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Author: Carol L. Douglas

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Monday Morning Art School: how to photograph paintings when you’re comically inept like me

The only photo I took last week that filled me with unalloyed joy was this tiny 4X6 of a baby spruce tree. Color, check. Exposure, check.

I am fairly incompetent when it comes to photographing my own work. It’s not from lack of equipment—I have a Nikon D750 digital SLR camera, photofloods, and a Slik tripod that’s so heavy I ought to be able to break my toe before I set my camera vibrating.

It’s the combination of cameras and the ego involvement of my own work that does me in. I exited the film age by tripping over a tripod while prepping a batch of slides for a show submission. Well, that camera was almost obsolete anyway.

Meanwhile, I watch my peers casually lean paintings against trees and shoot perfect images, while I struggle to remember to do it at all.

At any rate, here’s what I know about how to photograph paintings; I’ll try to practice what I preach.

A good cell phone can take a better photo than a bad DSLR, but more importantly, sometimes a cell phone is all you have at hand.

Exposure is OK, color is off, and it looks blurry to me. I painted this while discussing Proust with Björn Runquist.

Don’t shoot your photos when you’re exhausted.

I don’t do anything well when I’m hot, tired, up against a deadline and thirsty. My resolution for 2025 is to photograph things calmly and when there’s still gas in my tank.

Oil painters have an additional complication in that impasto doesn’t always look great when it’s wet; it can be overly reflective. If there’s time to let it dry, that’s an advantage. But when something has been painted for an event, that’s a luxury you might not have.

Shoot your work parallel to the camera lens.

If you can hang your work on a wall, that’s perfect. If you can leave it on an easel pointing straight up and down, that’s about the same, and more practical. Failing that, you want the picture plane to be parallel to the camera lens, so that all four corners of the painting are the same distance from the lens. That results in minimal distortion.

Yes, you can ease some of that distortion in photo editing software, but you can’t do it perfectly, and there are times (like on the ocean’s horizon, or in perspective) when it matters. 

By attempting to fix the bad exposure, I messed up the color relationships, and there went what I liked about this painting. Oops.

Light your work evenly

Guidebooks will tell you to use indirect natural light, but where I live that’s usually too blue. Also, it’s cold outside, and no number of windows cast even light indoors. I use two photofloods at 45-degree angles to my work, and they cast very even, natural light across my paintings.

If you don’t have photofloods, you can rig up paper or fabric screens in front of LED bulbs.

I’ve learned two things the hard way: make sure any shades behind your subject are closed and make sure that any brightly-colored objects in the room are not casting reflected color onto your painting.

Don’t zoom in too close

If you do, you’re in danger of getting fish-eye, especially with a cell phone. Phones and cameras are such high resolution now that you don’t need to worry about every pixel.

I’ve decided to make reshooting this painting my life’s work. It’s such a good painting and for some reason so difficult to get a good shot of.

Don’t use autoexposure

If you let your cell phone or camera choose an exposure for you, you are unlikely to love the results. On my cell phone, I take a couple different exposures and hope for the best. (Ask the internet if you don’t know how to do this for your phone.) On my camera, I auto-bracket.

You don’t need any great depth of field to photograph a painting. If you have a DSLR, set it for a larger f-stop (like f3.5, 2.8, or 1.4). That will give you a faster shutter. That’s the mistake I made on Friday that gave me blurry photos and why I’ll be reshooting all these pictures today. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Once you’ve got an accurate exposure, don’t go into your editing software and autocorrect the levels. Paintings do not generally have 100% blacks and 0% whites, but autocorrection puts those in, as well as averaging out all the values to look like everything else. Who needs that?

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How do you respond to colors and memory?

Camden Harbor from Curtis Island, oil on canvas, $2782 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

It was the couch that upset me in this decorating story about Farrow & Ball’s Dead Salmon. “I like it,” my 31-year-old daughter told me.

Uggh, I shivered. It reminded me of this passage from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which I read 52 years ago:

“As for the interior, there were spongy displays of liver-colored carpet… an immense modernistic living-room couch covered in nubby fabric interwoven with glittery strands of silver metal…”

Objectively, there’s nothing wrong with that brown-pink color; in fact, it reminds me of a mixture I added to my palette last year and dubbed Eric Jacobsen pink, because he uses it so much.

