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Author: Carol L. Douglas

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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.

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Monday Morning Art School: Brides and bridesmaids

Today’s blog was delayed due to a DDOS attack on my server. I’m assuming it was by a jealous blogger. 😊

Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise, 1888, Claude Monet, courtesy MoMA.

“You have three colors in this painting battling for supremacy,” I told Theresa Vincent during last week’s lesson on color. “One of them can dominate; the others need to be somewhat muted.”

“Ah,” she answered in her melodious Texas twang. “There can be only one bride; the others have to be content to be bridesmaids.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t been thinking of the red gazebo roof in her painting as Bridezilla, but it worked. In a triad color scheme (which is what Theresa was working in), all three colors can’t be of equal intensity. One must lead. Consider Monet’s Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise, above, which is a triad of green, orange and purple. The green is the star of the show, followed by the orange and purple.

Monet also demonstrated that even at the most carefully-controlled event, every wedding guest should be welcome to wear what they want (within the limits of propriety, of course). His painting is dotted with hints of accidental color. There are blues and yellows, pinks, and even red at the party. A color scheme is the guiding principle, but it isn’t dictatorial. Brilliant paintings have guests from every position on the color wheel.

I’ve written about the basic color harmonies here; understanding them will help you integrate color in your painting. It’s not necessary to memorize these harmonic schemes; the greater lesson is that color harmonies matter.

Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter, c. 1872, James McNeill Whistler, courtesy Detroit Institute of Arts. Whistler was enamored with monochromatic grey.

Color is fashion-based

The stylish Victorian matron avoided pastels; she decorated in maroon, red, burgundy, chestnut, and dark green, brown and blue. Her Art Deco granddaughter loved bright yellow, red, green, blue, and pink. Neither would have tolerated the monochromatic grey that dominated interior design a decade ago. Our color choices are fashion-based and what looks good to you and me will probably not appeal to our kids.

Each color harmony has multiple permutations, since you can start at any position on the color wheel. Then there is the question of which color leads, to which end you could either use higher chroma or allow it to take up more real estate on your painting. By the time you’re done considering the options, you realize that just about any color scheme you can develop fits somewhere in that chart of color harmonies.

Above Lake Garda at San Vigilio, 1913, John Singer Sargent, source unknown. Sargent loved his complements.

Does that mean you can just ignore color schemes? Of course not. It means you should be inventive but aware. Otherwise, you just might end up in the situation that Theresa found herself, where the bride and bridesmaids are squabbling over who’s in charge.

You should also be aware of how colors influence their neighbors. The definitive text on this is Interaction of Color, by Josef Albers. If you take away one thing from it, it will be the importance of setting values early in the process.

Regatta at Argenteuil, c. 1872, Claude Monet, courtesy Musée d’Orsay, is a split-complementary color scheme.

The same is true of focal points

I’ve written before about the importance of multiple focal points in drawing the eye through the painting. They should be intentional. But, again, only one gets to be the bride, drawing viewers into the painting. The rest, like good bridesmaids, should be quiet supporting actresses.

If focal points aren’t intelligently designed, and you’re not drawn through them with contrast, line and detail, then it’s back to the drawing board for you.

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Put down the red pen

Ravening Wolves, oil on canvas, 24X30, $3,478.00 framed includes shipping in continental US.

On Wednesday, I wrote, “Not creating is a safe position from which to operate. Your talent is inviolable, protected, a seed not open to criticism… That gives you the latitude to criticize other creators, as you are protected from criticism yourself.”

That relationship between nonachievement and criticism is famous in art schools, where bitchiness itself is often raised to a fine art. This video was a one-hit wonder but it captures the experience.

The Logging Truck, 16X20, oil on canvas, $2029 framed, shipping included in the continental US.

The best painters I know are also the most generous critics. They’re courteous and supportive of even the most tentative of efforts. They understand how murky and undeveloped radical new ideas can be, and they’re as curious as anyone as to how they will turn out.

