Category: G and S Orchards

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Touring Paradise

Barnyard Lilacs, 8X10, by Carol L. Douglas

Today I’m taking my Texan friend to see the Mennonite/Amish areas of the Finger Lakes. The Amish have a significant presence in New York, despite the impediments to agriculture here. It’s a population that’s growing.
Finger Lakes Overlook, 8X10, by Carol L. Douglas
New York’s farmland is fertile and productive, and cheap compared to Ohio and Pennsylvania. About a quarter of New York State is farmland. However, farming is a tough industry here: between 1997 and 2007, the amount of farmland declined by 7.9 percent. Farms are increasingly being consolidated, although most remain small and family-owned. Moreover, New York is consistently rated worst for business start-ups in the US. So how are these Amish communities moving in and succeeding?
Finger Lakes Farm, 11X14, by Carol L. Douglas
It’s not by evading taxes. The Amish have a religious exemption from some payroll taxes, because they do not believe in commercial insurance or taking money from the government. At the same time, they don’t take those benefits from the state: they care for their own unfortunate, elderly, and disabled within their own communities. But beyond that, they’re subject to all the same taxes we are, including hefty school taxes that they don’t see any direct benefit from (since they educate their own children).
Field in Paradise, 16X20, by Carol L. Douglas
Historically, the Amish settled in Chautauqua County, south of Buffalo, but there are now Amish communities throughout the state, and particularly in the Finger Lakes region. I’ve painted in these towns many times, but it never would have occurred to me to stress the ‘quaint.’ The Amish are our neighbors; they’re as much a part of pageant that is New York as I am.
Spring Blossoms, 8X10, by Carol L. Douglas
Remember, you’ve got until December 31 to get an early-bird discount for next year’s Acadia workshop. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here. 
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How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Barnyard at G and S Orchards, by Carol L. Douglas. 9X12, oil on canvas, $450, framed.
During Saturday’s class at G and S Orchards, my goal was to solidify the lesson from the prior week about painting into a monochromatic grisaille. This was something I used to do but had abandoned until I painted with Jamie WilliamsGrossman earlier this month. Then I remembered how much I enjoyed it.
Step one is a very rude value study. This gets simplified and refined with brush and rag.
One student went from his drawing right to masses of solid color. Nothing wrong with that, but I was a bit frustrated that he was totally ignoring my instructions. Eventually I realized he’d missed last week’s class because he had to sit for his SATs. But it was too late to show him on his canvas.
Step two is the addition of thin masses of color.
I quickly set up a demo for him. It was a small class so I was able to do rounds, come back and paint a bit on my canvas, call my student over to discuss what I’d done, and then repeat—over and over. I like being very busy and this was energizing. We did run over (about an hour and a half) because of this but nobody appeared to mind.
Here is Nina Koski’s monochromatic painting. She was able to correct a composition problem very early on, rather than have it dogging her through the whole painting.
Meanwhile, Nina Koski had taken my instructions of last week very much to heart and was turning out quite a lovely painting of roses along the barnyard. I managed to get some intermediate photos of hers as well, so you can look at two different painters using the same technique.
Here Nina Koski is starting to add color.
Nina, by the way, painted a small plein air painting almost every day last week. She’s an exemplar of that old joke:
“Excuse me sir, but how do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
“Practice, practice, practice!”
And here is her finished painting. She’s only been painting a few months!
I have three openings left for my 2014 workshop in Belfast, ME. Information is available here.
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Lilacs in an old farmyard

Lilacs in an old farmyard, oil on canvas, 14X11, by little old me. 
Yesterday I spent four hours painting standing up. I was able to finish—if not brilliantly, at least successfully. I think I’m on target for recovery before I leave for Maine in mid-July.
Here’s the barn. Ain’t she a beauty?
This barnyard—at G and S Orchards in Walworth, Ontario County—spoke to me the first time I saw it. Niagara County was dairy and apple-growing country when I was a kid, and I really enjoy being up close to a farm again.
But I’m grateful I’m not running it. Gary told me he was up at 3:30 AM, and he would be working until 9:30 PM.
I’ve again laid out the steps of this painting for my beginning painting students:
A careful drawing, to start. This one, again, is in watercolor pencil.

A map of darks using a thin wash of ultramarine-and-burnt-sienna.
A color-map of thin paint. From here you can go forward to paint the details.

Come paint with me in Belfast, ME! Information is available here:

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Back in the saddle again

Flowering apple trees at G and S Orchards. Wee (9X12) and by little ol’ me.

Yesterday I painted en plein air for the first time since my cancer diagnosis last winter. Yes, I was rusty. Yes, I forgot to bring essential stuff. Yes, I was limp with exhaustion when I was done. No, I did not paint a masterpiece, but I did a nice little field sketch and learned something about young apple trees.

I’ve been fascinated with orchards all winter. This spring I made a cold call to G and S Orchardsin Walworth. The owners promptly invited my class out to paint. I went out there again yesterday and had a few hours before the rains swept back in (although the winds were high enough to do a little free microdermabrasion on my face).
I hope they don’t get sick of me any time soon, because I’ve got a season’s worth of paintings scoped out.
I’ve photographed the steps of a plein air painting for my beginning students to study before Saturday’s class. Sometimes it’s easier to understand a process in pictures.
After doing a sketch, I map the painting on my canvas. I’ve been using watercolor pencils, because they’re easy to erase, but any pencil or charcoal works as well.
Then I map out the branches (which are the darks) using a mix of ultramarine and burnt sienna. This view was a little strange because the darks were a grid, but it’s important for me to note the branch structures, even though I obliterate them for the most part.
The next step is to mix a matrix of greens. I need all the help I can get to differentiate greens in a field of identical trees in absolutely flat light.
Then it’s time to map out the color, working from the darkest to the lightest. After this, you can paint as tight or as loose as you want; the initial steps work for every finishing style.
I didn’t want to paint a global view without exploring a few trees first, but isn’t this a sweet scene?
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!