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Author: Carol L. Douglas

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Time management for artists

The temptation to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way is strong, but it will wreck your focus.

Skylarking 2, 18X24, oil on linen, $1855 unframed.

This week, I cancelled my Cody, WY, workshop. There was nothing wrong with it in concept; it generated a lot of interest. The trouble started when students looked for rental cars. There weren’t any available, and in the nearby larger markets, rental rates were extortionate.

This is nobody’s ‘fault’; it’s an unforeseen result of COVID. However, that doesn’t give me a free pass to ignore the consequences. I still had a lot of clerical work to do to make the cancellation. That—along with the lost work and expense of setting up the workshop up in the first place—is part of the cost of doing business.

This is the time of year when I suddenly notice that I’m making lots of mistakes. That’s because I’m working myself too hard. That’s partly because of summer visitors, but it’s also because of my business model. I live and work in a tourist town, where we make hay while the sun shines.

Skylarking, 24X36, oil on canvas, $3985.

Every year at this time I reach a point where I can’t manage the clerical stuff on my own. There are only two solutions:

  • Scale back, or
  • Hire some of it out.

There are good arguments against either. Scaling back would reduce my income. Hiring is difficult in this market, and it would require raising prices.

To be self-employed without a secretary has only possible because of the remarkable improvement in business efficiency in the last few decades. Take paying bills, for example. It used to be a half-day affair that involved writing checks, addressing and mailing envelopes, and a quaint bookkeeping activity called “balancing the checkbook.” Now I can do it—including checking all accounts for fraudulent activity—in an hour every other week.

Belfast harbor, oil on canvasboard, $1594, framed.

Unfortunately, that has been replaced by other activities that are equally time-consuming. The biggest of these is social media, but it’s the best advertising at our disposal. When artists tell me, “I don’t have time for that,” they’re ignoring the first requirement of business, which is marketing.

Still, the reality for all self-employed people is that there are only 2000 working hours in the year. You have to be able to do all your tasks in that allotted time, or you’ll fail. Years ago, my friend and fellow painter Bobbi Heath taught me a simple time-managementsystem. The take-away lesson is that not everything will get done. Your job as a manager is to figure out which needs to be done most urgently, and to let the chaff fall.

Owls Head, 8X10, $652 framed.

Like most of us, I have a hard time saying no, but saying no doesn’t make me a failure or a bad person. It means I’ve prioritized other activities.

The temptation to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way is strong, especially when you’re just setting out. People will ask you to paint all kinds of things, in all kinds of places. “Your dog, at your wedding reception? What time should I be there?”

But many of these ‘opportunities’ are really just cul de sacs that will spread you too thin, and cost you your focus. If they can’t be done well, don’t do them at all.

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The viewer wants to know

Which is more important, narrative or design? The answer is yes.

Main Street, Owl’s Head, 16X20, oil on gessoboard, $1623 unframed.

Thomaston, ME, is a community of lovely, large Victorian homes that somehow maintain a whiff of the 19th century. It’s a little off the beaten path and the streets are quiet. I try to teach there at least once a season, focusing on perspective and architecture.

Ann Clowe and Cassie Sano had elected to paint the same house on Knox Street, an 1851 Cape that’s dwarfed by its attached barn (in the Maine way). It’s a strange shade of red that looks warm in some places and cool in others. Ann had painted it unsuccessfully three times before. She refused my suggestion that she look at other houses on the street. She was making her stand; she was going to defeat those red walls.

Victoria Street, 14X18, oil on linen, $1275 unframed.

One of the most common questions students ask me about architecture is whether they should include that door, that window, or that bit of moulding. The answer depends on the design and focal point of the painting. If one is focused on the house, the details are important. If the house is an incidental part of the landscape, it’s possible to reduce it to a mere silhouette.

Every painting—even stark hyperrealism—has some extraneous detail edited out. One of the great virtues of painting over photography is that we can eliminate the telephone lines, gas grill and other impedimenta of modern life. We do this both for design reasons and to make the narrative stronger.

