Category: Schoodic Education and Research Center

Posted on

I hate wasting money

If you’re like me, you can’t handle one more project right now, but my early bird discount expires on January 1.
Becky Bense among the rocks at Schoodic Point.
Several people have told me they’re registering for next summer’s Sea & Sky workshop but haven’t sent their deposit. It will cost you $100 more if you wait until after January 1 to register.
I was once a student, too. I clearly remember my frustration with too much theory and not enough technique. I resolved then that I’d do my best to send my students away with tangible technical help.

Students tell me that I’m the first teacher who’s ever given them a consistent system for putting paint on canvas in a way that’s bright, clean and clear. There are some basic steps in making paintings. They’ve worked for centuries. I do my best to teach them through my blog, but it’s really better to see for yourself.

You’ll see the giant lobsterman of Prospect Harbor.
I know painters at all levels. It’s sometimes frustrating to see them stuck for months or even years on the same painting problems. That’s especially true when I know the problems are easily corrected. Take the question of muddy, grey, paint. 90% of the time, it’s caused by how you lay down the underpainting, not your paint mixing.
What helps me break through problems like these is radical change, something that shakes up my routine enough for new ideas to sneak in.
And paint at this untouched Maine harbor.
Coming to Schoodic is as radical a change as you’re likely to get. You’re out of your environment, in one of the earth’s great beauty spots. You eat, laugh, and play with like-minded fellow painters. And you learn. I implore my students: “You don’t have to do this forever; just give it one week.” Usually, they incorporate those changes into their ‘forever.’
In a world of incredible atmospherics.
Here are the most common questions I hear:
How do I get there?Fly into Bangor or Portland, ME, rent a car, and drive over to Acadia National Park. It’s simple. Or, you can carpool.
I’m not very experienced. Is this workshop for me? Yes. We take such a small group that everyone gets individual attention. We meet you where you’re at.
Where are we staying? At the Schoodic Education and Research Center. You don’t just book a room there; you have to be part of an educational program.
Michael and Ellen practice their loafing skills at Blueberry Hill.
Can I bring my spouse?Please do. A non-painting partner sharing the same room is $475. That includes all meals, including our lobster feast. There’s lots to do in the area–hiking, biking, photography, birdwatching, fishing, or just quiet meditative time in nature. Sometimes non-painting spouses just like to hang out with the class, too. That’s fine with me.
Pastels are a beautiful medium for the Maine coast. And, yes, I should have been wearing gloves. (Photo courtesy of Claudia Schellenberg)
What mediums can I bring? Oils, acrylics, watercolor, pastel. And of course your drawing supplies.
Is that a good price? Even at $1600, my workshop is a fantastic deal, since it includes your meals, accommodations instruction and insider knowledge of the Schoodic Peninsula. Next year, the price is going up, since my costs rose this year.
But the Early Bird discount makes it a ridiculous bargain. So, if you’re planning on signing up, send me a check and the registration form, pronto, and save yourself $100.
Posted on

Schoodic puts on a show

Acadia was shouting to us: remember to come back, please.
Sunset off Schoodic Point.
One of the things I love about teaching in Acadia National Park is that the weather is generally excellent. The mean August temperature is 67.3° F., with an average 2.9 inches of rain. That’s as close to perfect as one can get for plein air painting.
I’ve come to expect one day of rain during this week in the park, and we got it yesterday. It dawned foggy and dreary with rolling thunder in the distance. I usually save my lecture on color theory for this one rainy day, so we gathered in the pavilion and did a green-mixing exercise across three media. That’s good, useful, technical information, but I’m the first to admit it’s not as much fun as scampering on the rocks next to blowing surf.
Diane Leifheit focused on the fog at Wonsqueak.
The rain cleared off after lunch. We went to tiny Wonsqueak Harbor. This is just an outlet of a brook. It used to have a single disreputable fishing boat in it, but now is just a few empty moorings collecting seaweed. It’s anything but boring. The channel is lined with rosy-pink granite rocks and deep spruces. Spruce Point and myriad ledges play peekaboo in the mist.
Trees at Frazer Point by Linda Delorey.
Across the channel, a man in wellies collected mussels for his dinner. I watched him working, musing on a small coda I might add to the story of Creation. God created the Continents using a rolling pin. As he got to the edges, the crust inevitably began to crumble, as pie crusts do. He put deep piles of top-soil on his creation, and it tapered off at the edge, as can happen with toppings in baking. The North Atlantic coast was kind of an afterthought, filled with detritus—tumbles of rock, lousy topsoil, spruce trees.
God created Man, and he put him in the most gardenlike spot on the Continent in order that Man might have a life of ease and pleasure. Instead, Man immediately wandered off to the coast.
“Why?” asked God. “I gave you everything you need in Des Moines, Iowa.”
“But it’s beautiful here on the edges!” exclaimed Man, “plus the fishing is awesome.” 
Wonsqueak rocks by Becky Bense.
Three of my students painted the exact same view of rocks across the channel. I’ve included them here, because their paintings are a lesson in how differently each person sees. We worked fast, because soon enough it was time for our lobster bake, followed by blueberry cobbler with fresh whipped cream. In August, Maine is a foodie paradise.
Wonsqueak rocks by Claudia Schellenberg.
As we left our feast, the clouds were piling in the sky to the west. We were headed for our final critique when two students disappeared. “Come to the Point, now!” they frantically texted. It took a bit of convincing, but we careened down to Schoodic Point in our cars. 
Wonsqueak rocks by Jennifer Johnson.
There, on the lee side of the storm, was the most fantastic sky ever. We stood there in awe until a last smattering of raindrops urged us on our way. Schoodic was shouting to us: remember to come back, please.
I teach this workshop every August. If you’re interested in the 2019 program, email me.
Posted on