Athabasca River Confluence, 9X12, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Lots of flowers come in that color, including pansies, irises, daylilies, columbines, chrysanthemums, roses, and carnations. Nobody hates them, least of all me. But as a decorating color, brown-pink reminds me of death and old ladies.

Involuntary memory

What caused my visceral negative reaction? It was a chained involuntary memory: the color evoked the smell of dusty, musty brownish-pink Herculon. (If you need a good cry, just look at how much that sofa you threw out is worth today.)

Our sense of smell works differently than our other senses. The other sensory apparatuses track through the brain’s thalamus before reaching the amygdala and hippocampus. In contrast, the smell system is hardwired to these memory and emotion centers, said Sandeep Robert Datta, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. That’s why we often have emotional responses (like mine) to odor-related or -evoked memories.

Belfast Harbor, oil on archival canvasboard, 14X18, $1,275 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Colors and memory

There have been many studies on colors and memory. These show that people remember images in color better than they do in black and white. However, they don’t remember falsely-colored natural scenes any better than they do those in monochrome.

“It appears as if our memory system is tuned, presumably by evolution and/or during development, to the color structure found in the world. If stimuli are too strange, the system simply doesn’t engage as well, or deems them unimportant,” said Dr. Karl Gegenfurtner.

What does that mean for artists in our color-saturated world? I paint in a high chroma palette partly because I like those colors and partly because they’re the direction our mass media has moved the needle.

https://www.watch-me-paint.com/product/downtown-rockport/Downtown Rockport, 14X18, oil on archival canvasboard, framed, $1594 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“Perhaps designers should be aware that, in order to engage or grab one’s attention (as in advertising), bright colors might well be most suitable,” said Dr. Felix A. Wichmann. “If, on the other hand, the aim is more to have an image ‘stick’ in the viewer’s memory, unnatural colors may not be suitable.”

I challenge you to name four or five paintings that you love, without using the internet for prompts. Now look them up. Are they high-chroma, dull, or in a natural chroma range?

Two upcoming classes

Yeah, I feel like I am nagging, but you’d be surprised how frequently people tell me, “I never saw that!”

Zoom Class: Beyond realism to expressive painting

Tuesdays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST

This class focuses on design and composition for expressive painting. Students will be encouraged to develop their own personal creative vision while working on refining their artistic skills through traditional studies.

Zoom class: design and drawing

Mondays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST

This class is targeted to the learner who has mastered measurement, shading, and perspective and wants to further develop skills in design and rendering.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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From aerobics to art class

In Control (Grace and her Unicorn), 24X30, $3,478 framed, oil on canvas, includes shipping in continental United States.

Did I ever tell you about my brief career as an aerobics instructor? It was back in the early 1980s, when the unemployment rate in my hometown was double-digit and I was desperate for work. I borrowed a cute pink leotard and leg warmers from my cousin, but nothing was going to give me Farrah Fawcett’s hair or Richard Simmons’ exuberance.

The music was awful, but as a student I was used to hearing it only for 45 minutes at a time. Instructors hear it class after class. I lasted exactly one evening.

My friend Catherine asked me to teach an art class around the time my youngest (now 28) was a tiny tot. It was a much better fit. We started in my finished third floor, a table running down the middle and me smacking my head against the rafters each time I stood up straight. A year or two later I moved my studio to the landing. I taught figure and drawing and painting there to students of all ages. Ten years ago this month, I bought this house and moved my operation to midcoast Maine.

I taught weekly classes here until COVID shut me (and everyone else) down. Today I suppose you can learn anything on Zoom but in 2020 it wasn’t such a widespread idea. I’m grateful Mary Byrom wore down my resistance, because I think Zoom art class is as valuable as in-studio art class, and it reaches everywhere.

Cottonwoods along the Rio Verde, 9X12, oil on archivally-prepared Baltic birch, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A workshop where it’s warm

I’ll be teaching Canyon Color for the Painter at the Sedona Arts Center in Sedona, AZ, March 10-14. I can think of lots of good reasons to take this workshop, including the incredible landscape, the fine organization and my own chops as a plein air teacher, but here’s the most important one:

It’s warmer in Sedona than it is up here in the north. Zoom student Julie Hunt told me it was -13° F in Alberta, CA yesterday. It’s 7° F here in Maine. Meanwhile, in Sedona, it’s 70° F.