“Put down the red pen,” is an editing maxim (from when writers used pens). It means that the editor should read through a piece first, with an open mind, before starting to make corrections. By coming at a piece flourishing your metaphorical red pen, you’re inclined to start rewriting the piece as you would have written it. That leaves no room for the writer’s own voice or goals.

The same is true with painting. We need to first step back and look and think. When we intervene too forcefully at the beginning, we supersede the artist’s ideas, style and voice. We take on the responsibility for refinement without asking whether that’s helpful or not. ‘I know better than you’ becomes our primary message. That might feel good (temporarily) to the critic, but it can be paralyzing to the painter.

Hostile input shuts us down

There’s plenty of science to tell us that the brain just shuts off at the first hint of stress. Comments that are perceived as personal attacks can set off a cascade of chemical events that weaken our impulse control or paralyze us with anxiety. We’ve all seen the Gary Larson cartoon (above) about what dogs hear when we yell at them. The same is particularly true of teenagers, and to a lesser degree, everyone else.

At my age, I don’t need to be diplomatic, but I do need to be kind. That’s not a moral imperative; I just want my students to hear me. One important way forward is to divorce feelings from criticism. I dislike comments that start with, “I feel…” What you feel about the artist’s use of line, color, shape and form is immaterial. What matters is what you think about those things.

Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed.

Objectivity is our goal

Here is a framework for objective criticism. These aren’t my ideas; they’re standard criteria for design. Obviously, there’s room in critique for the subjective, since art is ultimately a personal expression. However, these questions can also be framed in non-inflammatory ways. “Does this evoke a response in you,” is a very different question from, “is this painting boring?”

It’s far healthier to learn to apply these standards of criticism to your own paintings than to cast around for approval from your peers (although we’ve all done it). Learning to critique your own work as you go will save you a lot of flailing around.

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If not today, when?

Matt in his down coat, drawing at Sedona. He was not overdressed for the weather. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

Yesterday, I ambled around the grounds of the French Legation State Historic Site in Austin musing about my plans for Sunday. The air here is clear and warm, the bluebonnets are blooming, and the trees are leafing out-perfect conditions for a day with horses.

Then I remembered that my pal Sarah and the stable are back home in Maine. They’re about to receive another blast of arctic air, dropping temperatures back into the 20s and bringing more of the foul ‘mixed precipitation’ that so bedeviled last week’s workshop in Sedona. That’s my current disconnect.

Nita wore a sock over her casted hand to keep it warm. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

Last week’s weather was awful for plein air painting. However, I had a dedicated band that stuck it out. Nita had a pickleball fracture in her right arm. She’s a southpaw but she could only use watercolor, as managing pastels was impossible without two hands. In the cold, her injury started to throb. She painted, quietly excused herself to warm up her errant limb or go to physical therapy, and then returned. Every day.

Joan had never painted before. On my recommendation she bought a gouache kit and drove down from Seattle. No matter how grim the weather, she gamely stayed with me, exercise after exercise. At the time, I thought, “this is an awful introduction to painting; she’s never going to want to do this again.” Still, she learned the fundamentals. She says she’s going to keep with it.

Joan listening to me carrying on. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

What’s got you rattled?

I can think of a million reasons to not paint today. In fact, I can find a million reasons to not paint every day. I’ve written before about how Ken DeWaard, Eric Jacobsen, Björn Runquist and I can dither. There are legitimate reasons why your creative impulses are blunted, including bad weather, work, children, or storms of grief or anxiety.

We all suffer from competing demands that distract us from what we need to do. For me, for years, it was my house. I couldn’t paint if it was a mess, because disorder always feels like a tide about to engulf me

Most of us have creative impulses-to write, to paint, to build furniture, to design beautiful interior spaces or gardens. The vast majority of us never do anything with those impulses, claiming a lack of time or energy. That’s despite being able to binge-watch television shows, slavishly follow the Buffalo Bills, or (in my case) read bad novels.

