Eastern Manitoba Forest, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Plein air taught me more about painting than several years of intensive studio instruction. I could think of a thousand reasons it’s helpful, but here are just ten.
Nature is inspiring.Plein air painting helps us engage with the natural environment. Creation is an unmatched, unique, unlimited subject. Changing light, colors, and atmosphere teach us so much about creating mood and dynamism. Speaking of nature…
Spending time outdoors is good for us. It’s the best thing for my mental health, so I do it every day. It centers me, calms my anxiety, and constantly amazes, even in places I’ve been hundreds of times. Nature is never routine.
Brilliant autumn day, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
We get better at painting. I trained as a figure painter, but I think plein air is far more challenging. It teaches us to simplify, compose, and observe. Meanwhile we hone color mixing, brushwork, and drafting. And if the teacher is any good, we get immediate feedback and guidance.
We make friends for life. I don’t know why I’m so blessed, but I overwhelmingly have great people in my classes and workshops. Workshops bring together like-minded individuals with a passion for art. They exchange ideas, learn from each other, and establish long-lasting friendships.
We gain confidence. Painting on location encourages us to overcome challenges like changing weather, time constraints, and the occasional absurdities of painting in public spaces. That in turn boosts our confidence.
Larky Morning at Rockport Harbor, 11X14, on linen, $869 unframed includes shipping in continental US.
It’s the fastest way to learn how light and shadow work together. Mother Nature gives us no controlled light boxes, so we are forced to learn how natural light interacts with the environment. That ups our color game in ways we can take back to the studio.
We learn to see differently. Working outdoors in the slow lane helps us find unique and often overlooked subjects. These are things we never notice while frantically snapping reference photos with our cell phones.
We learn to make decisions quickly. There’s nothing like rapidly-changing light to help us stop dithering and lay down fast, decisive brush strokes. I’ve found that carries over to every aspect of my life.
Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed.
Plein air gets you out of your rut. “The rut I was in had once been a groove,” sang Nick Lowe, and ain’t that the truth! Breaking out of your studio offers new ideas, perspective, and inspiration, and pulls us out of stagnation.
Plein air leads to personal growth. Like any serious discipline, plein air painting encourages adaptability, patience, and a deeper appreciation for the beauty of our world. That’s something we take far beyond painting.
A personal note: Joe Anna Arnett was a nationally-known painter, but to me she was primarily a sister in Christ, a generous friend and a wonderful, warm soul. I’m not sad for her; she’s done fighting a long, arduous battle against cancer, and now she’s with the heavenly choir. I’m sad for us, because a beautiful light was extinguished on Saturday night. Rest in peace, dear one.
The Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.
When Mary and I were kicking around Newfoundland in 2016, Kyle from St. John’s insisted to us that there weren’t bears in Newfoundland. “But there are bear-proof trashcans all over!” Mary replied. Later, a toothless old woman from Hare Bay with an impenetrable accent told us that yes, indeed, there are bears in Newfoundland. Wikipedia confirms this.
This woman was born in Hare Bay and had never left. In the waning light, we watched a mink swim toward shore as cars converged on the spare frame churches. She told us the whole village goes to church on Sunday evening. That’s how isolated Newfoundland is, both physically and culturally.
SS Ethie in drydock in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in happier days.
We were on our way to L’Anse aux Meadows when we stopped to visit the wreckage of the SS Ethie. Hurricane Matthew was blowing up the coast, shifting from rain to blizzard. It was a day much like the day when Ethie broke up in the tumultuous seas off Gros Morne.
Ethie was a coal-burning steamer on the Bonne Bay–Battle Harbour run, carrying herring, cod and passengers. People have speculated that its captain, Edward English, was either anxious to get his passengers home for Christmas or under pressure from the home office. At any rate, on December 10, 1919, she set out on the leg from Cow Head to Rocky Harbour, carrying 92 passengers. That’s a short run of less than 50 km, but the weather glass was falling fast.
Hero dog Wisher. Awww.
Within a few hours, it was blizzarding. The west wind pushed Ethie towards land, and she burned most of her fuel staying off the rocks. Captain English realized he had no choice but to beach at Martin’s Point. Ethie was spotted by Reuben Decker, who rushed to help with his dog Wisher. Newfoundland dogs are famous for their stoic temperament, muscular build, thick coat and webbed paws, all of which make them great cold-water swimmers.
Wisher swam from shore to fetch the rope that would be used to make a breeches buoy. That’s a rescue device that’s something like a zip line with a float attached.
All 92 passengers and the crew were rescued, including an 18-month-old baby.
The wreckage is strewn over thousands of feet of rocky coast.
The wreckage of Ethie can still be seen today, scattered over thousands of feet of shoreline. Mine is a fantastical interpretation of the shipwreck, as I’ve compressed elements. I seldom get stuck into the details like this, but here the abstraction is in the objects themselves; it couldn’t have been painted in my usual loose style. Besides, it’s good to occasionally remind people that I can paint with precision when I want to. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
The Vineyard, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.
The consistent top-ranked post on my blog when it was on Blogger was about folding a plastic bag to fit in your paint kit. It remains useful even with plastic bag bans in some parts of the country.
The consistent top-ranked post on this platform is Debunkery #1: No, you’re probably not a tetrachromat. Month after month, it outperforms every other post. Most visitors stay on it for an average of just 1m 16s before flitting away, either to another page on this website or to someone who humors their dreams of tetrochromacy.
I’m surprised they stay that long. Eight years after I first wrote it, there’s still no evidence for tetrachromacy in humans. The idea should be consigned to the intellectual dustbin along with things like phrenology and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. But if tetrachromacy introduces them to my blog, I’ll gladly take it.
The Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.
A reader sent me this review of the upcoming Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker. It tallies with my goddaughter’s career in New York. Sandy made the error of getting her BFA and MA at prestigious schools without having a bean in her pocket. Gallerists mistook her for a trust-fund baby who could bask in their reflected glory rather than earn a living wage.
“Art devotees spoke like they were trapped in dictionaries and being forced to chew their way out,” Bosker wrote. For any of us forced to listen to or read near-incomprehensible drivel about near-incomprehensible art, that rings true.
I was a terrible student. Voted ‘most likely to drop out’ by my sixth-grade class, I did not materially change by college. Yet I’m well-read, literate and numerate, and my unconventional education has been a blessing. My brain is cluttered up with the bad ideas of my own choosing.
Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
There’s a lot of dreck written about art. Art isn’t that difficult, but lard it with lashings of pompous blather, and it rolls off most normal people. Obviously, there are many excellent art scholars out there, but they’re often outmaneuvered by the bloviators. (According to Warren G. Harding, bloviation is “the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing.”)
I hope I can say something intelligent about art without being caught up in the art-speak that drives me mad. I want to motivate people to learn to make and appreciate art, to buy it intelligently, and to understand its importance for the 99% of us who aren’t perusing it in Chelsea.
I can no longer remember why I started blogging so many years ago. In fact, I don’t have records of the first iteration of this blog on WordPress, before I went to the Bangor Daily News. I do know why I keep writing it, however.
Readers of this blog, this month.
A few years ago, I was happy to have readers in the US and Canada, with a smattering in the UK. That has grown now to a worldwide audience (see above). I teach to students from across the US and Canada and just had a student enroll from Scotland. On Monday I demoed to an art group in England. The internet is full of lots of schlock, but it also compresses distances and allows us to bypass the most egregious blowhards. As a person who could never thrive in the rigid systems of my youth, I find it liberating.
Dish of Butter, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US. I was discussing transparency with my drawing class on Saturday, so here are some transparency paintings.
