through mists all day.
Nancy hard at work on a misty bluff.

Arlene painted along the shore.

Matthew among the rocks.

Sue was in the pines.
Rocks and sea are far more energetic than meadows and flowers. To organize them, one must first consider the motive power driving the composition and harness the elements to that force. But added to the constant motion of the sea are the cyclical tides. They make a value sketch invaluable. Inevitably, the painter will lose the thread of his or her composition as the tide rushes in or out or the light suddenly changes. Being able to refer back to one’s value sketch is often the only way to save a floundering painting.
A value study by Pamela… everyone did them.
And look how fantastic the results were!
Pamela’s seascape.
Sue’s seascape.

Nancy’s seascape.

Matt’s seascape.
The second of my Maine workshops is half over, and we’re having a great time. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.
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Atmospheric perspective

Atmospheric enough for you?
Today was damp and drizzly—a perfect opportunity to consider atmospheric perspective. We did so at Glen Cove in Rockport, where on a clear day we can see islands in the far distance. Today was not a clear day; it became steadily less clear as we went on.
Matt’s view of the above scene. Yes, those are water droplets on his canvas.
Atmospheric (or aerial) perspective is the tendency of objects far away to have less contrast and chroma than objects nearby. In painting, we create the illusion of depth by depicting more distant objects as lighter and less-detailed than closer objects.
Pamela chose a long view of a boat at anchor. By the time she finished, the scene was monochromatic.
That’s not just a painterly convention. Solar radiation approaches the Earth in a direct beam, but is then scattered around in our atmosphere. That’s what gives us blue skies, pink sunsets and atmospheric perspective. On a clear day, there’s more of it bouncing around between you and that distant hill than between you and your coffee cup, so the distant hill looks bluer.
Nancy chose the same view, and experienced the same change in conditions.
Of course, when fog comes into play, it is water droplets that obscure that distant hill. However, the effect is the same. The easiest way to execute it is to just add some of the sky color—whether that’s blue, or grey, or violet—into the greens of the distant hills. The more distant the object, the more sky color should be added to it.
Sue chose the beach view.
At about 2 PM, the atmospherics had gotten a bit too thick to see much of anything at all, so we had a cup of hot tea and proceeded to the Farnsworth.  There we saw, among many fantastic paintings, Fitz Henry Lane’s Shipping in Down East Waters (1854) which is a luminous painting of boats in fog. Nothing like seeing how a master did it!
Sue hard at work.

And if these days weren’t enough, my intrepid students went out last night and painted the full moon over Chickawaukie Lake:
Matt’s view across Chickawaukie Lake.

Pamela’s view across Chickawaukie Lake showed the sinuous ripples that were there.
Matt’s second view across Chickawaukie Lake.
Nancy’s view across Chickawaukie Lake.

Pamela’s second view across Chickawaukie Lake.
The second of my Maine workshops started today. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.
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I love a parade

We arrived at our painting site and I heard the exclamation, “I’m in Maine!”
Among the skills necessary to run a successful painting workshop, I should add being the lead car in a convoy. I am proud to say I didn’t lose a single person in downtown Rockland. (One of my students said today that she was enjoying how close our painting sites were to Lakewatch Manor; it’s easy when one is working in beautiful mid-coast Maine.)
That’s a happy painter!
Today, we painted at a lighthouse. This is paradoxically both the easiest and most difficult of subjects. It’s easy to do something recognizable and popular with something so iconic; it’s extremely difficult to move past the clichéd into something truly good. But these being my students, of course they succeeded.
Our first paintings: Sue’s magical look out Penobscot Bay.

Our first paintings: Matt M’s view across the channel. Matt painted this on just a few hours sleep after flying from Belize and driving here from NYC.

Our first paintings: Pamela’s tiny jewel of a view out through Penobscot Bay.

Our first paintings: Nancy’s fantastic view of the lighthouse.
“I never expect to do good work at a workshop,” one student said today, and I generally concur with that. It’s so difficult to integrate new ideas that you lose track of what you know. But of course, they did do good work. After I tortured them with values, paint handling and other technical stuff for hours, they decided to do a “quick draw” to finish the day—15-20 minute paintings. (I apologize but I never got a photo of Nancy’s “quick draw.”)
Matt’s “quick draw.”
Sue’s “quick draw.”
Pamela’s “quick draw.”
And somewhere in there the teacher did a quick demo painting, which she thinks wasn’t half bad.
Lighthouse, by little ol’ me.
The second of my Maine workshops started today. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.
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I forecast a fantastic week ahead

Fitz Henry Lane, Owl’s Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine, 1862, 15.7 in. by 26 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Read about it here. This is where it all starts.
This morning I saw a Facebook posting from one of July’s workshop students. It read, “On my way for a week of painting in beautiful Maine!” She’s excited; I’m excited too. I will be joined by artists from Manhattan, the Hudson Valley, Rochester, Vermont, and Maine. By week’s end, we will have forged new friendships and made some fantastic art.
The little harbor at Owl’s Head today.
We’ll have a reception this evening at beautiful Lakewatch Manor. Tomorrow we will set off to our first destination: Owl’s Head, with its iconic 1826 lighthouse and beautiful rocky promontories.  Fitz Henry Lane painted it in 1862, when the little community of Owl’s Head was raw but not new. It was “discovered” by Samuel de Champlain in 1605, but of course the Abenaki Indians had never really lost it in the first place.
There are still schooners sailing around Owl’s Head today. They come out of Camden, Rockland and Rockport harbors, and we’ll see them regularly. You can learn more about them here.
And how about this weather forecast?