Joy and Matt persevering despite the cold. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

Are you hiding from the challenge?

Not creating is a safe position from which to operate. Your talent is inviolable, protected, a seed not open to criticism. You remain assured that you’re really a genius, which could suddenly be apparent as soon as you have the time or focus to start creating.

That gives you the latitude to criticize other creators, as you are protected from criticism yourself.

Many of us-most of us, in fact-will go to our graves never having moved past the ‘potential’ position. Those who do experience a transition to deep humility as we start to work through all the ways our craft can go wrong. We’re no longer so quick to have opinions about other work, because we recognize the struggle in which it was created.

But first you must start.

Whatever creative task you are called to do, there is always a day you must start doing it, instead of merely thinking about it. This might be that day, my friend.

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The most important rule of painting

It’s a start. Maybe I can even finish it before I leave!

Last March when I taught in Sedona, it was t-shirt weather. Our biggest dilemma was which day we should visit the winery. This year the weather has been terrible. Even I, an incurable optimist, can’t deny that.

The historic snows and rains that have pounded California have not left Sedona unscathed. Flood-prone areas were on high alert yesterday. State Route 89A closed in both directions between Sedona and Flagstaff due to rock slides.

Arizona has close ties to California, and people here have shown me pictures of their favorite ski resorts in the Sierra Nevada, where some places have seen close to 100 inches of new snow in the month of March alone. I’m from Buffalo and that number astounds me.

We’re not getting that, but we have had mixed precipitation and cold weather all week. It’s maddening when we’ve invited people to paint en plein air and they’re stuck inside, as beautiful as the teaching studio is at Sedona Arts Center. I want my students to be happy, and circumstances beyond human control are making that difficult.

“It’s the beginning of a new Ice Age,” I grumbled, and my student Maggie laughed and agreed.

Snow is welcome in December; at the end of March it’s just annoying.

This weather isn’t helping my slump

Maggie and her pal Beth wisely decided to paint indoors yesterday. The rest joined me at Secret Slickrock trailhead. Rain eddied and blew through the massifs, and Oak Creek roared in its rain-swollen channel below us. It would have been magical if the weather hadn’t been so stubbornly uncooperative. One by one, my students retreated to the warmth of their cars until it was just Matthew, Laura and me left.

I’ve been in a painting slump recently. There are all kinds of reasons for slumps, including health problems, pressure at work, grief and much more. Being able to identify the cause doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, but it does help me to feel better. And I know why I’m here. I’m spending most of my creative energy developing an online painting course. I’m alright with that trade-off, but it’s frustrating when I can steal a moment to paint and dreck comes off my brush.

Matthew is wearing three layers under that boilersuit. It’s a wonder he can stand up and waddle to his car.

But here I was on the top of a bluff and most of my students had left. I laid in a quick painting, breaking rules I drill into my students. I made no preparatory value sketch because I’d loaned my sketchbook out and hadn’t retrieved it. I did major design surgery in the middle of the painting. The painting is unfinished, because the rain and snow started sheeting down on us again. (Oil paint turns into stodge when it absorbs enough water.) And of course I don’t have a reference photo; I never remember to take them.

Yet I’m happier with this start than with anything else I’ve done since January.

Sometimes we go through dry periods. Sometimes we break rules we know are important. But the most important rule of all is to show up. Yes, you’re very likely to make a bad painting when you’re in a slump, but you stand a zero chance of making a good one if you don’t paint at all.

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Sit still and sketch the world

I’m in Arizona, teaching an annual workshop for the Sedona Arts Center. This has been an unusual year for the west, with snow, rain and cold in spectacular amounts. Still, my stalwart and stoic students are pushing through it.

Yesterday, we painted under the ramada at the Red Rock District Visitor Center in Coconino National Forest. We watched low-hanging clouds play peek-a-boo with Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte, and the surrounding massifs. It poured steadily all day. The high desert struggles to absorb it, as evidenced by Dry Beaver Creek in the video above, shot by my monitor, Ed Buonvecchio. Normally, this is a dry wash. I am staying in a casita above a tributary of Dry Beaver Creek, and as I listen to the rain sheeting down the tiles of my roof this morning, I wonder if the road will hold.