This workshop is all about color theory. That isn’t just a collection of truisms like warm-vs-cool. Color is the cornerstone of painting. We’re going to drill down and really master color and mixing in our week in the high desert. Plus, by now I know all the best places to paint.

I hear from the organizers that this class is filling up, so if you’re interested, contact them soon.

The Surf is Cranking Up, 8X16, oil on linenboard, $903 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A Zoom class on design

“How can I take my students beyond basic drawing to a more complete sense of design?” I asked Laura. Just because she’s on maternity leave is no reason to not pepper her with questions.

Design and drawing was our answer, designed to take you past the basics of measurement and perspective to concepts like focal point, composition, abstraction and more.

All design rests on line and contrast in value, chroma and hue, but value is the most important. For this reason, I’m designing this class to be done in graphite or charcoal. However, there’s no reason a person couldn’t do the exercises in paint. Or both.

The Logging Truck, oil on archival canvasboard, 16X20, $2029.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Beyond realism

I really have some hot painters in my classes right now, and my current goal is to push them beyond faithful rendering to a new language of expression. To this end, we’ve done composition experiments, color experiments and more. In the next session, Beyond realism to expressive painting, we’ll continue to build on that idea. You don’t need to have taken the prior class as long as you’re an experienced painter.

A word to the wise

I can never tell how many people will enroll in my classes. I won’t take more than 15 or fewer than six. However, both classes were sold out last session, so if you want one of them, you should register soon.

If you have any questions, email me.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: the golden rectangle and other design ideas

Dawn along Upper Red Rock Loop Road, Sedona, 20X24 oil on canvas, $2318 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“Why do odd numbers of objects in a composition look more ‘interesting’ than even numbers,” my correspondent asked.

“The explanation I’ve heard is that the brain wants to create symmetry, and when unable to do so because there are an odd number of objects, the gaze just continues to move around the composition.  I briefly worked on a sheep farm, and ewes who had three lambs always seemed confused, like they were counting ‘one… two… wait a minute! Let me count again!’”

Carrie, even with twins I was confused most of the time. Sheep, like humans, have only two teats, but no opposable thumbs, and they’re kind of dumb. But back to your question:

“Is a desire for symmetry really hardwired into our brains? Or is this a cultural preference? Or a myth? If our brains want symmetry, then why not give it to them and make symmetrical art? Do people actually look at paintings of odd numbers of objects longer? Do they like them better?”

The short answer is that the brain seems hardwired to like complicated visual relationships.

Home Farm, 20X24, oil on canvas, $2898 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The Golden Rectangle, the granddaddy of all design ideas

That need for visual mystery is the basis for the Golden Rectangle. It resolves to 1.618:1, which is a ratio none of us can parse. Yet it looks pleasing. That’s because it derives from the Golden Spiral and the Fibonacci Sequence, with their perfect squares.

By HB – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114843794

The Golden Rectangle is the first ‘absolute’ design model I ever learned. It has been used since at least the ancient Greeks. However, it doesn’t match up with the aspect ratio of modern canvases, frames and cameras, so we don’t hear about it as much anymore.

The rule of thirds

The rule of thirds never meant that you should have three objects. It divides an image into nine equal parts using two horizontal and two vertical lines. The most important elements of the image are placed along the lines or their intersections. That creates points of interest that are evenly spaced and aesthetically pleasing

It works, of course, but it is by no means the most interesting compositional grid. 1/3, although a repeating decimal, isn’t all that difficult for the brain to parse.

Camden Harbor from Curtis Island, oil on canvas, $2782 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Is symmetry always bad?

Whenever someone tells me you should never put something smack dab in the middle of their canvas, I direct them to the Mask of Tutankhamun. It’s powerful, stately and grand. That’s why Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci used symmetry to such good effect. It’s less popular today, perhaps because we don’t believe in absolutes truth much anymore.