Today: Sunny, with a high near 73. North wind around 5 mph becoming south in the afternoon.
Monday: Sunny, with a high near 71. Light and variable wind becoming south 5 to 10 mph in the morning.
Tuesday: Showers likely, mainly between 7am and 8am. Cloudy, with a high near 70. Northeast wind around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Wednesday: A 30 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 73.
Thursday: A 40 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 72.
Friday: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 75.
Students painting on a shingle beach below the lighthouse.
A student does a value study preparatory to painting.
The second of my Maine workshops starts today. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! I’m also starting a contact list for 2014. Interested? Let me know. Check here for more information.
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Reconnoitering

Castine from Fort George, 1856, by Fitz Henry Lane.
 It always helps to have seen a place you’re planning to paint, so I took a run up to Castine today in anticipation of next Saturday’s 2013 Castine Plein Air Festival. I packed both oils and watercolors, figuring I’d do a bunch of test sketches. At the last minute I emailed my only contact in town. I suggested we get together for coffee, not really expecting she’d check her mail.
That, my friends, is not a boat, but a ship. A retired navy man told me today that a ship can carry a boat, but a boat cannot carry a ship.
I am familiar with West Brooksville (which is across the mouth of the Penobscot River), so I figured I’d have some idea of the lay of the land. Turns out I was wrong.
Many of the picturesque towns of the Maine coast are strung like pearls along US 1. That is their main business street, with small side streets leading down to coves or harbors. The architecture runs from iconic drawn-out Maine farmhouses to Greek Revival Capes to Federal to Victorian to Foursquare, arranged organically around a harbor or river mouth. I can usually navigate them fairly quickly. That isn’t to say they reveal their treasures instantly, but that I have a method for finding good views.
A breathtakingly beautiful private garden in Castine. My green thumb was itching.
Castine isn’t on Route 1, and its streets are laid out in a grid. Greek Revival mansions march down its slope in imposing rows. It looks like a smaller, well-maintained version of Eastport (which is one of the most atmospheric places in all of Maine). One arrives in Eastport along a causeway from the mainland; one arrives in Castine via a narrow spit of land between two coves. Both places feel as if they never grew into the entire space allotted to them.
Iconic Maine.
I drove to the public dock and along the waterfront streets and rapidly realized that Castine wasn’t going to give up its treasures very easily to an outsider. Feeling a little daunted, I parked in front of the museum, intending to ask the staff for help, when my phone rang. It was my contact. “I never check my email during the day,” she said.
We had coffee and she offered to take me for a ride around the town. I couldn’t have asked for a better guide—she walks about five miles a day and has a great eye for the picturesque. I came home with 20 sites in mind that would each yield a fantastic painting, and a new friend!
I will not be painting this for next Saturday’s 2013 Castine Plein Air Festival, because the tide won’t be right, but I will paint it sometime soon.
Castine predates Plymouth Colony by seven years; its first European settlement is dated to 1613. It is ringed by historic sites, having been fought over by the French, Dutch, English, and Americans. I asked my friend’s husband why Castine was so important. “It’s a deep-water port,” he answered. I suppose that also explains why it puts me in mind of Eastport.

The second of my Maine workshops starts Sunday. If you’re signed up for it, you can find the supply lists here. (If you’re not, you’d better make arrangements super-fast!) August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.

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What a difference a week makes!

Amy drew her cat. It’s a lovely likeness of a cat in motion.
Last week I challenged Amy Vail to let me teach her to draw, after she told me she “lacked the gene” to do it. Amy has never had a drawing lesson before. I want to show you her progress, because it’s amazing and wonderful.
“I noticed that shadows of balls are also circular,” she told me. “They are not just amorphous shapes of dark.”
We started with plain old measurement, using our pencil as a ruler: “The rock you are looking at is two units wide and one unit long.” She got that right away, and understood that she could scale her drawing on the paper. (This is not the simplest concept, and one that often trips people up.)
“I thought measuring was cheating,” she said.
A tomato, by Amy. Note that she is getting into shading intuitively. Note her fantastic natural line.
Why do people believe drawing must be a matter of subjectivity and instinct, when it is based on rules that are as rational and systematic as are mathematical rules?
“I have not one recollection of ever having been taught a thing about drawing in school,” said Amy, which goes a long way to explaining why she believed she couldn’t ever learn to draw.
Amy drew her aunt’s Christmas cactus while waiting for said aunt to finish a phone call… that’s devotion!
“Look! That rock looks like a sleeping lion,” I said.

