Tag: Bruce McMillan

Posted on

May you have more friends than you do chairs

Me, painting at Camden Public Library, 9X12, colored pencil, by Robin Miller.

Yesterday, I received the most amazing gift in the mail, from my sometimes-student, Robin Miller. She drew it from a photo she took last summer at the Camden Public Library Native Plant Sale, which was the brainchild of another of my students, Amy Thomsen. My library-supplied assistant at that sale was Becky Bowes, who’s also, coincidentally, another of my painting students.

It’s one of only two paintings (I know of) done of me. The other was by Ed Buonvecchio and is in a private collection in Ocean Park, ME. The owner recently got in touch with me and offered to leave it to me when she sheds this earthly coil. I enthusiastically accepted, although I suspect she’s younger than me.

My grandchildren skating, approximately 9X12, by Bruce McMillan.

I haven’t been this surprised by a gift since I received the painting, above, of my grandchildren from my buddy Bruce McMillan. In the oddly circular nature of this week, Bruce and his buddy Óskar Thorarensen stopped by my gallery for a brief visit.

On Sunday, I was in Rochester, NY, for Kamillah Ramos‘ wedding. I first had her as a student when she was a junior in high school; she’s now a full-grown architect and last took a workshop with me a year ago. I love the kid, and I cried a little into my lovely embroidered cambric handkerchief. (I’m just kidding; I cadged a tissue from someone.)

Supervising three of my painting students at Kamillah Ramos’ wedding. (Photo by Douglas Perot)

Being a serious artist, Kamillah set up an easel so people could paint during her reception. (I went up and adjusted the palette while she wasn’t looking.) Later, I was at the easel with three of my former students as they painted on this most auspicious of days. We all managed to keep the paint off our wedding finery, and that really made me weep with joy.

I am very serious about the business of art, but I also recognize that my work has created a wide circle of cherished friends. There’s Toby Gowing, who mentored me through some very dark times in my life. And Jane Chapin, who saved my nut when we were stranded in Patagonia, and who later captured a street dog for me in New Mexico. And Bobbi Heath, who mentored me into being businesslike. There are my pals from the Hudson Valley, the Adirondacks, Arizona, Texas, and especially Rochester, where I taught for many years. Jennifer Johnson, who pulls me away from the brink every year at my Schoodic workshop. And there are Ken DeWaard, Eric Jacobsen, and Björn Runquist, with whom I paint here in Rockport. I can’t possibly mention you all by name, but I can tell you how blessed I am by having you in my life.

My friend Rita once told me at the start of a party, “you have more friends than you do chairs.” It’s stuck with me all these years, because to me it’s really the greatest blessing life can throw at us. May we all have more friends than we do chairs.

My canoe is on the SUV, ready to roll. Swim out and say hi!

As I said, this week is circular, so it’s fitting that this morning I head back to Camden for the third annual Camden on Canvas, also a benefit for the Camden Public Library. I’ve got my canoe on my car, and providing there are no cock-ups, I plan to paddle out to Curtis Island to paint the lighthouse. I’m reminded of Cassie Sano bounding up Bald Mountain two years ago to watch me paint. If she appears on Curtis Island streaming wet, seaweed in her hair, I promise to give her a lift back to shore.

My 2024 workshops:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: activate your paints

Clary Hill Blueberry Barrens, watercolor full sheet, $3985 framed includes shipping in continental US.

I give new students a protocol sheet. On one side it lists the steps for a good oil painting, on the other side, the steps for a good watercolor. (Acrylic painters can follow the oil painters’ lead.) Then I tell them they no longer need me, and laugh.

Last year, I realized that there was a step missing on the watercolor side, a step that seemed so basic that I had failed to include it. It was to wet the paints on the palette before starting painting. I expected that everyone knew that. Silly me, because it’s critical for clean, bright color.

The deck of the schooner American Eagle, from which I teach watercolor twice a year. 8X5.5 sketch.

Watercolor can be purchased in pans or tubes. If the latter (which I far prefer), it’s generally squeezed into a palette and allowed to dry. (There are a few painters out there who squeeze out new watercolors every time they work; that’s an expensive and unnecessary practice.) In either case, the paint needs to be activated. That means wetting it down to approximate its consistency out of the tube.

The easiest way to do this is with a small spray bottle; you can also use a syringe or drop (clean) water from a brush. It should be done 10-15 minutes before you start painting, and might need to be redone as you work, depending on environmental conditions.

Before activating your paints, make sure they’re clean. Any color that’s migrated into another pan is best removed when the underlying color is dry. You can do this very easily with a damp brush. And if you didn’t clean your mixing wells earlier, this is a good time to do it.

