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Category: learn to paint

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Performance anxiety

Tinfoil Hat, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas
In three months, God willing, I will finish a career of 21 years as the parent of a schoolchild. Hearing a child wail, “I’m going to fail my test” is a sadly regular occurrence. Mercifully, hearing him or her wail, “I failed my test” is usually pretty rare.
We all tend to anticipate disaster, of course. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” the Bible tells us. It’s good advice. Whether it’s the results of a biopsy, an exam, a financial challenge, or in a personal relationship, worry is superfluous. When things go really wrong, worry never makes it better.
I had a painting teacher who once announced to us, “You’re all terrified!” I was intrepid enough to come to New York for her classes, I told her, and I wasn’t afraid of no stinking brush. But the truth is, I am sometimes beset by nerves when starting a new painting. We all are. It’s a dive into the unknown.
A drink in the afternoon, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas
What helps? Painting every day at the same time is the best answer. It tells the brain, “we are working now; knock off your nonsense,” and the brain behaves. Regular work habits allow you to get right into the creative mode and minimize distractions.
Of course, it’s early March and I can’t do that. It’s time to do taxes. That requires all my concentration (and can shatter my nerves). But this too shall pass, and the snowpack is melting. Spring really is right around the corner.
Plastic wrap #2, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas. Also known as Portrait of the Artist as a Bookkeeper.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.
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Let’s talk about summer, part 2

Start with your pigments. 
Yesterday, it was so warm that I went outdoors in my loafers without socks. There’s still two feet of snowpack out there, but winter’s back is broken. Yes, it will snow again between now and Easter, but it can’t last.
That means that it’s time to get your plein air pack in order.
I use the same palette indoors and out, but my umbrella, my backpack, and my field easel get stashed in a corner. My first order of business is to pull them out and inspect them for cracks, tears and other damage, and to thoroughly vacuum out my backpack.

Check your brushes.
Last fall, I bought a bunch of new brushes so I’m sure that my brushes are in order. Good thing, too, since by the end of last season it felt like I was painting with clubs. Start by getting rid of brushes that are worn out or gunked up.
I buy my paints in cans from RGH Paints in Albany. I keep them in this segmented vitamin box. Generally a plastic box of paints will get me through a week of travel without reloading, and it weighs a fraction of what the same paints in tubes do. Spring is when I clean out the box, check my supplies, and order new paints for the upcoming season.

Baby wipes, bug dope, sunscreen, hooded ponch and a baseball cap are important.
More drawing means less struggling, and I carry a lot of drawing tools, both for myself and my students: charcoal, watercolor pencil, graphite, greyscale markers for fast value studies, and a viewfinder with a dry erase marker. I often use watercolor pencils and a straight edge when architecture is involved.
Don’t forget drawing tools.
I check my sunscreen, bug repellent, painting cap, apron, water bottle, and supply of liquid gloves. I always carry two ponchos—one for me, and one for my painting, because when it rains in the spring, it really rains.
I have two sets of tools, so my field ones generally don’t wander off. They still need to be checked: compass, palette knifes, scraper, bungee cords, level, S-hooks, clips, all-purpose tool, straight edge/angle finder, paint pots and soap.

S-hooks, clips and bungee cords have a thousand and one uses in the field.
It’s time to order new fast-dry mediumand check my supply of mineral spirits. Because I want to travel light, I repurpose old medium containers to hold mineral spirits, and carry my medium in a hotel shampoo bottle or cosmetic pot. I always carry a few plastic grocery bags for trash. The pins and strap are one way to carry finished paintings, if you don’t use a panel carrier. If you do use panel carriers, check the elastics to see if they need replacement. And it’s definitely time to check your inventory of painting boards.

