Category: painting in rain

Posted on

My goodness! It’s raining again!

Exciting weather means exciting skies, but it can also be a pain to paint in.
Breaking storm, pastel, Carol L. Douglas

I personally object to tornados and snowstorms on the same day. It’s like still having acne when you’re getting wrinkles. But that’s been the kind of spring we’re getting.

We had a lovely Memorial Day weekend here in mid-coast Maine. When Tuesday dawned clear, I thought we’d be fine to open our new session of painting classesdown at the harbor. Wrong. We were right back into the sub-normal temperatures we’ve had all spring.
In the Rockies, the weather has been more characteristic of late winter than late May. My youngest is on a field trip in southern Colorado. He called to tell me about ice on his tent and snowstorms. “I hope you’re sleeping in your jacket,” I said.
“I hate to break it to you, Mom, but I always sleep in my clothes,” he said. Geesh.
David Blanchard and I tough it out on an unseasonably cold day at Rockport Harbor. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Johnson.
The Rocky Mountain snowpack—which was at historic lows for the last two years—has recovered with a vengeance. Meanwhile, the southeast United States is baking, there’s flooding in the Midwest, and Tornado Alley has been on a tear. The cause, apparently, is ‘persistent big meanders’ in the polar jet stream. These waves are in a pattern across the Rockies, the Great Lakes and exiting through Maine. Weather is, by nature, always extreme somewhere.
Unfortunately, I no longer live where the future is writ on the clouds. Here, the sensible Old Salts rely on the weather forecast, not on their bones. But I do know one universal truth: the best predictor of tomorrow’s weather is what is happening today. For us, that means more rain and cool temperatures.
Deborah RoyRoberts comes up with a solution to dropping brushes on a dock. Every car has a floor mat, right?
What does this mean for the plein air painter? Foremost, it means not getting too far away from your car. Lightning strikes on both the leading and trailing edges of thunderstorms. Even if the sky directly over your head is clear, you’re at risk of a strike when you can hear thunder. Far better to record the pyrotechnics from your front seat.
Moreover, there will be changing lighting conditions. The only answer to this is a good preparatory sketch before you start painting.
This sketch of Lake Huron in a storm was done from next to my car in a parking lot. You need to allow for quick getaways in bad weather.
Watercolors and pastel are very difficult to manage in a downpour, even when they’re out of the direct rain. Paper and chalk both become saturated with moisture, making control impossible. The only solution I know is to work from inside your car. Acrylics actually benefit from higher humidity, but sideways mist and rain will make them run off the canvas too.
Remember learning that oil and water don’t mix? Instead, they form a stodge that’s impossible to paint with. The only way to paint with oils in the rain is to keep your canvas and palette dry.
Posted on

If Rembrandt and Van Gogh could time travel

What would they think of modern painting in Maine?

Some days it rains, by Carol L. Douglas.
Last week, I wrote about Maine’s Art Museum Trail. A reader commented, “Standing in front of Rembrandt’s Saint Matthew and the Angelat the Louvre, or Van Gogh’s The White Orchard in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam are sure to change one forever.” He’s right, of course, but were these two masters somehow superior to, say, Rockwell Kent?
I wonder what either artist would think of the contemporary work being done in landscape painting today. Both would have delighted in the wealth of pigments and materials at our disposal. That’s especially true of Rembrandt, who did so much with such a limited palette. Van Gogh was an admirer of the Primitivist Paul Gauguin; he would have understood that our contemporary painting style reflects the pace and shape of our lives. Both artists were misfits in their times and cultures. It is only retrospectively that they—and their styles—are lauded as brilliant.
Mostly, I think they’d like what they saw simply because mature artists tend to be very interested in other artists’ technique, approach and worldviews.
Ed Buonvecchio painted me painting the rain in the doorway of Ocean Park’s temple. We oil painters have it a little easier in a deluge than watercolorists. Russ Whitten’s solution was to run home and grab a hair dryer.
Russel Whitten and Christine Tullson Mathieu are having an especially tough time with the fog and rain at this year’s Art in the Park. It buckles watercolor paper and the paint never dries. This makes for extremely soft passages. Commiserating with Russ, I showed him the John Singer Sargentwatercolor from Monday’s post, with its great amorphous, wet blob of darkness. In response, Russ told me that Andrew Wyeth, after seeing a Sargent show, came out and told the waiting critics, “I want to kill myself.”
It’s comforting to imagine a painter of his skill and stature reacting like that. We’ve all said something similar along the way.
Sea Mist, by Carol L. Douglas.
Why don’t artists see their own brilliance, but are keen to recognize brilliance in others? We know our own work too intimately to be impressed with it. The more one paints, the truer that becomes. Running down other artists is the province of amateurs.
“People strengthen each other when they work together, and an entity is formed without personality having to be blotted out by the collaboration,” Van Gogh wrote to Anthon van Rappard. That’s exactly what’s happened to this group at Ocean Park. This is our fourth year painting in a small ensemble.  We’re secure enough in our friendship to help each other.
It was inconvenient for painters and vacationers, but we needed that rain.
Meanwhile, the rain ended at midnight, and the last droplets are splattering down from the ancient trees overhead right now. That gives us a few hours before we have to pack our supplies, shower and deliver our work. Our show opens at 5 this evening at 50 Temple Avenue, Old Orchard Beach. If you’re in southern Maine today, come out to see us!

I’ve got one more workshop available this summer. Join me for Sea and Sky at Schoodic, August 5-10. We’re strictly limited to twelve, but there are still seats open.