Fishing shacks, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, $869 unframed.

Cassie, in asking me whether she should include a door, said, “but the viewer wants to know how these people get in to their house.” She’d answered her own question, and created a good test for whether to include something:

  • If it’s an important part of the narrative, leave it in.
  • If it’s not, make your choice based solely on design criteria.

In the 20th century, narrative became a bit player in painting; abstract design was key. Only the reactionary Wyeth family and a few others were still telling stories in their paintings. That impulse hasn’t totally died, but it’s a trend, not an eternal verity. Storytelling appeals to something so primary in our psyche that we’ll never eliminate it entirely from painting.

Three Chimneys, 12X16, oil on canvasboard, $1159 unframed.

Storytelling ought to include telling the unvarnished truth about our current reality. That sometimes includes gas grills, cars, and telephone poles. As Cassie joked, “the viewers might want to know how they get their mail.”

The red house has a handicapped-access ramp running to the side door. It made a brilliant diagonal slash of light in the painting, but it was hardly in keeping with the house’s original design. It also told a story that’s achingly familiar to many of us. If it had been my painting, I would have included the ramp, and even focused on it. It says something laudable about our moment in history: we want to keep the elderly in their own homes as long as possible.

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Monday Morning Art School: Basic elements of design

The artist’s job is to invite the viewer into his world. That doesn’t happen by accident.

I and the Village, 1911, Marc Chagall, courtesy MOMA. In this painting, line is a dominant design element, articulating the relationship between man, beast and place. However, proportion (relative size of the objects) is playing a part as well.

Line

In math, a line is straight, has no thickness and extends in both directions through space. Sometimes that’s what we mean by a line in art—for example, a horizon line.

More typically in art, a line is just a path through space. Wherever you have an edge, you also have a line. However, lines also refer to mark-making, so in that sense they can be fat, thin, punctuated, tapering, diffident, bold or whispering.

Diagonals and curves seem to keep us more engaged than unbroken verticals, as they’re more difficult for the eye to ‘solve.’

Interior of the Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, 1664-66, Cornelis de Man, courtesy Mauritshuis. The illusion of three-dimensional form is created with perspective and value.

Shape and form

Shape and form define objects in space. Shapes have two dimensions–height and width–and are bounded by lines. Forms are three-dimensional. The artist’s dilemma is to give the illusion of three-dimensional form in a two-dimensional painting.

Ploughing in the Nivernais, 1849, Rosa Bonheur, courtesy MusĂ©e d’Orsay. The vast sky and field create as much narrative as do the team of oxen.

Space

Space in the real world is three-dimensional. In art, the term refers to a sense of depth, or the artist’s use of the area within the picture plane. The illusion of three-dimensional space is created with perspective drawing, atmospherics, relative proportion (size), positioning, and defining volume through modeling.

Sometimes we refer to negative and positive space, which means the division between the primary object(s) and what we perceive as the background. Positive and negative space were a very big deal in much twentieth-century design, which often used the vast emptiness of the page as a counterweight to the primary object.

The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1601, Caravaggio, courtesy Cerasi Chapel. Chiaroscuro relies primarily on value to drive the eye.

Color

Color has three essential characteristics:

  • Hue—where it falls on the color wheel (red, blue, etc.),
  • Chroma—how brilliant or dull it is,
  • Value—how light or dark it is.

Color is also described as ‘warm’ or ‘cool,’ but these are useful artistic conventions and not measurable as fact.

Historically, value did much of the heavy lifting in painting, and it remains the most important characteristic in your painting. The Impressionists began using hue and chroma to define volume, and that is essentially how most alla prima painters work today.

Portrait of the Baronness James de Rothschild, 1848, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, private collection. We see satin, lace, tulle, feathers and jewels primarily due to Ingres’ exquisite control of reflected light.

Texture

Texture refers to the surface quality of an object. Paintings have implied texture, conveyed by color, line and brushwork. They also have real texture in the form of smooth or impasto surfaces.

Ejiri in Suruga Province, 1830, Katsushika Hokusai, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art. Great winds have blown away the clouds on Mount Fuji, and they’re also blowing the travelers and their packs around. This movement is echoed and amplified by the brushstrokes.

Movement

Movement can be either suggested or depicted—as in the wind in the painting above—or implied by brushwork. Most paintings have a major thrust of energy, which I call its motive line.

Your assignment is to take one of your own paintings and subject it to formal analysis. Consider each of these elements of design in turn. How are you using them? How could you use them better?

(This post originally appeared in July, 2020.)

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Painting in strange places

Boats, mountains, glaciers—I like painting off the beaten path.

I don’t worry about much, but setting up the coffee this morning I was stopped by the sound of running water near the sink. It was rainwater coursing down the window in great gouts. Not a domestic problem, but it’s a hard start for the inaugural Camden on Canvas, which has brought top-tier artists to paint in our little burg.

Camden on Canvas is the pet project of Colin Page, and it’s a fundraiser for the Camden Public Library. Colin’s got bigger worries this morning than where he himself will paint. Anyway, he could paint Camden harbor blindfolded and with a sling on his good arm—after all, it’s his home harbor. As for the rest of us, we’re professionals, and we have two days to finish our paintings.

I’ll be heading down to Camden a little later this morning and setting up on the docks on the harbormaster’s side. I’ll work on a harbor painting today, but tomorrow my real adventure starts. I’m climbing to the top of Bald Mountain early in the morning and painting the vista of Camden from a high peak. Any fool can drive up Mt. Battie and paint from the parking area at the summit, but it makes a mediocre picture, having no foreground. Bald Mountain is a 2.6-mile round-trip hike of moderate difficulty (although it will be slippery after all this rain).

View from Bald Mountain.

If you plan to go up there to watch me paint, bring your own chair. I’m not carrying one up for you. You don’t have to work that hard, however; last time I checked, the signal on Bald Mountain was great. I’ll live-broadcast my painting on Facebook. It’s hard to predict an exact time, but expect me to start early, while the sun is still low in the east. I’ll update times on my Facebook page.

Speaking of video, my friend and student Terri Lea Smith made this wonderful video of schooner American Eagleduring our June workshop. If you’ve ever wondered why I have a crush on this particular boat, her film should answer that question. Boats, mountains, glaciers—I like painting off the beaten path.

On that note, students interested in my Pecos workshop might be happy to learn that Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbeyhas added camping spots to their accommodations. It’s a stunning location along the Pecos River and very convenient to all our painting sites. If you’re interested, I’d call them—quickly—at 505-757-6415. And then let me know, too.

My 2020 painting for Cape Elizabeth’s Paint for Preservation.

Cape Elizabeth’s Paint for Preservation is August 13-15. We’re assigned sites to paint, and these came this week. I’ll be at Trundy Point, which is a massive rock jutting out into the ocean. It’s got surf, beach roses, scree, and beautiful rocks.

I’ll only be there on Saturday, as I’m finishing my workshop in Schoodic that Friday. That occasional problem of unavoidable schedule conflicts is another reason they give us two days to paint at these events. As you can imagine, I’m praying for no rain.

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Loosen up

Jettison your deep thoughts. You and your painting will both be better for it.

Apple tree and swing, oil on canvasboard, $1623 unframed.

Illustrator Christoph Niemann spoke to the New Yorker about learning to draw a tree:

I took the same approach as I did when learning to draw the human body—trying to understand the structure, the weight, the proportions. But I always got lost in the details, and the results didn’t look convincing. Trees are much too complex to follow rules; each is unique, especially in the summer, and I’ve made my peace with that.

I do keep looking to see how the masters solved trees. (I recommend Matisse, FĂ©lix Vallotton, and Wayne Thiebaud.) But I admit the most important lesson came from watching the TV host Bob Ross: if you want to draw trees, you have to loosen up and be in a good mood.

Early Spring, Beech Hill, oil on canvasboard, 8X10, $522 unframed.

I was once an intense youngster myself. In fact, a wise teacher once suggested that I stop being so ‘sophomoric’. “But I am a sophomore!” I responded, and continued to make ‘serious’ art—all of which I hope has long been consigned to a dumpster. All that angst hinders the process of painting. It’s possible to be serious without being sour.

I never watch TV, so I’ve never seen an episode of Bob Ross’s show. Most of my friends who watched it back in the Eighties were doing so cynically, as an excuse to get high. I was surprised to learn that it was at one point PBS’ biggest show, watched by people from all walks of life.

Those of us in the narrow world of art probably don’t realize that Bob Ross is America’s most celebrated painter—bigger than all the Wyeths put together. He endures in reruns almost 40 years after his show first went on the air.

Jack Pine, 9X12, oil on primed birch, $696 unframed.

How is it that Ross endures when so many more ‘important’ painters of Ross’ heydey, like Julian Schnabel, David Salle or Eric Fischl, are unknown to most people? It’s not because of Ross’ paintings. Rather, it’s the way he painted, and who he was.

“I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, ‘Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.’” Ross said. “That’s for sure. That’s why I paint. It’s because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.”

When his show went on the air, I was recently married and blasting the Kinks’ Give the People What They Want in our tiny Buffalo flat. If you want to understand anxiety, give the soundtrack of the Eighties a spin. The world was a kaleidoscope of political and economic change, all set against the end of the Cold War.

Along Kiwassa Lake, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $696 unframed.

Most of us can’t just loosen up on demand, but we can make environments which are conducive to happiness. Perhaps that’s one reason that painting is overwhelmingly popular with older people—they’ve learned to jettison their Deep Thoughts and exist in the moment.

Bob Ross was the master of process—his whole show was about it. He painted to encourage himself and others. Apparently, it worked. I agree with him and Niemann—loosen up! You’ll paint better and enjoy the process more.

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Monday Morning Art School: simplifying values

Thinking about the landscape as a series of planes will help you create depth in your painting. 
Ice Bound Locks, John F. Carlson, courtesy Vose Galleries

When Eric Jacobsen told us that he was teaching the theory of angles and consequent values in his recent workshop, I was baffled by the big words. “What’s that when it’s at home?” I asked him. Ken DeWaard was equally confused, responding in a torrent of emojis.

“C’mon, guys, it’s John F. Carlson 101!” Eric exclaimed. Björn Runquist immediately checked, and announced that there was nothing about any angles on page 101. (Actually, it’s in chapter 3; I checked.)

It’s no wonder that Eric’s no longer returning our calls.

Sylvan Labyrinth, John F. Carlson, courtesy of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

All kidding aside, Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting is a classic. His theory, although it has a high-flown title, is actually quite intelligible to even the meanest intellects (and you know who you are, guys).

“Every good picture is fundamentally an arrangement of three or four large masses,” Carlson began. That’s as good an organizing principle as any in art. Value is what makes form visible, so we should see, translate, simplify and organize form into value masses.

Carlson wrote that any landscape would contain four groups of values bouncing off three major planes:

  • The horizontal ground plane;
  • The angle plane represented by mountain slopes or rooftops;
  • The upright plane, which is perpendicular to the ground plane, such as trees.

In the middle of the day—our most common circumstance for painting—the value structure would be as follows:

  • The sky is our light source. It should be the highest value in our painting.
  • The ground plane gets the most light bouncing off it, so it should be the next-lightest plane.
  • The angle planes such as rooftops or mountain slopes, are the next lightest planes.
  • The upright objects in our painting, such as trees, walls or people, should be the darkest value element.

Snow Lyric, John F. Carlson, courtesy of The Athenaeum

That doesn’t mean that the shapes are crudely simplified, as a glance at Carlson’s own paintings confirms. The shapes can be beautiful, elegant, complex, and lyrical without too much value overlap.

Thinking about the landscape as a series of planes will help you create depth in your painting. However, it can be tricky to see the landscape as a series of planes rather than objects. It can be helpful to keep each value group completely separate, with no overlap of values, but, in reality, there will always be overlap.

Your assignment is to find a photo among your own snapshots and reduce it to a series of four values. Then paint it.

As you try to integrate this idea into your painting, exaggerate the separation of planes.

Of course, there are many circumstances where this doesn’t hold true—where the sky is leaden and darker than a snow plane, or when the fading evening light is hitting the vertical plane rather than the ground. But understanding it will help you paint the exceptions in a more arresting way.

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Process, not product

Embracing process is deeper training than simply learning a new way to paint. It’s a new way to see, and it’s the basis of all really good art.

Belfast Harbor, oil on canvasboard, 14X18, $1594.

The hardest part of painting class is the first day, or first few days. Sometimes the students who have the most difficulty are those who are already good at painting or drawing.

Often, they are terrified about painting in front of others. They feel as if they’ll be judged and found lacking. They have a deeply buried nut of pride in being “pretty good at art,” and they’re afraid to expose that to reality. I recognize this because I was once that student myself. When someone resists me, I am patient because I remember all the backchat I gave my teachers back in the day.

These students don’t realize they’ve already taken the most difficult step, which is signing up for classes. It’s an admission that they know something is lacking in their technique. They may also be remembering making art with teenage peers, who can be the most judgmental of all critics. Adults are not cruel like that; they’re genuinely excited for each other’s successes.

Fishing shacks at Owl’s Head, 11X14, $1087

We’re never good judges of our own work as we’re doing it. The disconnect between what we’ve envisioned and what actually happened is too pronounced. The painting of Belfast harbor, above, is a great example. I was so focused on what it lacked that I never noticed that the color, structure and paint handling were excellent. It had to sit for months on a rack in my studio before I realized it was finished, and it’s now one of my favorite paintings.

That’s where a teacher can be helpful, and why positive criticism is so useful. But time itself is a great healer. It allows you to stop seeing the painting from inside your own head.

Often adult students have been trained to look for results. That’s an unfortunate byproduct of our commercial culture. It makes it difficult to sit back and enjoy learning the process.

Balletic sway, 9X12, $696 unframed.

I once had a delightful student named Ann, who was a good beginning painter. She would start strong, and when it looked like she had a winner on her hands, she’d announce to the class, “I’m painting this for [  ].” That was an instant jinx. She changed the way she saw her work. It became something tangible, a product to be given as a gift. She started seeing it through the potential recipient’s eyes, and that meant she only saw its shortcomings. That flood of negativity paralyzed her. Ann’s warm generosity was, in fact, getting in the way of her painting.

This, by the way, is the difficulty of commissions. The artist starts from the transaction, rather than the germ of an idea. In a world of extremely slick, photoshopped experiences, the physical reality of paint is always going to look clunky and awkward. That’s part of its charm.

My greatest challenge as a teacher is to get people to let go of what they think they know and to relax into the process of exploration. I give them a protocol, and that’s important, but it’s hardly the only thing. Embracing process means divorcing yourself from the results, no longer worrying about whether today’s painting is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, just that it’s been painted and you’ve gotten one step closer to your inner vision. That’s deeper training than simply learning a new way to paint. It’s a new way to see, and it’s the basis of all really good art.

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Broken economy

COVID didn’t cause the supply-chain problems we’re experiencing—it exposed them. Hopefully, we’ll solve them before another, bigger disruptor comes our way.

Main Street, Owls Head, oil on gessoboard, 16X20, $1623 unframed.


Early this month my laptop suffered a catastrophic failure. This is not the fault of Dell; I’d poured molten wax and water into it during a Zoom class in the winter. It had been wonky ever since. In fact, it had limped nobly on for longer than could be reasonably expected.

I called my programmer daughter for advice because my programmer husband is sick to death of fixing my stuff. Through the miracle of modern electronics, we had two calls going for a while.

“He’ll say, ‘she needs one built like a tank,’” I told her, just as I heard him yell, “She needs one built like a tank!” To be fair, that hasn’t actually worked. I once bought a hardened-case, ‘rugged’ specialty laptop. It didn’t last any longer than any other laptop.

Bracken Fern, oil on canvasboard, 9X12, $869 framed.

My daughter has had a Lenovo ThinkPad for four years. It’s doing fine, so we settled on the configuration I needed and placed an order. As you can imagine, one of the critical requirements is that I could actually get the darn thing.

And, of course, I can’t. Every day, its delivery date is pushed back another two days. There is a global semiconductor shortage. Of course, we’re blaming it on COVID, when the real issue is a supply-chain problem that COVID exposed.

Nighttime at Clam Cove, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed.

My workshopsare experiencing a related problem. Students report that they can’t get rental cars in their destinations. Yesterday, visitors to my gallery told me that they couldn’t find a rental car in Portland; they had to fly into Boston instead. Rental-car companies sold much of their fleets in the pandemic. Now there’s a shortage of rental cars just as Americans are jonesing to get on the road. The car-rental companies can’t buy replacements because of the aforementioned semiconductor shortage. It’s estimated that this will cut worldwide auto production by more than a million vehicles in 2021.

So, we understand: we must wait patiently for anything that has a chip in it.

Last month the bottom of our garage door crumbled off. It’s far past repair; it’s a heavy, wonky, old thing from the 1940s. I ordered replacement doors from Home Depot because I find them reliable, and you can’t even get a contractor to return your calls in today’s market. Yesterday, I got a notice from their home office—the door will be here in mid-November.

Apple Tree Swing, oil on canvasboard, 16X20, $1623 unframed

That’s been the case with every major purchase we’ve tried to make this year. There’s no inventory, and even things made within the US have a six-month lead time. If these supply-chain disruptions are impacting my business, they’re impacting every business in America.

Of course, COVID didn’t cause the supply-chain problems we’re experiencing—it exposed them. Hopefully, we’ll solve them before another, bigger disruptor comes our way.

So far, we haven’t experienced supply-chain problems in paint or canvases (although there are no manufacturers of pigments within the United States). Therein lies an opportunity.

People generally look at paintings in terms of their own enjoyment, but fine art is also an investment. The art market is fickle, and there are no guarantees of profitability, but with a little critical thinking, you can fill your home with beauty that can appreciate over time.

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Monday Morning Art School: basic color harmonies

Understanding basic color harmonies will help you integrate color in your painting.


Split the color wheel in half like this and you have your cool tones on one side, warm ones on the left.
Color is comprised of three elements: hue, value and saturation. We see value first, but our emotional response is largely dictated by hue.
There are some common color schemes, or chords, found in nature and by extension, in art.
The idea isn’t to be slavishly attached to these schemes, but to use them to perceive and point up color relationships in nature. What combinations are in ‘good taste’ and the reactions a color elicits are largely cultural responses. Nobody but me goes nuts about mauve today, but 170 years ago, it was all the rage.
With all color schemes, one hue should dominate.
Complementary
Complementary color scheme
These are colors that lie opposite each other on the color wheel. The most famous example is Christmas’ red and green.
This is a vibrant, high-contrast scheme. It’s the basic schematic for the color of light, where shadows are always the complement of the light color. If the light is a warm gold, for example, its shadows will be cool blues.
Analogous
Analogous colors
Analogous color schemes use colors that lie next to each other on the color wheel. Using analogous colors can make what might be a garish scene (a sunset, for example) more serene.
Equilateral Triad
Equilateral colors
This uses colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel. The most well-known example is the primary combination of red-blue-yellow.
Triadic color harmonies can be quite vibrant, even without high-saturation colors.  
Harmonic triads
A harmonic triad counting clockwise from the green
This variation counts 3-4-5 in either direction on the color wheel. Start with a key color, and count from there. This is a sophisticated variation on the equilateral triad.
Split-Complementary

Split complementary omitting the complement of blue

This is the color scheme I go to intuitively. It’s a variation of complementary colors. It substitutes for the complement or includes the complement’s adjacent hues. It’s as visually compelling as a complementary color scheme, but allows for much more variation in the accent colors.

Split complementary including the complement of green

Double complements
A symmetrical (square) double-complement color scheme
An asymmetrical (rectangle) double-complement color scheme.

The rectangle or tetradic color scheme uses four colors arranged into two complementary pairs. The colors can be in a rectangle or in a square.
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A game of chance

Fog has color, movement, and attitude, and is a great tool to understand atmospheric perspective.

Fog Bank, 14X18, oil on canvasboard, by Carol L. Douglas, $1275 unframed. 

I appreciate the care with which the National Weather Service makes hour-by-hour graphical forecasts. They’re the plein air painter’s best friend, since they predict not only the chance of rain, but the sky cover and the wind. However, they’re often wrong for areas near deep water. Mother Nature is impulsive and unpredictable where warm air first encounters the cold sea. Yesterday I drove to Warren, which is 12 miles to the southwest of me. I traveled through a band of dense fog, a band of brilliant blue, and ended up under a dour, dull sky.

That makes planning my plein air class a game of chance. My primary goal is to teach fundamental skills, but along with that I want my students to master every possible light situation. Yesterday’s nominal subject was value-matching and patterning. However, with a fog as rich and deep as the one we encountered at Owls Head, it seemed a pity to not concentrate on the atmospherics.

Early Spring, Beech Hill, 8X10, oil on canvasboard, $522 unframed.

Few things are more beautiful than fog—or more annoying to the painter who insists on golden sunlight in every painting. Fog has color, movement, and attitude. It’s a great tool to understand atmospheric perspective—and to teach patience with the passing scene. It moves in and out, obliterating a major compositional point here, and adding one there.

The more I teach, the more I realize how much I have to learn about teaching. My student, Jennifer Johnson is in a transitional phase where nothing she paints looks good to her. That’s painful, but it’s a sign she’s about to make a giant leap forward—if she allows it. The fainthearted painter will retreat back into the shell of the familiar. The courageous will allow herself to experience the “I hate everything I’m painting” phase and wrench forward into new discovery. Jennifer is, of course, one of the courageous.

Jennifer Johnson is working her way through her period of dissatisfaction by returning to first principles. That means starting with thumbnails and gridding them onto her canvas.

If you play a musical instrument, you’ve had the experience of mastering a piece part-by-part. You get the left hand down fine. Then you try to add the right hand, and what you’d learned in the left hand falls apart. But if you persist, your brain will integrate the two tasks. Adding new ideas to painting works the same way.

To ride through this, Jennifer has sensibly returned to first principles. One of these is thumbnails and value sketches, which are then transferred to the canvas in the form of a grisaille. Her example, above, from last week’s class, is far better than any I’ve ever made.

What I realized from watching her is how frequently students can do each step well, but not integrate them as a whole. That’s something I need to focus on more. The sense of being needed put a spring in my step. It seemed like only fifteen minutes had passed and the three-hour class was done. Rats.

Frank Costantino with Ann Clowe, Nancy Lloyd and Lisa Siegrist.

Yesterday’s students had the opportunity to watch a real watercolor master at work. My buddy Frank Costantino is in town, and they looked over his shoulder as he painted the lobster boat Daphne Lee. If he can stand more fog, we’ll go out again today.