You’ll need wee jars for medium and solvent. Don’t forget to check your stash of boards.
Last, I check my supply of frames and framing tools. If you do plein air events, you need them on hand.
Check your pigments, check your tools, check the stuff you need to be comfortable. Reorder what’s used up, repair what’s broken.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here. 
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Let’s talk about summer

Sunset off Schoodic Point. Just another day in Paradise.
I’m going to be speakingabout New York painters and their relationship with the Maine Coast at the Moore Auditorium in Acadia’s Schoodic Institute on August 12. This is scheduled concurrently with my workshop at Schoodic from August 9 to 14. The talk is free, and if you’re in mid-coast Maine that week, I hope you join us.
There are four spots left in the workshop. Last year I erred in letting a few extra people sign up, on the assumption that someone would drop and it would all work out. That didn’t happen, and we had too many painters. This year, I’m holding the line strictly at 12 participants, so if you want to come, I recommend you hold a place. From past experience, I’m confident that this workshop will sell out.
Painting the view from Mt. Battie during last summer’s workshop.
We have designed this workshop to include room and board so you can concentrate on painting. Schoodic is an unspoiled gem of the Atlantic coast. Pounding surf, stunning views of Cadillac Mountain, and veins of dark basalt running through red granite rocks are the dominant features of this “road less traveled” in Acadia National Park. Pines, birch, spruce, cedar, cherry, alder, mountain ash, and maples forest the land. There are numerous coves, inlets and islands. And your private room, shared bath, room and board and instruction are just $1150.
Some of last year’s participants asked for more surf, so I went up to Acadia and got them more surf. But they won’t get crowds; Schoodic is the quiet side of this monumentally popular park.
My long-term monitor, Sandy Quang, will not be with us at Acadia this year. She has finished her MA in art history and is working at Christie’s in New York this week, the beginning of her career in curating art. We will enjoy the time we have left with her here in Rochester while knowing that she’s on to bigger and better things. Sandy has studied on and off with me for ten years, and it’s a bittersweet parting. “You give them roots and you give them wings,” someone remarked to me last week. One thing I’m sure of: Sandy will be a painter for the rest of her life.
Stacey painting on a floating dock last summer.
Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here. 
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Objects of Grace

The Heavens Declare, 48X36, oil on linen, 2014
This month I have three pieces in Objects of Grace at Roberts Wesleyan’s Davison Gallery. This show was designed to accompany the school’s Schoenhals Symposium, which this year features art historian and writer Dr. James Romaine.
Dr. Romaine is a New York-based art historian. He is the president and co-founder of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art and Associate Professor of Art at Nyack College.
Beauty Instead of Ashes, 48X36, oil on linen, 2014
Three Dimensions of Christian Creativity is scheduled for Thursday, March 19 at 4 PM at the Smith Science Center Auditorium. Romaine will discuss The Art of Tim Rollins + K.O.S. on Friday, March 20 at 4 PM in the same venue, and will lead a discussion at the Davison Gallery on Friday, March 20, from noon to one.
That’s where I come in. Included in the exhibit are four artists (Sandra Bowden, Makoto Fujimura, Edward Knippers, and Joel Shessley) featured in Dr. Romaine’s book, Objects of Grace: Conversations on Creativity and Faith. Also in the exhibit are three “significant local artists treating Christian themes, Scot Bennett, Carol Douglas and Luvon Sheppard,” and pieces from Robert Wesleyan’s permanent collection.
The Harvest is Plenty, 48X36, oil on linen, 2014
I have long been a fan of Luvon Sheppard’s work. His watercolors of Rochester capture the pulse of the city perfectly, with a high degree of technical excellence. He’s a man of faith, but he doesn’t beat the viewer over the head with it. It’s a great honor to be showing with him.
Interested in attending Dr. Romaine’s talks? The Symposium brochure is available here.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here. 
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Debunkery #2: Yes, there was blue in the ancient world.

