Category: Lakewatch Manor

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Buoy auction!

As I’ve mentioned here before, I recently painted a Merdonna and Child for an auction to raise money for Penobscot East Resource Center. You can see my buoy here. 
When you’re done leafing through these, you can see all the buoys here. (And I hope you will consider bidding on them to raise money for this organization, which you can also do by emailing the director.) There are more than 60 buoys altogether, and they are very fine work indeed. These were selected under no greater organizing principle than that I liked them. But you may find others you like much better. If so, would you let me know? 

Paula Dougherty’s “Seabirds”

This is colored pencil. As absurd a notion as doing trompe-l’Ĺ“il using fist-sized pastels. And yet it works. The artist says this is a combination of “realistic and mythical seabirds.”  She’s from Brooklin. 

Julie Reed’s “Dressed to Krill”

“This little buoy has been hanging out underwater and has come up dripping with a net covered in krill! Who knew zooplankton could be so beautiful?” says Julie Reed, who–when she’s not beading–is a nurse and volunteer EMT in Deer Isle. 

Jean C. Burdo’s “Seaside Village”

I don’t usually respond to folk art, but this is awfully well-executed, whimsical, and curiously true to what a Maine seaside village looks like. 

Mary Ellen Kelleher’s “Zinnias & Bugs”

“Oh, buoy! Is there anything better than a day in the garden,” it asks.  Great flowers and a luscious blue sky…. and the painter is from Rockland. 

Audrey Yankielun’s “Number 2”

How did Yakielun look at a buoy and see a pencil? Was she a bean-counter in Westfield, NJ before (as she states on her website) “walking away from my corporate position in 2007?” No idea, but she made me say, “I wish I’d thought of that!”

Jill Hoy’s “Dancing Tree”

No mystery to this: it looks like a Tom Thompson or Group of Seven tree, so of course I like it. Hoy operates a gallery in Stonington, and I think I’d like to wander up to see it on one of these trips. 

Persis Clayton Weirs’ “Torrey Pond”

Having just painted a buoy myself, I’m in awe of the control needed to do this work on this surface. Torrey writes, “A mile walk back into the woods from our house leads to a beautiful wild pond. Cat tails and lily pads line the shores and spread into the shallows. Torrey Pond is a haven to eagles, water birds, beavers, snapping turtles and an occasional visiting moose visiting from the mainland.” 

Rebekah Raye’s “The Owl & Pussy Cat Set Sail”

Well, why not? (I think I actually saw their beautiful pea-green boat in Camden harbor last month.)

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 here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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Salvaging a fail (v. 2) and then messing up again

Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove, 16X12, oil on canvas. Available; please contact Lakewatch Manor for details.

Saturday dawned fair and bright in lovely Castine, ME. I had a plan for my painting; I knew that low tide was at 9:21 AM; I had croissants and fresh local blueberries for breakfast. By 7:30, I was at my location and ready to roll out something brilliant.
Wadsworth Cove at low tide.
The organizers had promised me a clearing sky, and that’s where I faced my first decision: horizon above the midpoint or below it? If the sky stayed as it was, a low horizon would mean a fantastic painting; if the sky cleared, that would produce something less satisfying.
Wadsworth Cove at Low Tide, 12X16, oil on canvas. Finished, but I wasn’t happy with it. It’s now in a private collection, and the new owner insists she likes it better than my final painting. She might be right, since the final painting is still available.
I bet on a clear sky and put the horizon above the midpoint. The day resulted in a succession of fantastic skies. (They may not have been a focal point on my canvas, but I’ve learned to simply enjoy the beauty God plays out for me.)
When you’re not happy with your composition, use all the tools at your disposal to make it better: greyscale drawings and viewfinders are both helpful.
I based my composition on the serpentine channel that cuts across Wadsworth Cove at low tide. Three hours in, I realized that the s-curve wasn’t carrying its weight and the boat was simply badly placed, being too low, too angled, and too far to the right. It was, however, too late to complete another painting of this size before the tide rose and filled the cove. It wasn’t, however, too late to do the painting in pieces.
I looked up at one point to realize my paper towel roll had unwound itself in the steady breeze.
So I flung my first sketch on the ground and reframed the composition. Having made careful sketches and taken my decisions on lighting earlier in the day, I could take my time and not race the rising tide.  I painted from the mid-point forward, ignoring the horizon and landmass to the right until I’d captured the sand itself. The result—if I may say so myself—is a successful treatment of a difficult subject: a real-time record of a moving tide.
I finished this painting when the tide was high. And, no, I didn’t use a photo to do so; I worked from my prior oil sketch, here thrown on the ground. (The new owner knows to wait until it dries to take the bugs out of the paint.)
However, after nine days on the road, my poor Prius was a complete mess. I tend to melt down when my stuff is in a shambles, and I was fighting this problem all day. I couldn’t find the tools I needed. At one point, I couldn’t even find my paints.  Still, I would normally expect to be able to finish two 12X16 paintings in eight hours, and I did so, even though one of them wouldn’t be shown. I was done in ample time to deliver my selection to the Maine Maritime Academy by 4:30.
Me, buckle under pressure? Not even when my glasses fall into my palette or I lose my paints! But afterwards… oh, boy!
At which point, I started to fall apart. I sent a pilot hole through the front of the frame. Worse, I couldn’t find my generic price list (which I carry to protect myself from my own absent-mindedness) and mis-priced my work. It didn’t sell because I’d marked it way high, and that was in spite of it being a good, strong painting.
Dear Readers know I’m awfully protective of my delightful little Prius. I hated seeing it like this; worse, I couldn’t find anything in it.
Oh, well; these things happen. No sense worrying about it. But while an error in pricing work is no big deal, if I made a similar error driving, it could have disastrous consequences. For this reason, I’ve decided that my next trip (in a mere two weeks!) can’t be quite such a pressure-cooker. I am not going to blog live when on the road. Journalists reprise their greatest hits when they’re traveling; that’s what I plan to do, too.
In its tailored little black frame: Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove, 16X12, oil on canvas. Available; please contact Lakewatch Manor for details.
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 here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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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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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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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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Mostly, what’s changed are the trees…