Dynamic Symmetry

Jay Hambidge hoped to capitalize on the brain’s love of inscrutable proportion when he devised his theory of dynamic symmetry back in the 1920s. It’s since been discredited, but pops back up with dismaying regularity.

I learned it from the painter Steven Assael and fiddled with it for several years. In the end, what it taught me was not to put focal points at the edge of my canvas, which I’m telling you here, for free.

Home Port, 18X24,, $2318 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The circle

The circle is balanced in every direction. If symmetry were boring, a circle would be the last word in dullness. Instead, it’s fascinated us from da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man to now.

Besides being a model of human proportion, Vitruvian Man is a nod to an ancient math problem called squaring the circle. That was the challenge of constructing a square with the area of a given circle using geometry. 

Ultimately it proved impossible. That’s because of our old high school buddy, π. π is what’s called a transcendental number, which just means it’s non-algebraic and goes on and on without ever repeating. Circles interest us precisely because they can’t be pushed into a square hole (and vice-versa).

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What is hands-on learning?

Possum, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

In the traditional sense of craft, I’m impaired. Take a brush out of my hands and I’m tripping over myself. But my artist circle includes many fine craftsmen, and I don’t see much difference between craft and painting.

“Crafting is… a form of manual thinking,” Ainsley Hawthorn wrote. “As we craft, we’re using our hands to problem-solve, to make decisions, and to express ourselves. In doing so, we’re able to access different sets of knowledge than when we’re simply mulling something over.”

Hawthorn is a self-described ‘cultural historian, sensory scholar, and author.’ Despite the fact that she makes art on menstrual pads I think she’s right about crafting and the brain. We bypass conscious thinking by means of motor learning and muscle memory. They use different parts of our brain than our conscious processes.

Toy Monkey and Candy, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

What is hands-on learning?

Kinesthetic learning enjoyed a brief vogue a few years ago. It’s defined as a learning style that functions best with physical activity, movement, and hands-on experiences. Essentially it means learning by doing rather than by passively absorbing information through watching or listening.

Sadly, there’s no data that supports the idea that kinesthetic learners do better when taught kinesthetically. Apparently, you can’t dance your way to understanding calculus. But I’d wager that we’re all hands-on learners; it’s baked into the human brain. This is the way we humans teach our offspring. Eventually, they manage to hit their mouths with their spoons and put their shoes on the right feet. But they’d never get there if we just lectured them instead of showing them and helping them.

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

That was also true for traditional jobs like cordwaining, carpentry and coopering, which is why so many professions developed along the apprentice-journeyman-master guild model and why so many skilled trades still use that system today. That’s also why the atelier model of teaching art creates such good artists and the university model creates such good theoreticians.

We’ve always had intellectuals (or abstract thinkers, if you prefer). Before the Enlightenment they confined themselves to philosophy, mathematics and other obscure disciplines. It’s only in the modern era that trades like engineering, medicine or law began to rest on a foundation of theoretical knowledge before hands-on experience.

Creativity is good for your brain

There is evidence that creative pursuits reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and reduce the incidence of dementia.

“The flow state we enter when we’re completely immersed in a creative activity like crafting is intrinsically pleasurable and keeps us from ruminating over negative thoughts,” wrote Dr. Hawthorn. “Craft projects are often small-scale and attainable, giving crafters a sense of achievement as they complete each one. Because crafting has tangible results, crafters can literally watch their skills improve over time and gain confidence in themselves and their capabilities.”

We know play is crucial in early childhood. It lets children explore their environment, build cognitive skills, develop social interactions, regulate emotions, enhance creativity and practice problem-solving. So why do we stop playing as adults?

Back It Up, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

Working with your hands is so much fun

Earlier this year, my husband and I built a new gallery space. Since neither of us are mechanical engineers, it’s probably overengineered, but it’s unlikely to fall down and it’s neat. We had a terrific time calculating, cutting, and hammering.

I will never again try to make a glass ball ornament Christmas tree (one of my most spectacular failures) but I get that same creative buzz painting. Whether it’s gardening, cooking, needle-felting, pottery or painting, everyone should exercise their creativity.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Top ten cat portraits

For several years I had a feline student in my zoom classes. Wylie attended faithfully every week, ‘assisting’ his human, Pam Otis, by standing on her drawing board, snaking himself around her monitor, jumping into her lap, and using every other cat trick that assures that work never gets done. I posted so many pictures of Wylie on Facebook that people assumed he lived with me.