Laura Felina had the ranger station stamp her sketchbook. What a cool idea!

The manager of the Visitor Center welcomed us. “We like to demonstrate that there are many ways to appreciate nature besides hiking,” she said. She mentioned that she took up watercolor sketching herself during the pandemic, and now hikes with a small portable paint kit and sketchbook.

“You see things differently when you’re hiking from when you’re standing still,” she told me. I’ve experienced this myself. I’ve had elk, small animals and birds come out of the forest near me.

Dry Wash, 12X16, oil on canvasboarad, Carol L. Douglas, $1159 includes shippng in continental US.

It’s not what you see, it’s how you see

Mostly, it’s not what you see but how you see that changes. You start with the panorama, the ‘money shot,’ as we so blithely call it. The big, spectacular massifs catch your eye. But spend time standing still in the desert and other things begin to catch your attention: rock piled on rock, the smell of creosote bush, juniper and piñones on a hot day, or the play of light on a canyon wall.

Back up slowly through all the forms of locomotion, and think of how each one changes your perception. Hiking, you see detail, but in rocky terrain you spend much time checking your footing. In a jeep or four-wheeler, you’re moving slowly enough to appreciate the rise and fall of the land, but you’re never in one spot long enough to savor the subtle interplay of light and shadow. In a car, you see only the big picture.

Our roads and parks make nature accessible to everyone. That’s in contrast to the 19th century, where you had to be either rich or an adventurer to get back of beyond. I might bemoan the damage that off-roading does to the environment, but it makes it possible for people with mobility issues to get out into nature.

I love all four speeds of appreciating the environment: sketching, hiking, four-wheeling, and long drives. As a nation, however, we do way too much of the latter, and not enough of the former.

We’ll be inside this morning until the weather clears, but we’re making the best of it!

My late friend Helen lived in a run-down section of North Braddock, Pennsylvania, which is itself a clapped-out old steel town. Helen wasn’t very mobile, so she appreciated nature from her porch. There was an empty lot next door. Every spring, she’d send me pictures of the weedy scrub coming into bud and flower. She was still enough to see beauty where others just saw urban blight. Sometimes she’d send me a picture she’d painted using copy paper and a paint set she bought at Dollar General.

Be more like Helen, and you’ll start to see your world differently. “But I can’t draw!” you say. Helen didn’t let that stop her. When you were a child, you knew how to draw a flower. What made you lose confidence in your ability?

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Monday Morning Art School: get the most from a painting workshop

Rim Light, 16X20, 16X20, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping in continental United States.

The hardest thing for a teacher is the student who says, “yes, but…” to everything one tells them. I should know; I tend to be one of those myself. I know what it means to stubbornly protect what I already know, to rely on my own skills instead of opening my mind to new concepts. (Note to Cornelia Foss: I really was listening; I wish I’d listened better.)

I’m teaching in Sedona this week and Austin next week, so preparation is on my mind.

The Rocks Remain, 16X20, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping in continental United States.

Come prepared

Study the supply list, but don’t just run right out and buy everything on it. Every teacher has a reason for asking for specific materials. In my case, it’s that I teach a system of paired primaries. You can’t understand color theory without the right paints. Another teacher might have beautiful mark-making. If you don’t buy the brushes he suggests, how are you going to understand his technique?

A tube of cadmium green that I once bought for a workshop and never opened still rankles. I never want to do that to my students. When you study with me, I want you to read my supply lists. If something confuses you, or you think you already have a similar item, email and ask.

(If you find yourself buying something for one of my classes or workshops and not using it, would you let me know? It means I’m missing something.)

Bring the right clothes. It’s hovering in the 50s in Sedona this week, but Austin will be in the 70s. I send my students a packing list for clothes and personal belongings. But modify it for the weather you’re expecting. Don’t ignore the insect repellant and sunscreen.