Lapis lazuli eyes in the 25th century BCE Statue of Ebih-II (eastern Syria).
Today’s misinformationcomes from the same fount that gave us yesterday’s‘four-coned woman.” It’s the idea that the ancients were somehow ignorant of the color blue, as evidenced by the fact that Homer called the ocean the “wine-dark sea.”
Fragment of a fresco from the Bronze Age Palace at Knossos. The blue is kyanos (from which comes our word cyan), a soda/copper frit paste.
Calcium copper silicate was the first synthetic pigment, dating from the Egyptian 4th Dynasty (c. 2575–2467 BCE). Although no Egyptian texts lay out its exact manufacturing process, Vitruvius gave us a formula in his De architectura (c. 15 BCE).
The Egyptians synthesized Egyptian blue because their primary blue pigment, lapis lazuli, could only be found in Afghanistan and therefore was rare and expensive. Lapis has been mined since the 7th millennium BCE, making it one of the oldest known human endeavors.
Carthaginian glass head pendant with cobalt blue hair and eyes, 5th-4th century BCE. Cobalt is another pigment used since antiquity.
By the fourth millennium BCE, the Egyptians already had an established sea and caravan trade network. The Uluburun shipwrecktells us conclusively that the Egyptians were trading blue glass ingots with the Greeks by the late 14th century BC, long before Homer lived.
Blue glass ingot from the Uluburin shipwreck. Chemical analysis indicates that the cobalt blue glass in ancient Egyptian glass vessels and in Mycenaean glass beads were from the same source. Syria in the late Bronze Age was exporting raw glass to both places.
Lapis lazuli’s name derives in part from lāžaward, which is simply the name of the mineral in Persian. From it comes the English word azure, French azur, Italian azzurro, Polish lazur, Romanian azur and azuriu, Portuguese and Spanish azul, and Hungarian azúr. It doesn’t take an etymologist to realize that all these European words come from a common root, one that meant ‘blue’ to its users.
Egyptian blue pyxis, imported to Italy from northern Syria, c 750-700 BCE.

It isn’t a Roman root. The Romans called that blue color caeruleus, deriving from caelum, meaning heaven or sky. The Greeks had a word for blue: kyanos, which comes down to us as cyan. And, yes, the ancient Israelites had a word for blue: tekhelet. This refers to a dye made from a now-unknown marine creature.

On the other hand, the word blue in English derives from a Proto-Germanic word that meant pale, pallid, wan, blue, blue-grey, yellow, discolored and light in color. That is as good a description of the northern sky as anything.
Nobody knows what the marine creature that gave the ancient Israelites tekhelet was, but a piece of wool dipped into Murex-based dye turns green in sunlight, eventually darkening to a blue-violet. This is possibly why the word refers to both blue and green.
So what was Homer—whoever he was—talking about with his references to the “wine-dark sea”? I’ve asked this question before, and my conclusion is that he is speaking of the roiled, opaque, impenetrable ocean.
King Tut’s burial mask (1346 BCE) has lapis lazuli eyelashes, imported from Afghanistan.
Some people have absolutely no poetry in their souls.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here. 
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Debunkery #1: No, you’re probably not a tetrachromat

The distribution of cone cells in the fovea of an individual with normal color vision (left), and a color blind (protanopic) retina, by Mark Fairchild.

Tetrachromacy means that you have four types of cone cells in the retina. Tetrachromats exist among birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and insects, but in most mammals there are two kinds of cones, and in humans and some of our primate relatives, there are three kinds.

As you remember from high school, there are two types of photoreceptor cells in your retina. (Actually, they now say there are three, but the photosensitive ganglion cells aren’t there for vision). The rods work in low light; the cones work in normal light. The three kinds of cones respond, more or less, to short, medium, and long wavelengths.

The four pigments in a bird’s cones extend the range into ultraviolet. That would do you no good, since your eyes are designed to block ultraviolet rays.

In humans, those three cone types give us the capacity to distinguish a million color variations. Some men suffer from having two kinds of normal cones and a third, mutant, cone that is less sensitive to green and red. We call that color blindness. It’s a sex-specific trait.

In 1948 a scientist named H.L .de Vries studied the daughters of color-blind men to see if they might be carrying the mutant cone type along with their three normal ones. He did notice that the daughters of one of his test subjects responded to reds and greens differently than most women. Since then, a lot of people have searched for the so-called ‘four-coned woman’.

Turns out a significant portion of woman have dud ‘fourth cones.’ In June 2012, after 20 years of studying them, neuroscientist Dr. Gabriele Jordan identified a woman who could detect a greater variety of colors than trichromats could, meaning that she is a ‘true tetrachromat.’

To be a true tetrachromat, you’d have to start by being a carrier female in a family with genetic colorblindness.

One woman thus far. Yes, there probably are several more, but I doubt that includes you. For one thing, you’d need color-blindness to run in your family.

Visual information has to be collected and processed with retinal neurons and the resulting information sent via the optic nerve to the brain. It is processed and refined all along the way. What would the existing neural structure of the brain do with the information it got from a fourth set of cones if the infrastructure to interpret it wasn’t in place?

The cones in your eyes are part of a complex system for distinguishing color. From Anatomy & Physiology, Connexions Web site.

Human vision has plasticity that we don’t even begin to explore. When I first see painting students, they are puzzled about the color temperatures of white and grey. A year later, they’re manipulating color temperature like old pros. That isn’t because they sprouted new hardware; it’s because they’ve started to use the hardware with which they were born.

Want to see more color? Take up painting.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Presence

Winter Lambing, 36X48, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas
It’s that season when artists gather up their slides—by which I mean the JPGs on their desktops—and send them off to be juried. Technology has advanced so that we now get the same kind of results with a point-and-shoot camera that we used to rely on professional photographers to achieve.
That can have its downside. Last week, I wrote about decentralizationof art images on the internet. Reader Victoria B. responded:
“The image of the spoon and the Chinese screen taking up the same amount of screen real estate reminded me of art history classes I took where the Mona Lisa slide was the same size as a room-sized Rubens. What a revelation to go the Louvre and see exactly how small and subtle Mona really is. I also remember when the Finger Lakes show was judged on the actual work, not on slides. Now the judging is on digital files submitted electronically, so the 5” x 5” small work and the 5’ x 5’ large work will be viewed at the same size on a monitor.
“Equality is not always best when judging art work. I think the size of the painting (or sculpture) is part of the artist’s intent that we miss.”

Happy New Year, 6X8, by Carol L. Douglas. This is very small, but the distortion of the internet renders it the same size as the monumental painting above.
Victoria is talking about presence, and it’s a huge part of our subjective response to art. Paintings, drawings and prints stubbornly resist being scaled up or down; their fundamental character is tied to the size at which they were created.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here. 
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Not another brushstroke!

Chrysanthemums, by Sandy Quang, finished.
One of my friends posted a work-in-progress on Facebook. It was greeted with a chorus of “not another brushstroke!” “You’re done!” “Don’t touch it!”
I hate these statements for two reasons. First, they impose another person’s vision over the artist’s. Second, if a painter always stops before he addresses the defining questions in his work, he stunts his growth.
Everyone loves ‘free’ brush work, and that only happens in the passages where one is completely comfortable. But that doesn’t mean that one should never push beyond the easy parts.
I’ve resolved to never say it as a teacher. That resolution was challenged this weekend when Sandy Quang returned to a painting that I thought was finished. The picture on top is after her last session; the one on the bottom is before. I don’t think either is objectively ‘better’ than the other, but she was able to explore issues of reflection and lighting in the later one.
Chrysanthemums, by Sandy Quang, in progress.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here. 
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The Greatest Painter Who Never Lived

The Facts of Life, Norman Rockwell

It’s a sad fact that in the United States one can defame the reputation of a dead person with impunity and his or her loved ones and heirs can do nothing to stop it. Such is the case with Deborah Solomon’s American Mirror: the Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, which characterizes Rockwell as a complex, depressed, repressed gay man whose repression led to pedophiliac urges expressed in his paintings.

A Scout is Helpful, 1941, Norman Rockwell
A nice person—one not looking for duplicity everywhere—would agree with Rockwell’s granddaughter’s assessment: “My grandfather was a charming, kind, generous man; his models, without exception, say that posing for him was one of the highlights of their lives. He had a marvelous sense of humor, was a remarkable observer of people and human behavior…” 
Rockwell was a fantastically successful illustrator because his ear was perfectly tuned to the 20th century zeitgeist, which celebrated work, home, family and children. Of course, Deborah Solomon is in perfect tune with the zeitgeist of our times, which holds that there is nothing good in this world. Nor is there any privacy, apparently. 
The Babysitter, 1927, Norman Rockwell
Abigail Rockwell has done an excellent job of debunking Solomon’s sources, but she gets little traction in modern media, because she—unfortunately—is working at cross-purposes to our modern world. We like knowing that others are ‘no better than they should be.’
Rosie the Riveter, 1943, by Norman Rockwell. Of this iconic painting, Solomon said, “You know who else is masturbating? Rosie the Riveter. Women to him [Rockwell] were sexual demons. Over here, the riveting-gun penis on her lap, and in the background these pulsating red waves. Even though she’s a worker she’s not working, she’s just eating and satisfying her desires.”
But why is it being gay is so frequently the ‘secret sin’ of which artists are accused? (For a start, see Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Leonardo Da Vinci; never mind that their culture cannot be transcribed literally into our culture.) And why did a publisher like Farrar, Straus and Giroux publish an outrageous, unsubstantiated claim of a putative link between homosexuality and pedophilia? If that had come from the Right, the howling would have been deafening.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here. 
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Frozen beauty

Thin sheet ice at the harbor in Baltimore, MD. (Photo courtesy of Emerson Champion.)
The Great Lakes are a continuous channel of fat parts (the lakes) and straits (the Niagara, St. Lawrence and St. Mary’s Rivers and the Straits of Mackinac). A sort of inland sea, they contain 21% of the world’s surface fresh water by volume. Because they are huge and deep, they never fully freeze, and they even have small tides.
We all know that lake water starts to freeze at 32° F. The salty ocean’s freezing point is more like 28° F., but of course the ocean is vast (even vaster than Lake Ontario) so at our latitude it only freezes around the edges.
Orange peel ice developing on the Patapsco River shipping channel in Baltimore, MD. This is brackish water in a shallow cove. (Photo courtesy of Emerson Champion)
Still, the Great Lakes form some features usually associated with sea ice. Ice hummocks and pressure ridges, pancake ice, grease ice (which is basically ice soup), and ice stuck fast along the shores with open channels, or leads, are all features of both sea and Great Lakes ice. As long as the lakes don’t freeze, they also have the same drift ice that one sees on the ocean.
Ice balls on the shore of Lake Michigan. These are caused by rolling surf.
Ice coverage on the Great Lakes reached 85.4% on Feb. 18, making this the second winter in a row that it has exceeded 80%. That’s the first time that’s happened since the 1970s. As usual, Lake Ontario is the slowest to freeze; as of yesterday, it was at near-record levels, being 82.6% covered.
Pancake ice looks like blood platelets and is a common enough formation on Lake Ontario. Sometimes the edges build up enough that the pieces look like kettles.
This much ice is highly unusual. But this is the second cold winter in a row, and the lake never fully warmed up last summer.
Flow ice near Brooksville, ME.
In terms of comfort, it’s difficult: Buffalo is recording its coldest February in the 145 years in which records have been kept, and the whole northeast has been buried in snow. Ice is, of course, beautiful, but we’re all starting to look forward to the grey, rotten ice that heralds Spring.
Fast ice is ice that’s stuck on the edges of open water.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.