That’s one sassy ocean

The rules work, even when we don’t notice. That’s as true in life and painting as it is in Acadia National Park.
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Johnson.

I’ve been getting workshop permits for Acadia National Park since I moved my workshop up to Schoodic Institute. They mean paperwork and expense, and nobody ever asks for them. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

Yesterday, a ranger stopped by. “Do you want to see my permit?” I asked excitedly. “Oh, please, do you really want to see my permit?”
Becky comfortable near that sassy ocean.
He already knew we were going to be there; he was just stopping to check something else. I’m glad that the park rangers know what happens in the park, and that I haven’t been wasting my time and money complying with the permitting system.
Even if we aren’t aware of it, rules continue to be in effect. That’s as true in the universe as it is in a National Park, and it’s a good thing. Nobody wants the earth potting off into a different orbit because it’s sick of the one it has. 
A demo on the rocks near the Mark Island Overlook.
It is also true of painting. Many paintings of Ralph Blakelock have darkened beyond seeing because he puttered with the chemistry. It’s a terrible pity, because he was a great painter.
The ranger and I chatted for a while about the most inscrutable (to civilians) rule of national parks, that you can’t take natural materials out. “If we have three and a half million visitors and each of them takes home a rock…” he began. In some places, it might save on dredging, but I see his point.
The Mark Island (Winter Harbor) lighthouse was built in 1856, with a keeper’s house added twenty years later. It’s a handsome assemblage of whitewashed walls and staggered rooflines, and it’s far enough away that one can’t really do a stereotypical lighthouse painting. Instead, it must be in the context of its landscape, with Cadillac Mountain rising behind it. The scale relationship is a little misleading, because Mark Island is less than a mile offshore and Cadillac Mountain is several miles away.
A lighthouse painting doesn’t have to be about the lighthouse.
Look north or south and there are sweeping diagonals of pink granite tumbling to the sea, framed by dark spruces and crashing surf. And the seas were definitely crashing. “You sassy ocean, you!” cried Becky as a great long foaming breaker blew over the rocks nearby.
A student studying mixing greens. (Photo courtesy of Donald Fischman)
A sea fog approached and retreated, finally cloaking us in soft pink cashmere around sunset. That was appropriate, because yesterday’s demo was on the color of light. This subject is like one of those drawings that flips from being a vase to two profiles. It’s easy to see once you get it, but difficult to explain.
Ravens Nest  is fine for an individual painter but not for a class.
As the afternoon ended, several students walked down to Ravens Nest. I never teach there. There’s no guardrail, only pot warp strung from tree to tree. There’s no room for a large group to paint safely. But it’s an interesting geological formation and quite pretty.

We’ll be heading to Schoodic Point this morning. As I type this, I can hear the surf crashing. The sky is fair and pink. All signs are good for another great day of painting. 
Posted on

The Full Monty

You can learn a lot from videos, but the boring parts are edited out. It’s good to see our dithering.

It’s all about that green, by Carol L. Douglas.

The weather service was spot on yesterday. It dawned cold and drizzling. We wrapped our southerners in blankets and took shelter under the Schoodic Institute picnic pavilion. Every plein air painter has a few of these protected places tucked into the back of her mind.