Safe Harbor, 20X24, oil on canvasboard, almost finished.

I started this during the last year in which my painting partner Marilyn Feinberg was still in Rochester. It is as big a canvas—20X24—as I ever do en plein air. That size usually takes two or more sessions to finish, but without Marilyn around to schlep up to Irondequoit with me, I seemed to lose the thread. The painting sat on my counter for two summers before I got around to finishing it. (Of course the first time I went out to work on it this summer, I was rained out.)

The Port of Rochester is my favorite place to paint in Rochester, but I don’t do it as often as I should. It’s in the northwest corner of the city; I live in the southeast corner. It seems like I have to travel cross-lots to get there. But once I get there, I wonder why I’ve stayed away so long. (I am grateful to the folks at Genesee Yacht Club for allowing me to paint on their property; they’ve always been gracious.)
My new set-up makes larger canvases more manageable.
Buffalo is at the end of Lake Erie. Its weather blows off the lake and funnels through the city. Rochester is on the side of Lake Ontario. That occasionally produces east-west bands of different weather. This was true today: overcast at my house; raining lightly at Ridge Road; sunny and clear at the lake.
One of the reasons I love painting at the Port of Rochester is that it’s never boring. It’s one of two ports on Lake Ontario that accepts cement by freighter, so sometimes one sees a freighter pushing its way upriver past the recreational boat slips. And I saw two trains pass by within feet of the boat slips today; none of the summer people seemed remotely fazed by them.
Most of the boats were just as I left them (although some were reversed in their slips), and the clouds were piling up to the southwest exactly as they were the last time I was there. Surprisingly, the mature trees across the channel had grown noticeably. I texted Marilyn to tell her that. “It’s one of the things I always notice when I come home to visit,” she responded. “It’s a weird feeling.” I agree. We think of those big trees as timeless and the human structures as changeable, but that’s not exactly how it seems to work.

I have a little more work to do (the reflections, modifying light levels, painting the rigging) and it’s done.
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.
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A Sunday Afternoon on the Ontario Beach Park Jetty

Georges-Pierre Seurat, Un dimanche après-midi Ă  l’ĂŽle de la Grande Jatte, 1884-1886
I have young nephews visiting. It seemed on this blistering hot day that a day at Ontario Beach Park would be a good way to burn off some of their energy. They went swimming and I sat in the shade sketching.
As they strolled slowly along the boardwalk between the bathhouse and the jetty, my neighbors reminded me powerfully of Seurat’s Un dimanche après-midi Ă  l’ĂŽle de la Grande Jatte (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte).
The boardwalk at Ontario Beach Park.
Seurat saw women with parasols; I saw a woman wearing a leopard-print micro-bikini, her hair dyed an impossible neon pink. Seurat depicted a pet monkey on a leash; we saw beach volleyball. Seurat’s Parisians were uniformly white; my fellow Rochesterians come from all corners of the globe.
Georges-Pierre Seurat, Une baignade Ă  Asnières, 1884-1887. Today we swim in mixed company in far skimpier outfits, and then some of us amble over to Abbott’s for ice cream in the same outfits, or lack thereof.
But the most striking difference is that Americans display considerably more tattoos and less clothing than holiday-makers on the ĂŽle de la Jatte 130 years ago. It’s not just a question of too much flesh on display as too much flesh overall. There’s nothing erotic about it; in fact, it is almost the antithesis of eroticism.
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.