The Surf is Cranking Up, 8×16, $903 includes shipping in continental United States.

Know what you’re getting into.

“How can you stand this? It’s all so green!” an urban painter once said to me after a week in the Adirondacks.

There are no Starbucks in Acadia National Park or on the clear, still waters of Penobscot Bay. If you’re dependent on your latte macchiato, you may be uncomfortable at first. But the beauty of America’s wild places more than makes up for it. (And somehow, there’s always coffee, even where there’s no cell phone reception.)

Take notes

There’s a sketchbook on my supply list; plan on writing as much as you draw. If you write down key points, you’ll remember them far better than if you just read my handouts.

Listen for new ideas and ask questions. If I can’t stop and answer them mid-stream, save them for after the demo. Participate in discussions and know that your voice is valued; I’ve learned more from my students than from anyone else.

Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed, shipping included in continental United States.

Be prepared to get down and dirty.

I’m not talking about the outdoors here, I’m talking about change and growth. I am highly competitive myself, so it’s difficult for me to feel like I’m struggling. However, it’s in challenge that we make progress. Use your teacher’s method while you’re at the workshop, even if you feel like you’ve stepped back ten years in your development. That’s a temporary problem.

You can disregard what you learn when you go home, or incorporate only small pieces into your technique, but you signed up for the workshop to grow and change. You can’t do that if you cling to your own technique.

Connect with your classmates

There’s power in those relationships. Exchange email addresses. Keep in contact. Follow them on Instagram or Twitter. You’ll learn as much from each other as you will from me.

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Investing in art

Early Spring on Beech Hill, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, 12X16, $1449 framed includes shipping in continental US.

In June of 1975, my husband paid $285 for a Fender Precision Bass. He spent the whole of his high school graduation money on it. For a 16-year-old about to start his first summer job and then go off to college, that was a very big deal.

“If I had invested that money…” he mused recently.

That’s a difficult question to answer. Had he put it in an S&P 500 index fund and reinvested all the dividends and not had to pay fees, he’d have about $60,000 right now. Of course, that is a theoretical ideal; in practice, it would have been impossible. There weren’t index funds available in June, 1975. Most working people had pensions, and the 401K hadn’t even been invented yet. In 1980, the first year the SEC asked the question, only 6% of American households had mutual funds. Our parents kept their savings in banks.

In a savings account, that $285 would have earned… pretty much nothing. Assuming it had survived the depredations of three subsequent college degrees and four children, today that $285 would be worth $1,599.62. Even in its heavily-used condition, the bass is worth much more than that.

That’s disregarding the money he’s made with it. Although he now plays in church, at times he supported us with that guitar. But that really misses the point.

Sea Fog over Castine, Carol L. Douglas, 9X12, $869 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Making art is transformative

“You wouldn’t be the person you are today,” I told him. He’s played that instrument for 48 years-sometimes in intense bursts of creativity, at other times in stolen moments in an otherwise busy life. But it’s central to the way his mind works.

Back in 1975, I didn’t have $285. If I had I’d have banked it. I don’t think frugality is a bad trait, but in this instance, I’d have been dead wrong. There are purchases that are self-indulgent, and other purchases-investments, really-that pay off many times over.

The Pine Tree State, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, $435 framed and including shipping in continental US.

How does this apply to the visual arts?

First, there’s the question of materials. My student Diane wants to try pastels. She could buy a cheap kit at a department store for under $30, but it’s a waste of money. She’d walk away frustrated and not understanding the first thing about the seductive immediacy of pastels. If she wants to try them, she needs the proper materials.

I gave her a list: Unison pastels in a starter kit and a landscape kit, paper, and hard pastels. Even at that minimum level, that’s more than a hundred bucks. That hurt to tell her. But it’s an investment in learning and Diane is happy.

Blueberry barrens, Clary Hill, oil on canvas, 24X36, $3985 framed, includes shipping in continental US.

Then there’s the question of hanging art on your walls. I sometimes look at the prices of the so-called ‘art’ at my local Home Goods and wince. It’s like those cheap pastel kits-a simulacrum of the real thing. In a few years, it will be added to the local landfill.

Art, if it’s chosen well, is not just something to look at. It’s an investment that appreciates over time. That’s particularly true of the work of women artists on the secondary market, which is currently appreciating faster than their male peers’. And unlike my Vanguard account (at the moment) the art on our walls brings me consistent, great joy.

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Ecotourism and art

Painting aboard schooner American Eagle.

The track up Beech Hill is my daily morning routine. Occasionally I run across C-, who’s a co-owner of an elegant windjammer plying Penobscot Bay.

As you know, I teach two watercolor workshops each year aboard the schooner American Eagle. These workshops combine two things I love: sailing and painting. I get to do them without the responsibility of owning a boat, and my students get to do them without the responsibility of carrying their gear. (I supply it.)

I’m always thinking about ways to get more people excited about the combination of painting and sailing, because I can’t imagine anything better. Windjammers tend to attract older people, and that’s great, except that I don’t really understand why younger people don’t love them too.

“I had an idea that windjamming is the natural extension of eco-tourism,” I told C- the other day. “But I can’t figure out a way that you could stack 18 kayaks on your deck. They wouldn’t fit.”

“We don’t have to,” she pointed out. “The boats themselves are the original form of ecotourism.”

That’s my girl! American Eagle modeled for this painting, called Breaking Storm, 30X48, oil on linen, $5,579.00 including shipping in continental US.

What is ecotourism?

Ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education.”*

Schooners rely on wind power to glide silently through the sea; hence their moniker of ‘windjammers.’ We pass ledge and small islands where sea birds and eagles nest. I’ve seen sea otters, dolphins, and, memorably, a whale breaching off Rockland harbor last fall.

Because American Eagle carries several smaller vessels, including a seine boat, we can row to uninhabited islands, which we visit on a carry-in, carry-out basis. And those interested in studying quaint, endangered local cultures need look no farther than the lobstermen of coastal Maine.

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1,594.00 framed, includes shipping in the continental US. G**gle recently disapproved this image because it violates their policy. “Local legal requirements and safety standards (live animals).”

So why hasn’t the windjammer industry tapped into the $200 billion annual ecotourism market? I suspect it is because we believe that to see something exotic, you must go overseas. Having traveled extensively, I know this is nonsense. New Englanders and Nevadans may-nominally-share the same language, but we live in very different physical, economic and cultural communities. Ours is a vast country, twice as large as the EU. It has amazing diversity, including more than 95,000 miles of coastline.

Maine’s little piece of that includes 17 million acres of forestland and 3,500 miles of rocky coast. There are more than 3000 sea islands (and who knows how many on inland lakes). Only about 200 have more than four structures, meaning that the whole coastline is covered with forestland, bluffs, cliffs, and coves-and all the wildlife that goes with that.

As a painter, I find that irresistible, and I’m not alone. That’s why the Maine coast is infested with artists and galleries.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping in continental US. You can tell it was painted from a boat, rather than from shore, because the wave isn’t horizontal.

Where happiness lies

“A wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” wrote Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert. We’re happiest when we’re living in the moment, totally focused on what we’re doing. A wandering person, on the other hand, tends to be a sublimely happy soul. New experiences sharpen our focus in a way that material goods can’t. Soon after they’re purchased, our new car, phone or dress fade into the background; in fact, they’re only notable if there is a story to their acquisition.

Psychologists tells us that experiences bring people more enduring happiness than do possessions. Which, I suppose, is why I love the paintings I’ve done from the deck of American Eagle so much. They are treasured memories of happy days.

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Monday Morning Art School: painting plein air fast

My top five tips to finish a plein air painting in three hours.

The Rocks Remain, 16X20, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 unframed includes shipping.