Usually I like to schedule the rain on my third or fourth day, so my students have a chance to get down onto the shore and collect detritus to make a still life. This hadn’t happened.
I tend to avoid full demos, instead demonstrating one key process each day during lunch. That’s more about my own hyperactivity than anything else. I never could sit through an all-day demo. Still, you can’t take away people’s processes and not give them a viable option in exchange.
My happy painting crew.
It’s hard to paint from under that picnic pavilion. Traveling around the compass from the north, there is a restroom and a trash can, a chain link fence, a helicopter landing pad, and the mown edge of a woods. I find the restroom the most visually interesting, but settled on a gash in the woods where a service road cuts down to the park’s volunteer housing.
I started with developing an idea, and how I built it from what I saw. I did a sketch, a value study in watercolor and then slowly developed a painting through all its constituent steps, focusing on how to move from thin layers to fat layers at the top.
Oil paints dry at different speeds depending on the pigment. However, the more oil in the paint, the longer it takes to oxidize, and the more flexible the paint film is. That’s great on top layers, where you want an oily binder to prevent “sinking,” where the oils in the top layer settle into lower layers. It’s not so good in the lower levels, where flexibility means instability. Ignoring this practice can result in cracked, less durable, paintings.
By mid-afternoon, the skies were clearing. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Johnson.
Knowing that is one thing, but it’s kind of like making pie crust. Until you’ve seen it done, you don’t know what kind of consistence you’re really looking for. The best way to understand is to stick your finger in the paint, which I invited my students to do.
You can learn a lot from videos, but the boring parts are edited out. It’s good for students to see how many times we dither and change our minds.
Often in peninsular Maine, the weather can be very different in two nearby places. We drove to Frazer Point feeling hopeful. Sadly, it was still dripping. The parking lot was empty. Should we wait it out?
By evening, it was beautifully clear again.
As we talked, the wind shifted. The rain stopped and suddenly the visitors were back in swarms. It was fabulous painting, and some of us stayed almost until the dinner bell rang at six.
I went back to my room and took a hot bath to scrub the paint off. Many of my students went to a talk on bats. “Why didn’t they just drive?” asked my husband. It took me a minute, but then I laughed.
Posted on

I promised them the moon

Don’t put your drawing in a box, put a box around your drawing.
Painting a nocturne.

 There may once have been blueberries in abundance on Blueberry Hill. Now, it’s a parking loop above spectacular rock shelves and worn round cobbles, reaching down to an impossibly blue sea. The landscape is punctuated by beach roses, spruces, and jack pines.

Yesterday’s was an almost painfully clear light. Schoodic Island lies about three-quarters of a mile offshore. To have painted it in muted greys would have been an abject lie. There was little atmospheric perspective. Farther out to sea, the horizon was a pale, milky gold. Later in the day, of course, the wind rose and that all changed.
Nancy’s never toned a canvas red before. She looks skeptical.
I like to start my workshops by asking students to do a painting as they always do, without ‘orders’ from me. This is the only way I can see what they know. That works best with relatively experienced painters, and I’m lucky to have such a group this year.
That doesn’t mean I stay quiet. We only have a week together and I’m full of ideas. I start by making soft corrections. But I don’t yet start to dig into the matter of process.
Beach painting, Maine style.
One thing I’ve noticed recently is how many people start their sketches by drawing a box corresponding to the aspect ratio of their canvas. Then they draw a design inside of that box. To me, that’s backwards.
The drawing is the exploration process. We should start it without limitations, and let our fingers tell us what’s interesting. From there, we can crop the box shape around it, instead of the other way around.
Becky’s hair tie.
At lunch, I showed my students four or five ways to do a value study, none of which I currently use. Then I relented and showed them the method I do use. Of course, how it’s done isn’t important, just that it isdone.
I’m gently kicking the braces out of what has worked for them before. This is no place to leave people, so this morning I’m doing a long demo about my process. There’s nothing revolutionary about it: it’s cobbled together from teachers and painters who came before me. The goal is a fast, efficient alla prima technique that can deliver a finished painting in a few hours.
This young lad was so taken by Fay’s painting, he thought she could sell it, “for maybe $85 or $90.”
Meanwhile, I’d promised them the moon. A few minutes after seven we trundled down to the shore of Arey Cove. I’d guessed at three fundamental colors based on how the moon rose on Sunday night—a blue-violet shade, a clear blue shade, and a soft white tinted with yellow ochre.
A bald eagle flew along the shore just in front of us, low enough that we could see his tailfeathers. He perched nearby and stayed to watch the moon with us.
Painting in Paradise.
There was low-lying moisture on the eastern horizon. It looked for a while as if we wouldn’t have any moonrise at all. But suddenly, there she was, flickering behind the scant clouds. She rose steadily in the sky, a brilliant orange harvest moon, nothing like the pallid yellow orb of yesterday. We scrambled to adjust our color while she played peek-a-boo amid the clouds. Scratching from mosquito bites, we watched her slip behind a larger cloud. The eagle swooped into the gathering dark. It was done. We packed up.

As we walked back to our car, the sky cleared momentarily. The moon poured out a brilliant golden blessing of light to guide us home. 
Posted on

Back in Paradise

Schoodic Point in Acadia National Park welcomes us back with its solitude and beauty.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Johnson.

I love Schoodic Point and the Schoodic Institute, but sometimes I toy with the idea of teaching somewhere closer to civilization. Then I drive around Frenchman’s Bay, sensing, rather than seeing, the depth and intensity of it. I stop at Frazer Point, and feel the familiar springy turf under my feet. Then I remember: this is the best place to paint that I know of. And I’ve been in 49 of our fifty states and a majority of our national parks.

I drove up to Corea yesterday to see a man who lets us paint in his backyard. “Any time,” he assures me, but I won’t do it without checking in first. Last year, he surprised me by being out of town. I learned his neighbors are as fiercely protective as geese.

His mother was the mystery writer Virginia Rich. She pioneered a kind of cozy mystery that features recipes. My friend now lives in his mom’s old writing studio, behind a beautiful old general store.

“It’s untouched Maine!” my monitor, Jennifer Johnson exclaimed when we arrived. It’s not much more than a fleet of fishing boats surrounded by old houses and wharves. An old slip next to the store remains from the Down East schooner days, when fish left from these docks and sundries from Boston arrived.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Johnson.
An artist was working along the road near Schoodic Institute. I only knew three of my students, so decided to take a chance. “Are you here for my workshop?” I asked. Turns out she wasn’t; she is a painter from Massachusetts named Victoria Templeton, and she was working on a lovely gouache.
We have the luxury of fine weather ahead. I saw no need to rush into a nocturne before we’d had at least one class. Many of my students had traveled long distances to get here. They were glad to call it an early night after dinner.
Jennifer and I tucked them in and headed out to reconnoiter. It’s always possible that the park service might have an area closed for restoration or construction. It was no trouble; there was a glorious sunset and an equally beautiful moonrise.
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Johnson.
I normally do this earlier in the day, but I was delayed. I’d invited one of my workshop students to come to church with me in Rockport. She enthusiastically accepted. It was then that I remembered that I’d signed up to be baptized. “That might be weird,” I thought.
I was baptized as a young woman in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. This means having Holy Water sprinkled over your head with a liturgical implement called an aspergillum. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to think this wasn’t what the Bible had in mind. I’m not implying that any other person’s baptism isn’t valid. I believe that the Holy Spirit directs us in these matters.
By the time I’d changed my clothes and thrown Jennifer’s stuff into my trusty Prius, it was 1:30 PM. That cut it a little fine.
Apple Tree Swing, by Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Kelpie Gallery.
Even that wasn’t the beginning of my day. Before church, I drove to South Thomaston to deliver Apple Tree Swing to the Kelpie Gallery. What a difference a frame makes! This one was built from chops from Omega Moulding; it was wicked expensive and worth every penny.
Of course, I was there long before the gallery opened for the day. What do gallerists do when they’re not talking art? They weed the crabgrass out from around their signs. Art—like every other career path—has its moments of glamour and its moments of hard slog.
Posted on

The perfect size painting class

Bigger art classes are easier for the instructor, but not necessarily good for the students. Neither are very small classes.

A delightful day at Owls Head.
“Do you ever offer private lessons and if so, what advice can you offer me on what I should charge?” a painting instructor asked.
There are very few things I won’t do for money, but private painting instruction heads that list. Learning to paint is all about repetition. I show you a technique, and you repeat it until you’ve got it. The best balance for plein air painting, I’ve found, is a class of 6-9 people. Fewer, and I am crowding my students with too much information. More, and I can’t pay enough attention to their needs.
The wilder the terrain, the fewer students I can teach. That’s why I often use a monitor at my Acadia National Parkworkshop. He or she handles problems of logistics, freeing me to concentrate on painting questions.
The rockier the terrain, the fewer students you can teach.
“How many people are in the class?” a person wrote me this summer. That was one smart cookie. We’ve all taken workshops where the instructor tries to manage a group that’s much too large. Teachers cope by doing long demos, but that’s unfair to the students. They might as well watch a video.
Rushing around on rocks can lead to injury, as we discovered a few years ago.
It’s easier indoors. Classes at the Art Students League were very large, but I wasn’t neglected. I benefitted from the instruction happening around me as much as from what my teachers told me.
A big group is easier to teach than one or two people. Teachers are only human, and humans are essentially proprietary. The longer we spend at a students’ easel, the more we want to take over.
Demos have their place, but they’re no substitute for one-on-one attention.

When I’m first looking at a student’s work, my mind is fresh. One or two things immediately jump out at me for correction or praise. I can articulate them and move on without meddling. That keeps the focus clear and directed.

Give me a enough time there, however, and I start deconstructing the painter’s vision. Students tell horror stories of teachers who have repainted whole sections of their work. That’s hard to avoid when you’re spending too much time with a single painting. You get proprietary.
The right size class makes for lots of attention but no hovering.
Handicapping conditions don’t necessarily require private lessons. They can often be accommodated surprisingly well in a class. Several years ago, I taught a mobility-impaired student in an outdoor workshop. We made sure there was a safe, flat, level site available at every painting location. She brought an assistant with her.
If you choose to teach private lessons, you should charge based on your hourly earnings for teaching a class. Tot up the number of students you usually teach, multiply by the class fee, and divide by the number of hours you spend on that session. Add travel time if you’re expected to go to the students. $50-75 an hour is not an unreasonable fee for your undivided attention.
Posted on

This wonderful life

Corea, ME pine, by Lynne Vokatis.

Corea, ME pine, by Lynne Vokatis.
In the week of a workshop, I form intense bonds with new people and see old friends again. I have learned to not take the future for granted. We will never have this exact experience again. The mix of people, the experience, the weather and our goals will be different next year. It will be beautiful, yes, but it won’t be the same.
Hence, I always cry when I say goodbye.
Looking back on the week, there were three important lessons:
  1. There is an order of operations for painting. Learn that, and you will make life infinitely easier on yourself. (More on that tomorrow.)
  2. To paint boldly, you need to stop mixing with your brush. That is what your palette knife is for.
  3. Eventually everyone needs to pee in the woods.
There is no extra charge for learning to pee in the woods.

The woods.
That last item is usually a shock for city dwellers, but most of America’s beauty spots don’t have Starbucks on the corner. And it really isn’t that hard to miss your shoes.
All last week I pondered whether I wanted to bring my workshop back to Schoodic Institute for an unprecedented third year. In the end I realized a simple fact: I love to teach there, my students love to paint there, and their families love to go there with them.
A fogbow over Frenchman Bay

A fogbow over Frenchman Bay
Schoodic has some of the best vistas in all of Maine, which is saying a mouthful. Unlike the Mt. Desert part of Acadia National Park, there are no crowds. There are fishing, biking, hiking, and innumerable touristy things to entertain the non-painting fellow travelers.
In 1935, the Navy opened a radio listening post at Schoodic Point to replace the old Otter Cliffs station. Acadia was the best spot along the Atlantic for this because of its isolation and its unobstructed ocean path from Europe. Those same factors make for brilliant painting. Long, long breakers roll in from the open sea and crash on high rock bluffs.
Since the station was closed in 2002, the US government has transformed the site into a research and training center for the National Park Service. You can’t just drop by and stay the night. The only people who can stay there are participants in an educational program and their traveling parties.
They provide our meals so we don’t have to worry about preparing food when we’d rather be painting. At $1600 a week including room, board, access to the park and instruction, it’s a great deal.
Schoodic Institute waits among the pines and spruces for us to return next year.

Schoodic Institute waits among the pines and spruces for us to return next year.
So I finally wised up and did the contract part of my 2017 workshop before I left on Friday. It’s scheduled for August 6-11, 2017. Why should you care now? Because you’ll get an early bird discount of $100 if you sign up before January 1 (or a $50 returning-student discount if you’ve taken another of my workshops).  That means you can ask for the workshop for Christmas.
Fog at Birch Harbor. The weather was generally fantastic all week.

Fog at Birch Harbor. The weather was generally fantastic all week.
Now the boilerplate: the 5-day workshop is just $1600, including your private room with shared bath, meals, snacks, and instruction. Accommodations for non-painting partners and guests are also available. Your deposit of $900 holds your space.  Refunds are available up to 60 days prior to start, less a $50 administration fee.
Email me to let me know you’re interested, or for more information. I look forward to seeing you!