Wylie (2009-2025)

After I posted Dogs in art: ten great dog paintings and why I love them, I expected an email from Wylie demanding equal time for cats. Perhaps his silence meant he was already not feeling well, because last week he passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 16. Wylie, here are the cat portraits you meant to ask for.

Top ten cat portraits

Study for the Madonna of the Cat, Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1478–1481, courtesy British Museum

Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches of the Virgin and Child playing with or carrying a cat six times. Either the painting never materialized or it didn’t survive, but it’s clear from this and his other cat drawings that he had a real cat at home. This one is a cat that’s had just about enough, thank you, which in turn humanizes the Infant Jesus.

Miss Olson, 1952, Andrew Wyeth, courtesy Brandywine Museum

This painting was done just four years after Christina’s World. The model was Christina Olson, the inspiration for the earlier painting. She was the victim of a wasting disease, although its exact character is unknown. Much of how we perceive our pets is based on our interactions with them. This is a moment of tenderness to which anyone can relate.

Maine Coon Cat, 1998, Jamie Wyeth, courtesy Farnsworth Art Museum

Then there’s Jamie Wyeth, whose relationship with animals is more astringent and far funnier. I have known many Maine Coon Cats and think of them as overlarge house cats mainly interested in their baskets. The idea of them caterwauling in unison in the tall grass strikes me as very funny indeed.

Black Cat and Tomato Plant, 1931, woodblock print, Takahashi Hiroaki, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts Houston

Cats have been an important motif in Chinese, Japanese and Korean art for centuries. They have a symbolic meaning that’s missing for westerners, representing good luck, prosperity, protection from evil, and longevity. Part of that has to do with their skill at eradicating pests. Here we have a shrewdly-observed cat’s eye view of hunting.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Child with Cat (Julie Manet), 1887, courtesy Musée d’Orsay

Many artists, including me, have a hard time liking Renoir. This painting differs from much of his work in that it’s a real girl with a real cat. That cuts through his “syrupy, falsified take on reality,” as critic Sebastian Smee described Renoir’s oeuvre. That’s a happy but very real cat.

The Cat, 1914, Bart van der Leck, courtesy Kröller-Müller Museum

Bart van der Leck’s principal fame to claim is as a cofounder of De Stijl with Piet Mondrian et al. That said, he ultimately backed off pure abstraction to being satisfied with simplifying representational forms. This cat would be just another clever motif if not for that knowing face.

Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, 1850, woodcut print, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, private collection.

The Tōkaidō road linked the shōgun‘s capital, Edo, to the imperial capital, Kyōto, making it the most important road of old Japan. The ‘stations’ were its rest stops, and they were a popular subject for prints. You could probably get a nice fat thesis paper out of comparing this with Utagawa Hiroshige’s far-more-literal Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. Or, how would you represent the rest stops on I-90 as cats?

Boys and Kitten, 1873, watercolor, Winslow Homer, courtesy Worcester Art Museum

The star of this painting isn’t the light-grey kitten, which you can barely see cradled in the middle boy’s arms. It’s not even the three youngsters, raptly attentive to their pet. It’s Mama Cat, sitting up so proudly to the left.

Black Cat and Abyssinian Cat, 2003, etching and aquatint, Elizabeth Blackadder, courtesy Royal Scottish Academy

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder was the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy of Arts. She did so while embracing ‘feminine’ subjects like cats and flowers. She lived a long, happy, productive life, and her cats (for which she’s well-known) are fat, sleek, and content creatures.

Happy Flower Cat, undated, Louis Wain

Louis Wain was another famous painter of cats, but his story isn’t nearly as happy. His early cat paintings are precious and anthropomorphic. “English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves,” said  H. G. Wells. In 1914, he suffered a severe head injury and was eventually certified insane. I tried to find an example of his work that bridges the work of his younger years and the more troubling work he did post-brain injury.

If you still want more cats in art, check out these cats who walked across manuscripts hundreds of years ago.