Penobscot Bay sunset, from the deck of the same schooner. 8X5.5 sketch.

How wet should your paints be? Wetter than you might imagine. You need to lay a solid film of water over the top of the paints and let it soak down into the pigments. That takes more than a few seconds. If you go several days between painting sessions, expect it to take at least fifteen minutes.

Most of my watercolors are dashed off between oil paintings, but they still need activated paint. 8X5.5 sketch.

The proof is in the pudding

My old pal, watercolorist Stu Chait paints deep, intense hues in his abstract paintings. He gets them by working with suspensions of paint in little square cups. Bruce McMillan, master of clean color, paints on a big butcher’s tray with paint cups around the center.

The best way to achieve a prissy, old-lady look in watercolor is to start with dry paints. Even a wet brush can’t pick up enough pigment to give saturated color. To compensate, the artist starts to glaze colors, over and over. Eventually he has something so delicate, so refined, so dull, that it looks like it was done by a minor British noble’s maiden aunt.

Watercolor is shockingly durable. I have a palette given to me by a retired artist. It contains the paints she used back in art school in the 1970s. They awaken with a sheer misting of water. This is one reason for the perpetual love affair of painters with watercolors-they’re patient. You can slip them in a backpack and ignore them for months between uses.

Rocks along the Pecos River. How I miss teaching in New Mexico!

One more thing

There are a few slots open in my critique class, starting tonight.

My 2024 workshops:

Posted on

Reference photos for painters

Winter Lambing, oil on linen, 30X40 in a slim black frame, $6231 includes shipping in continental US. This was painted from a reference photo of a snowdrift in Orleans County, New York.

The ‘pictures’ folder on my laptop has more than 50,000 images in it. I don’t have an easy way to count my cell-phone images, but they date back to 2003. There are thousands more photos on our server.

The vast majority of these serve no purpose. They’re not a record of an event or people I love; they’re just a visual that caught my eye while I was hiking or painting. They were quickly seen and more quickly forgotten. Luckily, when I die, my kids won’t have to lug them to the dump in plastic bin bags; they’ll be gone with a click of the mouse.

Compared to other artists, I don’t take many reference pictures at all. That sometimes proves to be a problem when I have a thorny painting problem to solve, but often reference pictures serve to confuse rather than clarify issues.

All Flesh is as Grass, oil on linen, 30X40 in a slim black frame, $6231 includes shipping in the continental US. This was painted from a photo of a neighbor’s apple tree.

Great photos don’t mean great paintings

“Surprisingly, a great photo often doesn’t make for a great painting,” Bruce McMillan wrote this week. “It’s already a success as a photo. Most of my reference photos are failures as photos, but hold the elements that I want to enhance in a painting.”

A great photo-taken by you or someone else-has already done the design work. You’re constrained in composition and color because those elements are pre-determined. That’s one reason I discourage my students from using photos they find on the internet.

Of course, respecting copyright is the primary reason. Any photo or illustration you find in books, magazines, newspapers, or the internet is automatically protected by copyright law.

Even if that wasn’t true, I’d still discourage painting from other people’s photos. When you take a picture yourself, you have felt the dirt and smelled the air of the place. You understand the depth and breadth of its space. If you’ve taken the time to make a sketch, you comprehend it even more deeply.

You have none of that with a photo you grabbed from the internet. How much do you expect people to engage with an idea that you, the artist, have no relationship with? That comes back to my cardinal rule of painting: don’t be boring.

The Harvest is Plenty, oil on linen, 40X30 in a slim black frame, includes shipping in the continental US. This was painted from my own head.

Take your own pictures where you can

Anyone can take a decent photo with a modern cell phone, as I prove every morning when I hike up Beech Hill. I was a ‘better’ photographer before I started painting full-time. My compositions were tighter. Then I realized that my best photos were cropped too tight to be useful for painting. There was always something left out that I needed.

Now when I take reference pictures, I make a point of shooting far more peripheral material than I would for an artistic shot. This is because I’ve outsmarted myself too many times by cropping out essential information in the viewfinder. Detail is generally unimportant in a reference photo, and most modern cameras (including the one in your cell phone) have far greater resolution than the artist ever needs.

Deadwood, 30X40, oil on linen, $6231 in a slim black frame includes shipping in continental US. This was based loosely on a photo taken by my friend Joe Wagner.

Flat, indirect light can be boring in a landscape painting, but it’s sometimes helpful in a reference photo. It allows you to create your own atmospherics. You’re never stuck fighting a lighting source that doesn’t work.

My 2024 workshops: