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Author: Carol L. Douglas

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How to set up a field sketch, for my students’ edification

Cottage at Sea Breeze, 12X16″ oil sketch
This is for my students… a primer in setting up a painting. This is not a finished painting, and it’s probably a bit on the “tight” side since I was doing it solely to demonstrate how I want them to work tomorrow, but so be it.

My goal was to finish this in three hours, including set-up and tear down, since that’s what I expect of them.

  1. I did a sketch in watercolour pencil; then followed that by blocking in the darks.

  2. Then I blocked in the major shapes, working from dark to light, in the right values and hues.

  3. Then I added such details as I was able to finish in the time allotted.
Done in 2 hours, 45 minutes, actually. Would have put the fence details in with a rigger brush but I forgot to bring it. And it was time to go canoeing with my kids.
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Painting on a dock on the bay…

I spent a few hours on Irondequoit Bay this morning, painting Mayer’s Marina, across the swing bridge in Webster (a hundred feet by water, miles away by car until the bay closes to marine traffic and the swing bridge is moved back into place). Nothing brilliant, just an exploratory oil sketch. A more finished picture would have more room to the right, but it’s the road behind the old building that interests me most.
Mayer’s Marine from the Swing Bridge, oil on canvas, 16X20

And I did this fast (five minute) oil sketch of a fisherman for Zoe Clark. Took a photo and gave it to him… he wasn’t catching anything, so at least he came away with a ‘snapshot’ of his day!

Fisherman at Irondequoit Bay, oil on canvas, 6X8
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Travels with Friends: Recent landscape paintings of Carol L. Douglas

I called this show “Travels with Friends” because most of these paintings were done with either Marilyn Feinberg or Kristin Zimmermann. A great plein air partner is a true treasure.
Erie Canal, 40X30, oil on canvas

Saturday, May 7 Ā· 11:00am – 4:00pm

Cobblestone Gallery

The Mendon Academy of Arts & Moveme

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16 Mendon Ionia Road, Route 64 South, Mendon, NY 14506

See Carol Douglasā€™ new plein air work from the 2010 summer season, painted across New York from Niagara to the Adirondacks to Manhattan.

Ms. Douglas will be demoing painting during part of the Grand Opening, and there will tours of the facility and other artisans on premises.

The show will hang until May 24, 2011. Hours are:

Monday: 9:30-11:30 AM; 4-7:30 PM

Tuesday: 9:30 AM-12:30 PM; 4-7:30 PM

Wednesday: 9:30-11:30 AM; 4-7:30 PM

Thursday: 9:30 AM-12:30 PM; 4-7:30 PM

Saturday: 8 AM-noon

For more information: (585) 315-2300

The Mendon Academy of Arts and Music is located in this cool cobblestone schoolhouse in Mendon Center, NY. Neat place, and it’s great to see the Cobblestone Gallery up and looking fabulous.
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Skelly in love (bloom where you are planted)

If I could get painting students to do one thing, it would be to draw every day. Itā€™s cheapā€”$5 will buy you a sketchbook, graphite pencil and eraserā€”convenient, and portable, and the fastest way to see progress. But so few people take me up on that suggestion.

This hasnā€™t been a productive year, art-wise. Iā€™ve spent the better part of it loitering in waiting rooms. Tough on the schedule, but with an elderly mom, four bio kids and a few spares, Iā€™m used to waiting.

One can either read bad magazines or use the time for something useful. This skeleton is at the office of physical therapist Joanne Panzarella. I started off drawing detailed studies of the bonesā€”the vertebra (very tough to understand), pelvis, skull, the fascinating details of toe bones and how they attach to two different heel bones.

One day Skelly showed up in a blonde wig and pirate scarf and I knew I ā€˜knewā€™ him. It was simple to draw him in all his bony splendor without worrying overmuch about how many ribs he has or where his vertebra attach to his pelvis.

Today he was cuddling with his Easter Bunny. A quick sketchā€”perhaps 25 minutesā€”but it gets to the heart of Skelly. Who says that a man without soft tissue is without feelings?

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Meme of the Dayā€”Kim Jong Il Looking at Things

Abi’s stuffed opossum and green wine glasses, 8X6″, oil on canvas

Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things is my current favorite blog. I suppose it amuses me because it reduces a frightening, insane tyrant to an object of ridicule. (I sure hope he doesnā€™t see it and melt half of Asia in response.)

Much of the time, heā€™s wearing a grey-and-lavender parka similar to one my dad used to wear. I assume they have no heat in North Korea and his factotums freeze during these photo ops, but, hey, heā€™s the dictator.

It dawned on me that in his parka he looks just like the opossum who was camping out in our basement, so thatā€™s how I painted him. Used Abiā€™s ā€œpetā€ opossum because the live one has been relocated to public housing elsewhere in the county.

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Meme of the day–Back it up!

My new hard drive that just arrived in the mail, 6X8, oil on canvas

A note about these still lives: theyā€™re exercises before my ā€œreal workā€, a sort of a meme-inside-a-meme, considering how popular the painting-a-day movement is. They take an hour, more or less. And I do them because I find the classic still life boring to paint, but itā€™s too cold for me outside to paint plein air.

I figure by the time spring comes, water reflections will seem awfully simple in comparison to all this plastic wrap, tinfoil and bubble wrap.

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Neko-nabe, or fat cat in a dish (with notes about how to draw the ellipse of the dish)

Neko-nabe, or fat cat in a dish, 8X6 oil on canvas

An ellipse is a plane curve with two foci which is symmetrical on both the vertical and positive axes, and intersects with these axes perpendicularly.

I recently heard a student tell another one, ā€œShe means not a racetrack and not a football.ā€ Works for me, as long as itā€™s symmetrical both ways, as below.

Use that boring old method, a pencil held up in space, to measure the distances above the bowl’s ellipse and below it. You’ll be surprised at how often the bowl has very little showing below the rim, and a lot above the rim.

There is nothing like a contour drawing to check your composition. This is not time consuming, but the most important work you can do. The mantra of my studio is, “draw slow, paint fast” (and thank you to Rhea Horowitz for coining that). It’s a lot easier to correct mistakes in a pencil drawing than in a mush of paint.

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Meme of the day–Ginger is so last year, but so’s this purse!

Sandy’s ginger purse, which I found lying on the floor, 6X8, oil on canvas

These memes of the day are tiny (6X8) still life paintings, warm-ups for my “real” paintings, and if they take me more than an hour, I get quite grumpy. (Girls, can I send this purse away now, or should it kick around your bedrooms for another few years before being properly buried?)