In 2018, I wrote, “Does anyone ever tell Christian Louboutin that $995 is a bit much for a pair of platform suede pumps? No; they either understand Louboutin’s market or they don’t buy designer shoes.” I was stunned to learn that you can still buy a pair of Christian Louboutin suede pumps for $995. Meanwhile the price of a loaf of white bread has risen 33.69% during the same period.
Luxury goods-which paintings very much are-do not follow the general rules of retail pricing. Since people don’t need them, they can be as fickle and subjective as they want in their purchasing.
Stuffed animal in a bowl with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.
A proper price is the intersection of how much you can produce of the product and how much demand there is for it. If you can’t keep your paintings stocked, you’re charging too little. If your studio is jammed with unsold work, you’re either charging too much or not putting enough effort into marketing. Your job is to find that sweet spot. (But bear in mind that we all paint a lot of duds between the good ones, and periodically weed them out accordingly.)
A friend prices his work slightly lower than his peers, because he wants it to look like a good deal in comparison. It helps that we both know exactly who our peers are. (Of course, women’s art generally sells at a discount to men’s, despite the fact that in a blind test, consumers can’t tell the difference.)
Back It Up, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.
Most artists are terrible judges of their own work, seesawing between believing they’re geniuses and thinking they’re hopeless. That hinders our ability to subjectively price our work. Don’t assume that because you labored for a long time over a piece, it is more valuable. Your challenges are not the buyers’ problem.
Set aside your emotions and base your selling price on the size of the piece and your selling history. How do you do that if you’ve never sold anything before? Survey other artists with the same level of experience and set your first prices in line with theirs. Visit galleries, plein air events and art fairs. Before you decide an artist is your peer, find his resume online and check his experience. Painting in a national show is not the same as painting your local, unjuried Paint the Town.
The artist’s prominence is the single biggest factor in a painting’s value.
Charity auctions are a good way to leverage your talent to help others. They also provide a sales history to new artists. Let’s say you donated an 8X10 watercolor and it sold at auction for $100. Great! You have a sales history (albeit a limited and imperfect one) from which to calculate prices. Just figure out the value per square inch and calculate from there.
Square inch is the height times the width. That means your 8X10 painting is 80 square inches. Dividing the $100 selling price by 80 gives you a value of $1.25/square inch.
To use this to calculate other sizes, you would end up with: 6X8 is 48 square inches.
In practice, my price/sq. inch gets lower the larger I go. This reflects my working and marketing costs.
Saran Wrap Cynic, 20X24, oil on canvas, $2100 includes shipping and handling in continental US. This was the endpoint of all those plastic wrap paintings–a series on the commodification of women. Ah, to be young and didactic again!
When I first moved to Maine, one of my gallerists was also my good friend. She took a red pencil to my price list and brought it up to Maine standards. But don’t expect gallerists to do this for you; they expect artists to set their own prices.
It’s much easier to raise prices than lower them, so start low and work your way up. Another wise birdie once told me that I should adjust my prices annually, so that’s what I do. Our goal ought to be to sell at constantly rising prices. When you find yourself painting on a treadmill to have enough work for your next show, it’s time to charge more. Each time you show, your work will be better known, and over time your prices will rise.
And, by the way, I would never spend $995 on a pair of shoes.
Ravenous Wolves, oil on canvas, 24X30, $3,478.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
I painted Ravenous Wolves, above, at a low point in my life. I was coming to grips with the clay feet of people I’d once respected. My mother had died after a long dance with Parkinson’s dementia. I was trying to find my place in a new church, after leaving another in disgust.
The image of ravening wolves is used in Matthew 7:15: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”
However, I based this picture on Ezekiel 34, which uses the vulnerability of scattered sheep as a symbol of our own exposure: “…because my flock… has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock…”
The life of a shepherd during the Biblical era must have been rather taxing. The Bible mentions adders, asps, wild oxen, rhinoceros, bears, wild boars, crocodiles, jackals, hyenas, leopards, lions, scorpions, wild dogs, wolves and predatory birds. It’s no wonder that David was an ace with his slingshot.