“No, it looks like TWO sleeping lions,” she responded. She was right. I knew at that moment that she could make the intuitive jumps that separate draftsmen from artists, and that separates art from math.

Amy drew her foot. She got the angle of the ankle and the overall shape perfectly.
This is a person who believed—eight days ago—that she couldn’t draw. But she is off to a wonderful start!
And in her first week of intentional drawing, Amy tackles the ellipse of an egg cup. Without ever hearing a word about how to do it, she draws the ellipse of the lip very accurately… which leads me to her next homework assignment, below.
 The last sketch shows Amy’s homework for when I’m away in Maine: she is to practice drawing cups or other vessels with ellipses. She is to practice shading.  
I can’t imagine what she will be doing when I get home. Or a year from now.
Amy’s homework while I’m in Maine is to work on observing values and to practice drawing cylindrical things with ellipses. (I would draw wine-glasses; she will probably concentrate on her egg cup.)

Do you believe you can’t draw or paint? Amy’s just shown you that’s not true.
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Top ten seascapes of all time!!!

A recent Guardian columnsought to identify the ten best sea pictures of all time. I propose an alternative list, not the “best”—because the idea of “top ten paintings” is in itself ridiculous—but ten equally brilliant and perhaps less famous seascapes, here presented in no particular order. (My apologies to Turner and Monet; I only omitted them because everyone knows they’re brilliant.)

Have you any to add to this list?

Fitz Hugh Lane, Becalmed Off Halfway Rock (Casco, ME), 1860
Fitz Hugh Lane painted a narrow repertoire—ships and the ocean—but he perfectly captured the atmospherics of the sea. Long after the fact, he and his contemporaries would be lumped together as “luminists.” It’s a good description of Lane’s aerial perspective on tranquil, hazy days.
Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs, 1861
Frederic Edwin Church is also called a luminist, but he’s very different from Lane in that his compositions are never tranquil. He was one of the first artists who actually traveled to see what he was painting. The Icebergs was done in studio from sketches he made during a one-month schooner cruise through the North Atlantic. (A painting which mines the same material but is stylistically different is Caspar David Friedrich’s The Sea of Ice. Note that both include broken boats, symbolising the reaches of man’s endeavors.)

Richard Diebenkorn, Seawall, 1957

A first-generation Bay Area Figurative painter, Richard Diebenkorn moved from abstract expressionism to figurative painting back to abstract expressionism.  His ability to simplify his paintings into brilliant, recognizable parts simply amazes me.

Jamie Wyeth, Smashing Pumpkins, Monhegan, 2007
Like the writer Haruki Murakami, Jamie Wyeth can make you simultaneously marvel at his technique and laugh out loud. When I saw this painting in person, I boggled at how convincing the water is; that is somewhat lost in this rendering.
JoaquĂ­n Sorolla, Bulls in the Sea, 1903
There is another version of Joaquin Sorolla’s Bulls in the Sea at the Hispanic Society in New York that I actually like better for its composition. But I can’t find a well-lighted version online. (No surprise there; the Hispanic Society gallery isn’t well lighted, either.)
Sorolla painted countless paintings of the sea, and it’s tough to choose a favorite. Work, play, child, adult, misery, fun—he catalogued it all. But I think I love these paintings as much for the sails as for the bulls.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder,  Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1558
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Icarus” has to be the seascape about which the most poetry has been written. “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams is here, and W.H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” is here. Both are wonderful.
The painting employs Bruegel’s signature move: the most important part of the painting takes place in a relatively inconspicuous corner of the canvas.
Frank Carmichael, The Bay of Islands, 1931
Canada has more coastline than any other nation in the world (265,523 km) so it stands to reason that their Group of Seven painters made a lot of pictures of it. The Great White North is inseparable from the sea. I adore the Group of Seven, so I’ll give you two of them, including Frank Carmichael, above.
Lawren Harris, Off Greenland, Arctic Sketch XIX, 1930
Lawren Harris’ plein air field sketch, above, sold in 2011 for a whopping $1.77 million Canadian. (Gotta love that!) Like Rockwell Kent, Harris’ seascapes are deceptively simple.
John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778
John Singleton Copley never visited Havana and probably never met a shark (seeing as this one has lips). But this commemorative painting—commissioned by Brook Watson, the shark attack victim—is compelling in its sheer liveliness. The young Watson was not rescued until the third try. He lost his leg in the attack. I bet he dined out on that story for the rest of his life.
Édouard Manet, Moonlight over the Port of Boulogne, 1869
Édouard Manet is another artist who frequently painted the sea. Would the stars indeed have been this bright in a port city in 1869? Does it matter?
I’m off to the sea myself in the morning, to teach the second of my Maine workshops. If you’re signed up for my July workshop in mid-coast Maine, you can find the supply lists here. There’s one more residential slot left; I’m dying to know who is going to fill it. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.