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Monday Morning Art School: learning by copying

Cheese Slices, 1986, Wayne Thiebaud, private collection, photo courtesy Mark Gale

“I won’t ask you to do anything I won’t do,” I promised my students recently. That’s cutting into my painting time, but I have several students enrolled in both of my online classes. I’m concerned I’m running them ragged.

Last week I asked my composition and brushwork class to copy a Wayne Thiebaud painting. I’ve been meaning to do it myself because I was curious about how he executes those hints of penumbral color.

Later, I was flipping through Facebook and realized that painter Tim Kelly had just copied Winslow Homer’s The Herring Net. What is so valuable about copying masterpieces that even professional artists do it?

My copy of Cheese Slices, roughly 9X12.

Freed from original thought

Getting rid of the pressure of originality frees your mind to focus on technique. You hone skills without the added burden of inventing something new. You can study, dispassionately, the elements of color and design used by the artist.

Brushwork

I assigned Thiebaud because I wanted my students to get a feeling for his brushwork. That differs depending on the medium. He’s also a great source to understand optical mixing.

The Herring Net, 1885, Winslow Homer, courtesy Art Institute of Chicago

Color mixing without pressure

By the time I was done with my fair copy, I knew what paints Thiebaud had on his palette. (It doesn’t differ much from mine, it turns out.) Here, Tim was operating at a disadvantage. “This was done from a picture in an old book so it’s likely a chromatic departure from the original,” he said.

There are several passages in Cheese Slices where colors were mixed with a dragging brush. That’s easy enough to do spontaneously; it’s much harder to copy. But the attempt helped me understand the theory behind his color choices.

Tim Kelly’s copy of The Herring Net. “Our living room wall had a reproduction of this painting back in the early 70’s,” he said. “Little Timmy would stare at it often with concern that the guy on the left might fall out of the boat.”

Learning by copying is really reverse engineering

Most of the painting I copied was pretty straightforward. In other areas, there were challenges of blending and detail that surprised me. For example, Thiebaud’s application of impasto was more conventional than I expected, considering how radical the results look.  

These problem-solving skills, of course, are transferable to your original work. Once you’ve figured out how a master blends, or applies paint, you can do it in your own work any time you want.

My cranberry-glass goblets, oil on linen, 9X12. My big surprise painting these was that none of them are exactly the same!

Learning by copying builds confidence

I still don’t think I’ll make a good forger, but it is always heartening to realize that I can fake it enough for the painting to be recognizable.

A few tips for success

You have to be a little in love with a painting to bother copying it. It helps to understand the historical context and technique of the artist before you start. There’s no reason to sweat this part; the internet is a terrific resource.

Find the best image of the painting that you can. I have a picture of Cheese Slices in a book but ended up painting from a photo taken by my friend. It was much more detailed and nuanced.

Above all, be patient. It took time to create the original, and it will take time to make a copy. Mine took the better part of a day.

Focus on what you care about. I was uninterested in copying Thiebaud’s paint-handling; I understand how he did that. Among other things, he was right-handed and I’m a leftie. But if juicy brushwork is your issue, copy the brushwork. If color’s your issue, copy the color. If they’re both your issue, focus on them both.

My major question going into this copy was when those brilliant penumbral colors were added—in the base layer, the middle layer, or the top. All of the above, it turns out.

The night after I copied this painting, I dreamed about it. My subconscious mind showed me how those penumbral colors are organized and I looked at the original with new eyes. Then I went on to paint my own cranberry-glass goblets using the same general idea. Is it brilliant? No. Is it interesting? To me, at least.

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Challenge yourself

Cinnamon Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I have a friend with the unfathomable habit of rereading Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu once or twice a year. (I tried it once and didn’t get halfway through.) Recently I asked him why he finds the novel so compelling. “Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality,” he answered.

This week I had a surprise visit from a man who studied painting with me during his junior and senior years in high school. He was an extremely disciplined, hard worker and had scholarship offers from the nation’s top art schools. He graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and after that he just stopped painting. He’s taken occasional workshops with me but he doesn’t stick with it, despite my nagging.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

There are many reasons people don’t pursue careers in art. They are worried about money (in particular, their student loans), competition, and the seemingly random way the market rewards artists. After all, for every thousand workaday artists like me, there’s a celebrity making bank off art.

Our society doesn’t respect art as a career, so many young artists are under social pressure to ‘get a real job’. Or, their guidance counselors push them into more stable career paths before they ever leave high school.

These are not foolish considerations. Anyone considering an art career ought to, at the minimum, take some business classes along the way.

Cottonwoods along the Rio Verde, 9X12, oil on archivally-prepared Baltic birch, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Challenge yourself

The deepest problem of all lies in the perfection of our fantasy life. As long as I never pick up a brush, I’m a genius in my own mind. It’s that disconnect between our mental activity and reality that makes us so afraid to drill down.

Worrying about what others will think if you fail is one problem. Worrying about what you will think if you fail is even more crippling. We’re all under so much social pressure to succeed that failure seems like an unbearable outcome. What if I’m terrible… or even worse, mediocre?

That leads to setting extremely high standards for ourselves, where even our minor mistakes feel like failure. That would erode anyone’s confidence.

Hail hitting the Cockscomb Formation, Sedona, 8X10, oil on archivally-prepared Baltic birch, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What can we do about it?

Another artist who started about the same time as my young friend had nothing special in his early work. He did, however, have determination. He’s not overtly competitive and he didn’t get wrapped up in the end result. Instead, he kept quietly plugging away at the process. Today he’s painting beautifully and people are noticing. He’s an inspiration on the days when I just don’t feel like getting moving.

When we start pushing paint around, we all discover how flawed we really are. If you need reassurance on this point, look at Vincent van Gogh’s early work. There’s very little indication of the master he would ultimately become.

Insecurity is, sadly, the artist’s closest companion. That’s ultimately good; it means we’re constantly striving to be better. Still, it can overwhelm us, so it’s important to identify and challenge our self-defeating thoughts before they take root.

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How to negotiate when you sell paintings

All Flesh is as Grass, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The Maine coast gets its share of mega-yachts and the people who inhabit them. A former gallerist of mine once had a visitor who made sure to mention the fabled locations in which his second or third homes were located. He seemed very interested, but didn’t bite on any paintings. The next day, he came by and said, “Let’s see how hungry your artists are this morning.” That man needed a stake driven through his heart.

With the notable exception of Frederic Church, most artists are not noted for business acumen. (If they were primarily motivated by money, they’d do something other than sell paintings.) In 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2023 median wage for a fine artist in the US was $52,910 per year. Those of us who are self-employed (almost all of us) provide our own insurance and retirement savings.

Deadwood, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

That makes it easy to pressure an artist for a discount, but the question is whether you should. That’s doubly true if you’re negotiating through a non-profit. You’re also trimming proceeds for the organization.

Negotiation is the key to a happy life

I once did a show with a painter who asked, “Would you ask the telephone company to take 10% off your bill? Your dentist? Your plumber?” Well, actually, we do ask for discounts, all the time. It’s really no different when we sell paintings.

Art buyers, like everyone else, want to think they’re getting their money’s worth. Appearances can be deceiving. They may be driving a nice car but not have much loose cash. Asking for a discount is perfectly reasonable, but so is saying no.

On either side of this discussion, you can’t invest the process with something it’s not. It’s not a hunt to beat down the price; nor is it any kind of validation of the artist’s work.

Winter lambing, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Listen more than you talk

Some days I wish I’d just shut up. A good life lesson in any situation is to remember that communication is a two-way street. It’s not necessary to answer every objection or comment. If you give people enough time, they’ll probably understand your position on their own.

Is it really worth it to stand your ground?

The last time I was asked to cut a price, I did it but wasn’t thrilled. Then I sat down with my pencil and realized that my net out-of-pocket was $45 (it was a gallery sale). It would have been absurd to walk away from a sale for pin money, but my first response was emotional, not intellectual.

On the other hand, it’s also OK to say no

Some offers are so absurd that you don’t even need to think about them. Some are more difficult to parse, and it helps to do a little seat-of-the-pants math. If nothing else, it buys you time to think. If a person is set on not spending more than X, I may steer them towards something they can afford. But if it becomes clear that there’s no middle ground, I just smile and wish them well.

