Monday Morning Art School: more better, faster

Curtis Island Light, 24X36, oil on canvas. That's my painting for last year's Camden on Canvas. Private collection.
My painting for Camden on Canvas, called "So Many Boats!" Sold at auction yesterday.

One of the questions we are often asked at plein air painting events is, “Did you really finish that whole painting in one day?” The answer, of course, is yes—or sometimes two or three paintings. We have trained ourselves to be fast, but that didn’t happen by painting large set pieces. It’s by churning out small studies.

My buddy Bobbi Heath recently wrote an excellent post on how to do ten-minute daily exercises in paint. It’s complete and I have little to add, except the rationale for why lots of little paintings will get you to your stylistic goal long before a few major set pieces.

All the chaos of Camden. This was my 'also ran' painting for Camden on Canvas; it was a touch choice.

Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, is a book I frequently recommend. I’m up in Schoodic and can’t access my copy, so this will be a very loose interpretation of what they actually wrote. They described an art class where the students were divided into two groups—the first would be graded on quality, the second on quantity. It was the students pushed to produce lots of work who, in fact, made the best work. That is because talent, in the end, is really about perseverance and hard work. The artist must paint a lot of duds before he or she creates something that is truly brilliant.

But these duds do not have to be large, serious paintings—a fact I wish I’d realized much earlier, before I cluttered up my studio with so many big canvases. Often, painting students have lovely photos they took on vacation, or of the perfect sunset, and they want to immortalize them in paint. That’s a laudable goal in its own right, but it won’t actually make you a better painter. In fact, their emotional investment in the content might get in the way of pure painting success. Far better to grab a few objects from around the house and paint them, or paint the view out your front window.

Owl's Head, Early Morning, is a painting that started as a quick practice but turned out to be one of my personal favorites.

There’s much to be said for the humble still life. Eric Jacobsen is a wicked good expressionist painter, and he often paints still lives—the busier, the better. I’m not a still-life painter myself; I strongly prefer fresh air. But I do live in the north, where winter can make for unpleasant painting. During a blizzard, the best way I know to stay fresh is to set up a still life in the studio and hack away at it.

That’s why so many of my Zoom classes are based on still life. I understand when students say, “I hate still life,” and that they’d rather paint landscape or portrait. However, they won’t learn half as much from copying a photo as they will learn from painting from life. Still life—as Bobbi Heath says—is the next best thing to painting plein air, in terms of training and growth.

To be honest, I never get my oil paints out for a ten-minute exercise. I’ll paint an apple in gouache or watercolor; the clean-up is easier. (Switching between media teaches you new ways of applying paint, and different ways of looking at things. However, for a beginner, it can be confusing.)

Sometimes watercolor is just what you need for a fast sketch. This was the Pecos River, painted by me.

I have my own interpretation of fast warm-ups; I call them ‘practicing my scales’ or ‘practicing chip shots.’ They usually involve running down to the harbor to paint a few boats before my gallery opens, but they might also be something as silly as painting a basket of beach toys in my driveway. The important thing is the daily discipline, and it’s something I’m concentrating on right now.

My friend Peter Yesis has done a lot of these fast warm ups over his career—for a long time, they were his daily discipline. They served him in good stead at Camden on Canvas this weekend. Peter’s taken a long hiatus due to serious illness, but he knocked this week’s painting out of the park. The brushwork and paint application were assured; the drawing was perfect.

So, if your goal is to get better, fast, try practicing with small, unassuming paintings. They might just end up being masterpieces.

Perfect is the enemy of good

Mudflats. It's a start.

This blog was on Google’s Blogger from 2007 until the present (with a short hiatus during which it was hosted by the Bangor Daily News). Blogger is a simple platform, but in 2021, it suspended support of its RSS web feed. That meant that people could no longer subscribe.

After consulting with the usual experts, I determined that it was sensible to bring it in-house, onto my own website. I have a tenuous relationship with my website—it’s a large beast that I placate by throwing content over the fence and then quickly running away.

Importing 15 years of blog posts was way above my skillset. In May, I wrote about hiring an expert. Unfortunately, she finished just as I started my hike across England. It was easier to just keep writing on Blogger. The posts piled up. I didn’t dare ask Deepika to do another import, so yesterday I finally sat down and moved the remaining mess on my own.

Drying sails in Camden harbor. We're taking practice shots before Camden on Canvas.

It’s not elegant. I’ve had 15 years to make Blogger look exactly as I want—font, header, nested links, advertising. But it’s done, and as of today, you should be getting this feed in your mailbox if you’re subscribed. And if you’re not, you can subscribe 
 oh, darn, the subscription box has migrated away again. Another task for Deepika, until I can master this interface.

When my father was 63, he was secure in his expertise, partially because there was a secretary who did all the technical stuff for him. When my grandfather was 63, he was dead. In contrast, my husband and I spend inordinate amounts of time and effort mastering new technology. In almost every field, we’re barraged by new information and equipment.

Apple Blossom Time, 9x12, oil on canvasboard, $696 unframed. I painted this with Eric Jacobsen last summer.

There are two lessons here, both of which I think are hopeful. The first is that, at 63, I see no sign of mental exhaustion or slippage. All this struggle is keeping me mentally agile.

The second is
 oh, shoot, I forgot the second.

It’s summer, so I go out in the morning and painting for a few hours. Then I head home and open my gallery. It’s exactly the right amount of time for a good start. Last week I painted with Ken DeWaard. I painted an absolute stinker. This week, Björn Runquist and I have been practicing our chip shots together and mine have gotten better.

Spring Greens, 8X10, oil on canvasboard, $522 unframed.

“How can you be rusty?” my husband, who’s a bass player, asked me. “Isn’t painting a mental skill?” Painting and music are both combinations of the mental and the physical, and the two are closely intertwined.

Are my painting starts perfect? Heck, no. Do they show promise? Yes.

Oh, yeah, that was my second point: it doesn’t matter if my blog or paintings are good or bad. They won’t get better unless I actually work on them.