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| We arrived at our painting site and I heard the exclamation, “I’m in Maine!” |
Among the skills necessary to run a successful painting workshop, I should add being the lead car in a convoy. I am proud to say I didn’t lose a single person in downtown Rockland. (One of my students said today that she was enjoying how close our painting sites were to
Lakewatch Manor; it’s easy when one is working in beautiful mid-coast Maine.)
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| That’s a happy painter! |
Today, we painted at a lighthouse. This is paradoxically both the easiest and most difficult of subjects. It’s easy to do something recognizable and popular with something so iconic; it’s extremely difficult to move past the clichéd into something truly good. But these being my students, of course they succeeded.
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| Our first paintings: Sue’s magical look out Penobscot Bay. |
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| Our first paintings: Matt M’s view across the channel. Matt painted this on just a few hours sleep after flying from Belize and driving here from NYC. |
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| Our first paintings: Pamela’s tiny jewel of a view out through Penobscot Bay. |
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Our first paintings: Nancy’s fantastic view of the lighthouse.
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“I never expect to do good work at a workshop,” one student said today, and I generally concur with that. It’s so difficult to integrate new ideas that you lose track of what you know. But of course, they did do good work. After I tortured them with values, paint handling and other technical stuff for hours, they decided to do a “quick draw” to finish the day—15-20 minute paintings. (I apologize but I never got a photo of Nancy’s “quick draw.”)
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| Matt’s “quick draw.” |
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| Sue’s “quick draw.” |
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| Pamela’s “quick draw.” |
And somewhere in there the teacher did a quick demo painting, which she thinks wasn’t half bad.
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| Lighthouse, by little ol’ me. |
The second of my Maine workshops started today. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.