Keep your equipment organized

Eric Jacobsen improved my life when he suggested I buy a good, dedicated backpack instead of using cheap gear bags. I bought this Kelty Redwing; you must find the pack that’s sized for you.

When not in use, that pack hangs on the back of my studio easel. With a few exceptions, my plein air kit stays in it. My tubed paints are in a tough pencil pouch (more durable than a ziplock bag), and my small tools are in a zippered makeup bag. The tripod for my easel stays put. The pochade box itself is usually in my freezer in a 35-liter waterproof stuff-sack. My brush cleaning tank is attached to the pack with a carabiner and there’s always a spare canvas ready for painting.

When I get back after a day of painting, I spend a few minutes pulling it back together. Everything goes in its designated place so I can find it when I need it.

I use the same brushes for studio and field work, so they live in a brush case next to my easel when I’m not carrying them outdoors. I clean them when I come in.

When I decide to go out, I can be out the door in a matter of minutes.

Jimmy the donkey admiring my palette.

Lay out your palette in advance

Cleaning all the paint off your palette between sessions wastes time and money. Only clean the mixing area of your palette, and leave your unused paint for the next session. Or, do as I do and never clean your palette at all. I just knock off any dried paint as it annoys me.

Every palette needs attention at some point (even mine). It’s easiest to reset the colors when you finish for the afternoon, but if that doesn’t work for you, do a reset before you walk out the door the next morning.

Your palette doesn’t need to be cleaned off before you fly. When I arrive in Sedona on Monday, I can just flip open my pochade box and I’m ready to go.

A painting student from my Adirondack workshop, with her drawing at hand. (The subject was perspective.)

A sketch in time saves nine

It’s faster and easier to work out your composition with a pencil than to do it with a brush. It’s a lot easier to erase pencil errors than to scrape out bad brushwork-or worse, start again in watercolor. The ten or twenty minutes you spend with a pencil on this first step will save you hours of bad painting later.

Your sketch should lay out your basic composition. The human eye sees value first, so if that doesn’t work in your composition, the painting will fail. “I substitute off-value color and chroma for accurate value. Then, except for a couple spots of high-chroma yellow, I wonder why my paintings are flat,” a student once told me. He took that observation and ran with it, painting only in greyscale for months.

You don’t have to go that crazy, but with every painting, work out the darks to lights in your sketchbook first. Alla prima painting requires great skill in color mixing, because the goal is to nail it on the first strike. You can be off on the hue, but when you don’t have the value right, you start to paint and overpaint passages. That’s flailing, and it kills a painting.

I do not know what Eric Jacobsen or Björn Runquist were up to, but my sketchbook is right underneath my easel, as I was faithfully copying my original idea.

Stick to your value sketch

The worst error of plein air painting is chasing the light. It’s seductive. The shadows lengthen and grow heavier, and you want to capture every second of that transition. You can’t.

If you start with a good value sketch and stick with it, you’ll have a strong painting. That sketch on paper (instead of just on your canvas) gives you reference for when the light inevitably changes.

Make sure you aren’t intimidated by your neighbors, who just dive in without sketching and appear to be going much faster than you. The goal isn’t to finish first, but to paint your best.

Cypresses and shadows, 11X14, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 unframed.

Don’t fuss with the ending

A good alla prima painting has two or possibly three layers of paint:

  • Grisaille or underpainting.
  • Midlayer, where the tonal relationships are worked out.
  • Finish layer of judiciously-selected detail.

Many exciting paintings are chewed down at the end, when painters perseverate over brushwork and/or details. If you find yourself noodling, stop.

This is not to say that you can’t ever paint in detail. But the ending should be about strengthening composition, not adding last-minute tchotchkes.

I’m off this weekend to teach back-to-back workshops in Sedona and Austin. There’s still a seat or two left in each (I think), and airfare has dropped considerably since last year.

My first online painting class is up and running, here. It’s called The Perfect Palette and is about the very first step in painting-the paints you should buy.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025: