Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
Don’t fall into the trap of drawing what you know instead of what you see. The Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874, Claude Monet. All three waterlines are parallel to the horizon. I prefer painting from a floating dock, where I’m at eye-level with the boats regardless of the tide. However, on Friday, I found myself up …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: perspective of boats”
Drawing six similar objects will teach you to observe details. Reliant rigged as a sloop. I once got a commission to paint Lazy Jack II in Camden Harbor. I was pretty happy with the results. As I finished, two deckhands from another boat stopped to look at it. Their eyes met. “You’ve got the…” one …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: draw six different boats”
This exercise is like learning perspective. You’ll never draw this way in the real world, but practicing it will improve your harborside skills. Cadet, by Carol L. Douglas I tell my students that it’s best to paint a boat from the deck of another boat or a floating dock. If you can’t, then keep your …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: how to draw a boat”
I missed the obvious, but my student was more observant. Becca & Meagan iced in at Rockport Harbor in 2015. My class was drawing at Rockport Harbor yesterday. A red lobster boat was pulled up along the dock near Rockport Marine. There’s been a red lobster boat in Rockport harbor for as long as I …
There is no shortage of painting subject matter in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. Levitating Lobster Boats of Alma, NB, by Carol L. Douglas Where other rural places have spare cars, here in coastal Maine you’re likely to find spare boats on jackstands. Boats are so ubiquitous that they blend into the landscape. Last winter …
That’s as far as I can go without some better weather. The fit-out of the Maine schooner fleet begins in earnest on April 1. That doesn’t mean that their crews haven’t been busy. There’s a lot of dockside work to keep them out of mischief, including mending and refinishing the boats and the shipyard itself. …
Continue reading “If you’re looking for me, I’ll be down at the boatyard”
“Working boats, Bay of Fundy,”Carol L. Douglas. In the Canadian Maritimes, boats are sometimes left to rest on mudflats as the tide drops. Occasionally I’ll see that here in mid-coast Maine, but nowhere near as frequently. It’s something that interests me, and I’ve painted it before, in Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove. On the last day …
Continue reading “Levitating lobster boat, and an unsalvageable ghost ship”
“Swells,” by Carol L. Douglas Yesterday a visitor to my studio told me about recently purchasing her first piece of artwork, a print by University of Maine’s own Karen Adrienne. My friend had sold some possessions to pay for it, trading unwanted treasures for something she really loved. The look on her face as she told me …
It’s a start. Yesterday I planned to stop in to the North End Shipyard to take a good look at the Jacob Pike, which I think I want to paint. From there I would go home and do an exercise painting the branches behind my studio. It would be improper to poke about without saying hello to Shary …
Drydock at Genesee Yacht Club, 12X16, oil on canvasboard. I’m sorry about the lack of a post yesterday; the collywobbles-sans-merci blew through my household this weekend. Sometimes when the limbs are still, the mind does its best work. Last summer Howard Gallagher of Camden Falls Gallery took Lee Boynton and me out to see the …