The Harvest is Plenty, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A word about payment

I accept Square and Paypal when I sell paintings because we live in a cashless society. Part of the reason for their high fees is that they offer some protection against the many scams targeted at artists. I only accept checks in person or from people I know well. And, yes, I will let people buy paintings on layaway; it is a great option for the sincere collector who has limited resources.

Do you believe in the quality of your work?

Thomas Kinkade once bet a million dollars that his work would be featured in a major museum. That’s not confident; that’s delusional. However, most artists I know—including some absolutely brilliant painters—tend to be hypercritical of their own work. That’s not fair, either.

Yes, we all have bad days, but if you don’t recognize the quality of your work, who will? I don’t think “fake it ‘til you make it” works with self-confidence. If deep down you really think you don’t deserve to sell paintings, you won’t sell paintings.

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Monday Morning Art School: the twenty-brushstroke painting

Mike Prairie’s twenty-brushstroke painting, in watercolor. He did the whole thing with a single 1.4″ dagger brush.

When I told my Composition and Brushwork students they were going to complete a finished work in twenty brushstrokes, they were skeptical. “You’re going to demo,” they insisted. Once they realized it was easier than it sounds, they—not to put too fine a point on it—nailed it.

Baby spruce in snow, a twenty brushstroke painting by me, in oils.

What will you learn?

The twenty-brushstroke painting is an exercise to loosen up our painting. It emphasizes simplicity, efficiency and intention. It means prioritizing the essential elements of composition. That teaches us to focus on what matters most.

Painting is always about strategy. Limiting the number of brushstrokes forces you to plan carefully before you start. You must think ahead about where each stroke will go, what color it will be, and how it contributes to the overall painting. This sharpens your ability to observe and distill a subject into its most important elements.

That is the basis of making bold, deliberate marks rather than overworking, hesitating or flailing around. Simplifying helps you see larger shapes and forms instead of getting mired in details. Since you can’t rely on detailed rendering, you are forced t focus on strong contrasts, values and color harmony to convey thoughts and feelings.

Lynda Mussen’s twenty-brushstroke painting in oils.

The twenty-brushstroke painting frees us from perfectionism and encourages economy of movement and painterly efficiency.

I do the twenty-brushstroke painting when I’m tapped out. It encourages me to experiment and take risks. It’s almost impossible to do a twenty-brushstroke painting that isn’t energetic.

How do you start?

First I draw… always. In this case, I wanted to understand a baby spruce’s needle and branch structure before I started to abstract shapes.

The twenty-brushstroke painting isn’t necessarily easier and faster to do than a conventional painting. It’s more thoughtful, less frenetic.

Start with a simple subject with clear shapes. A subject with defined forms is easiest, but with practice you can pare down most complex subjects into striking, recognizable shapes. Strong contrast helps.

For my class demos, I snapped a photo of a baby spruce. I drew a careful rendering of the wee tree in order to study how the limbs and needles branched out into space. After that, I drew a composition drawing, because if a picture doesn’t work in greyscale, it’s never going to work in color.

My twenty-brushstroke painting in watercolor.

Since I was painting a baby spruce in snow, a complementary scheme of blue and palest peach was an obvious starting point. I mixed sufficient paint so that I didn’t run out in mid-brushstroke. This is almost counterintuitive in watercolor, where people tend to mix smaller amounts with a brush, but it’s a great skill to develop. You can modulate and mingle the basic colors as you go.

I always test my watercolor strokes on a sheet of scrap paper to make sure the value, hue and chroma are exactly what I want. In oils, I can generally see the chromatic relationships on my palette. Knowing that value is the most important element of color, I get that straight first.

Each stroke is deliberate, with no dithering, correcting or overpainting. Brushstrokes should vary in length, texture, pressure and direction, but every one should have a purpose.

Work from the general to the specific. If you save details for the end, you may find you don’t want or need detail at all. In the watercolor painting above, I used one brush, a squirrel mop. In my oil painting, I used a #10 flat, a #6 bright, and a wee thing that was probably unnecessary. Mike Prairie used this dagger brush for his whole watercolor painting; I was so impressed I now want one myself.

Stop after each stroke to assess the overall balance and composition. Above all, resist the urge to overcomplicate matters.

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