I watched a pack of wolves lope across a meadow near the South Fork of the Shoshone River in Wyoming last week. They’re undeniably beautiful, but they’re also apex predators. They pose a danger to livestock and pets.
From the settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the modern era, there were wolf bounties in North America. That caused their near-extirpation. We’ve wisely stopped that, since it was both inhumane and foolish. However, to some degree the pendulum has swung hard toward romanticizing wolves. In 2010 a woman was attacked and killed by a wolf in Alaska, and wolves remain a real danger in Asia (which is why they’re a recurring motif in Russian art and literature.)
Of course, those numbers pale in comparison to attacks by domesticated dogs, which kill 30 to 50 people in the United States every year.
I don’t think you should take up wolf-hunting-for one thing, it’s illegal except in very limited areas. But we should recognize that wolves are not the furry, cute elder brother of the domesticated dog. They wouldn’t think twice about eating your baby if you were foolish enough to leave it outdoors. That’s why they are metaphors for danger in art and literature ranging from the Bible to Dr. Zhivago.
There was no reference material for this painting; it all came out of my mind. These are the paintings I love the best, although I’m sure there are all kinds of subconscious cues in them that would embarrass me if I understood them.
And, by the way, if you get past the wolves, you reach the sunny uplands where the flock are grazing. It’s almost like a video game, isn’t it?
Bracken Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
A professional artist is, by definition, one who sells art. That’s different from an amateur, or one who makes art as an avocation. Neither is inherently better than the other. There is a range of engagement, of course. There are people who never sell work, people who sell occasionally, people who sell as a side gig, and people for whom art is a full-time job.
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people move from amateur to pro. I love watching the transition, although it ultimately takes painters out of my orbit and onto a path of their own. I’d like to introduce you to a few painters that I taught in 2023. I encourage you to follow their links to see not just the work they’re doing, but how they’re marketing.
American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Patty Mabie Rich blew out of New York about five seconds after retirement, relocating to the sun-drenched sands of Myrtle Beach. If you look at her About the Artist page, you’ll see her painting in the filtered light that’s so common in central New York. Her palette has exploded in color since her move, as she thoroughly embraces the southern coastal vibe.
Karen Ames has a gilt-edged CV that included stints as the communications director for the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, and Houston Grand Opera. I wish she’d do my marketing too, because her first solo show of paintings sold out. She’s also very larky and funny, and her painting has an edgy energy.
Eastern Manitoba River, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Linda Smiley is a principal at Saam Architecture in Boston and paints on the side. Although she doesn’t have an art website, she sells her work through ArtbyKaty Gallery in Stonington, ME. Last year she did a collaborative show with woodworker Bob Winters, where she painted inset panels for his beautiful cabinets. Low-key marketing works for her; she sold at least ten paintings at that show.
Stephen Florimbi only studied with me for one session as he negotiated the pivot from abstraction to realism. He likes painting the world of boats and boatbuilding. However, he also has an almost-obsession with the winter woods. He did a solo show at the Apprenticeshop, where he was artist-in-residence. I noticed several red dots at the opening.
“Do you ever sleep?” I asked Cassie Sano. In addition to teaching watercolor and doing regular solo shows, she has written and published three children’s books, with a fourth coming out this spring. She’s as bubbly and energetic and outdoorsy as her work.
Maynard Dixon Clouds, 11X14, oil on archival canvas board, $869 includes shipping in continental US.
Last month, Amy Sirianni stopped by my studio to pick my brain about teaching art to young kids. She’s a natural, since she has a degree in art and teaching experience. I touched base with her recently. “My class is sold out,” she told me. She’s a success with almost no internet presence.
Texan Mary Silver shows her watercolors with the historic River Arts Group in San Antonio. She has a wicked sense of humor, and her work often reflects that. She’s been studying with me on and off since COVID, and is planning on joining me in Austin for my workshop in March.
Mary and her friend Annette once stayed with me after my workshop aboard American Eagle, when their hotel room fell through. It was a terrible deal for them; they helped me empty my kitchen for demolition.
Mark Gale started studying with me as he prepared to retire and move from Wisconsin to Texas. He is my monitor at the Austin workshop. Through Park Art Project, he donates part of the proceeds from his sales to non-profits in the Austin area. He also works with Austin’s homeless population, encouraging them to make and sell art.
Becky Bense has been my student at Sea & Sky at Schoodic for many years. (She would like to take my Monday evening classes, but inevitably falls asleep before they’re half finished.) Recently she’s been interested in neurographic drawing, an approach that neatly ties together her delicate drawing and the spirituality that underlies her work.
Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning MP. He’s not a professional, but he sold his first watercolor painting at a fundraiser last year for $7000. (That is not a typo.) I’d suggested a nominal price of $750-shows what I know!
Home Farm, 20X24, oil on canvas, $2898 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Volume is the three-dimensional space occupied by an object. For example, in Home Farm, above, each of the buildings has a height, width, and depth, and the product of those three things is its volume. Form is the artist’s representation of volume, and shape is the space enclosed by a line or lines.
The Dance, Henri Matisse, 1932-33, courtesy the Barnes Collection.
Usually, we start with a line drawing (shape) and then use modeling to create form. However, there are many instances in which form is implied with no modeling at all; see Henri Matisse’s The Dance, above, for just one (superb) example.
The Laborer Resting, oil on linen, 36X48, $4,515.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US. Satin, linen and lace each reflect light differently.
When we think about modeling, we think of shading, which is the technique we use to represent light and shadow on an object’s surface. Start by observing how light interacts with the objects’ surfaces. If they’re shiny, the value range (light to dark) will be much greater than if the surfaces are matte. Likewise, if the light is close by, shadows and highlights will be harsher than if the light source is far away or filtered.
Our first task is to identify where the light is coming from. The direction and intensity of the light will affect how shadows are cast, and where highlights appear on the object. But to confuse the issue, light can bounce around and shadows can overlay other shadows. A good understanding of light is important, but it can never replace observation. By that I mean observation from life, for just as cameras compress color, they also compress greyscale.
Two Peppers, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435.00, framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.
We use gradation to model changes in light levels. That can take the form of carefully blended charcoal, graphite or, indeed, paint. Sandy Quang and I demonstrated drawing globes in pencil here, so you can follow our steps to practice drawing shiny round objects.
Gradation can also be implied with the use of hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, or rough paint or lines. In the two peppers above there is no blending at all; the mind fills in the gaps.
Your specific technique for gradation isn’t as important as your observation of how the light levels and patterns tie together. This can be complicated.
Every painting has highlights and core shadows. The highlights are the brightest areas in the picture, usually facing the light. Core shadows are the darkest part of the picture, usually opposite the light source. Highlights may be absolute white and core shadows absolute black. Although we could draw them like that, modern painting tends to shy from either true white or black. (Even watercolor paper is not harshly white.) That, however, like so many other things, is a trope of our times. The Baroque masters of chiaroscurorelied on absolute black to set the dramatic mood.
Highlights and core shadows are easy enough to spot. What is more difficult is fitting the mid-tones in, in a consistent series of steps from dark to light, hitting all or most of the levels. If you don’t start with the highs and lows, it’s very easy to err on the side of being too dark or too light. This is where a greyscale is very handy, for light levels are infinitely complicated. I’ve tacked one at the end of this post; go ahead and print and use it.
Prom Shoes 2, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US. The direction of brush strokes implies form.
Remember that brushwork and drawn lines themselves can imply volume by curving with the object’s surface. This is an effective technique in both drawing and painting.
Tin Foil Hat, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.
I’ll be deleting any political comments. This was meant as a light-hearted reflection on the news media, not on any candidate.
My love affair with tin foil hats started 15 years ago when I went to Texas to see my buddy Laura. The Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints and their pedophile cult leader Warren Jeffs were very much in the news. Their apologists, including Oprah Winfrey, were painting a sympathetic picture of them (it would eventually be shattered by the evidence collected at YFZ Ranch). My friends and I decided to make tin-foil hats in response to the FLDS’ daily protestations of innocence.
I tend towards simple clothing choices, so I went with the classic folded sailor hat. Laura’s looked more like my crystal candy dish, and there was one like the old Dutch Boy mascot’s hair. Another looked like the hats worn by Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs, and there was a tin-foil visor. There was a prize, which I didn’t win, even though my technique was as impeccable as always.
Tin-foil hats are especially useful during election season. I was at my friend Jane Chapin’s house last week when the results of the first Republican primary came in. You’d have had to have been completely insulated from reality to have thought it would end any way other than how it did. The results had been predicted for months.
I’m a TV tenderfoot but I thought it would be fun to scan the major news channels for analysis. (It was -34° F., which meant our options for amusement were limited.) I suppose news anchors are trained to bloviate about anything, but the analysis generally ranged from the blindingly obvious to the out-and-out ridiculous.
Laura and her tin-foil hat that looks like my candy dish. That isn’t going to protect her from radio waves!
If that’s any sign of the tone of the upcoming election, we’ll all need tin-foil hats to make it through the next eleven months. I’d recommend buying this one. It’s more durable than the Reynolds Wrap model, so you can reuse it every election season.
I started this painting as an exercise in reflections, but each time a public figure says or does something preposterous, I make it my Facebook profile picture.
I think this is one of the best things I’ve ever painted, and that’s not just because of its enduring social relevance. The reflections and color structure are strong, as is the paint handling.
I’ll leave it to you to figure out what the compass in the bottom right corner means.
Little Village, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, 435.00 framed includes shipping and handling within continental US. This is a field sketch.
“What’s the difference between sketching and drawing?” a student asked me. Since we were drinking cappuccino and watching a spectacular sunrise together, I asked my friend and fellow artist Jane Chapin.
“Sketching is a thumbnail, while drawing is more careful and measured,” she said. “In sketching you’re trying to work things out in your mind; in drawing, you already have your idea.”
The simplest of thumbnails is still a sketch.
Both sketching and drawing use the same essential tools: pencil, charcoal, ink, and pastel. However, these materials can be deployed in an almost infinite variety of ways.
The terms sketching and drawing are often used interchangeably, but they have slightly different meanings. These depend on the work’s purpose, level of finishing, and technique. There’s no hard line separating one from the other; that is subjective. Neither one is inherently better or more valuable than the other.
This is a drawing even though it’s in my sketchbook.
For me, sketches are quick, rough, informal representations of something I want to capture on the fly. Or, they’re experiments in design and composition before I commit myself to painting. Sometimes I use sketches to explain ideas. I’ve even sketched out ideas of things I want to build. (That’s almost always a mistake; I’d make far fewer errors if I drew plans with a ruler.)
Then there are the stupid cartoons I sometimes make for my grandkids. But whatever their purpose, sketches are immediate and without extraneous detail. They’re loose and imprecise.
This is an idea for a painting reduced to its simplest elements and value steps; it’s a value drawing, but I’d call it more of a plan.
In painting practice, sketches capture basic shapes and values without focusing on fine details. The term value drawing is really a misnomer; most of the time what we really mean is a value sketch. That’s especially true when we’re making thumbnails.
Then there is the field sketch, which is the painting equivalent of a pencil sketch. It is invariably on the small side. It can be used to record color notes or light effects, but it’s as different from a highly-finished painting as a pencil sketch is from a highly-detailed drawing.
This is a character sketch for a larger studio painting. Those old Italian aunts!
Drawings involve more careful measurement with thought-out perspective and proportion. They are usually more detailed, with a greater emphasis on accurate representation. Drawings can include subtle modeling, refined linework and intricacy. They can be highly complex. However, sometimes they’re starkly simplified; detail is deleted in favor of abstraction. The drawings of Vasily Kandinsky are just one example.
Sketches are generally done with quick strokes, using pencils, charcoal, or ink. No great emphasis is placed on sophistication or finish; instead, a sketch is all about spontaneity and intuition. Drawings, in contrast, are more cerebral, as is the case with mechanical and architectural renderings. Drawings are more likely to be made as final works of art, and are often done with better materials.
This is another drawing that started out as a few diagonal lines in my sketchbook. I define it as a drawing because it’s fully realized.
Of course, sometimes sketches evolve into drawings, as happens to me when I draw in church. I start with a germ of an idea, often nothing more than the intersection of two or three lines. As my subconscious mind drives my pencil, my conscious mind begins to see threads and connections. I erase, redraw, erase some more, and in less than an hour I have a finished drawing. It helps that my sketchbook is highly-erasable Bristol; I have endless opportunities for revision.
Windsurfers at La Pocatière, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Witness this exchange:
“You should do more plein air events,” said A. “You’re a good painter.”
“I don’t enjoy them,” said B, who’s older and wiser. “I find them almost painful.”
“But they’re good for you,” insisted A.
I don’t think A’s comment was malicious. She works the plein air circuit. She can’t conceive of an art career that doesn’t involve competition. On the other hand, B has an extensive resume that includes signature membership in several prestigious national organizations. For her, plein air events are too much effort for too little return.
Early Morning at Moon Lake, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
I love plein air events myself, but they have their downsides. There are often more artists than the market can bear, resulting in bargain-basement pricing. They can encourage artists to churn out quantity instead of quality. Without a good gallerist to guide buyers, sometimes sentimental dreck goes for good prices and fine paintings are ignored.
They can be nerve-wracking. I once did an event with a very fine painter who downed four glasses of wine in rapid succession before he could go to the awards ceremony. He took first place, but that is not a healthy way to run your art career.
Marshes along the Ottawa River, Plaisance, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Underlying A’s comment was the assumption that growth comes only through pain. Sometimes that’s true, as anyone who’s been through the creative desert can tell you. (The desert is a necessary step in growth, but you don’t realize that the first half a dozen times it happens to you.)
It’s equally true that growth comes through joy, quiet reflection, prayer, thought, or going for a walk. Each time I held one of my children for the first time was a transformative moment. It was joyful, but it came with the realization that my life was changed forever. A wedding is like that; so is getting your first dog. All have the potential to make you a better person, and the mechanism for that is joy and a determination to live up to the promise of the moment.
Pensive 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
I had two influential painting teachers. First was my father, who was often irascible but who taught me to draw and paint with great patience. Then there was Cornelia Foss, who is as tough a nut as ever came out of the Upper East Side. I’m not easily cowed, and I learned a great deal from her. However, my friend and sometimes-roommate Peter was a much gentler soul. I don’t think he ever finished a painting in her class. He would pluck his eyebrows out in frustration and anxiety. He’d make a good start and then wipe it out, he was so nervous. Cornelia’s indisputable genius landed on stony ground because he was so daunted by her. That’s pain to absolutely no purpose.
The second problem with A’s comment is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. (Sorry, Wylie.) My own path has been very different than A’s or B’s, but it has worked for me. Chutzpah seems to be a specialty of our age, and we’re all quick to give unsolicited advice, myself included. But if someone doesn’t seek our opinion, we don’t need to give it. If someone doesn’t depend on us for support, we can let them make their own choices. There are many routes to the same goal and what works for one person may not work for the next. That’s a big part of what makes life so beautiful and fascinating.
