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Category: Mid-coast Maine

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Kids, gather around and I’ll tell you about the Dark Age of Graphic Design

My watercolor graphic for the invitation. Yes, it dangles. It is meant to be a corner ornament.

A long time ago and far, far away I worked as a graphic designer. One of my favorite tasks was choosing paper for print jobs. AJ Laux in Lockport and, later, XPedX’s retail store on South Avenue in Rochester were two of my favorite places. Paper and envelopes, not shrink-wrapped but each kind in their own precise little cardboard coffer, are more sensual than chocolate, more gratifying than new shoes.
OK, kids, go ask your grandparents what this tool was. And think that I paid $48 for it in the 1980s. That’s like $2000 today. (I saved it in case I can figure out how to use it as a depilatory.)

 A few weeks ago, an important client commissioned a watercolor-and-design project. That would be my daughter, who is being married in October. Of course I was happy; not only do I love my daughter but I particularly love multi-layered, text-based design. And I got to do a watercolor!

What a lovely time to be a designer this is! Never has software been so fluid, flawless and flexible. High speed digital printing has rendered service bureaus, separations, film, and press proofs obsolete. The technical barriers that stood between idea and realization have pretty much been eliminated. You have an inspiration; an hour later it’s uploaded and on its way. And if you don’t have any skill, you can do a pretty bang-up job just using the templates available online. (Try thatwith painting.)
The last project for which I was able to buy paper at XPedX.
(I am a bit wistful when I see all the wonderful hand-drawn typefaces shared so freely across the internet. As a youngster I loved typeface design, but there was no way to convert one’s own typography to anything useful. It’s almost enough to make one envy the young.)
But in the past few years there has been a less-welcome change in the graphics industry. The demise of small offset print shops has led to the corresponding demise of the small paper shops which supported them. The rise of big box office supply stores has undone small stationers. Last year XPedX closed their retail stores nationwide. One’s paper-buying options in Western New York seem to be limited to office supply stores (which specialize in copy paper) and craft stores (which specialize in scrapbooking papers). 

All off-whites are not created equal.

I spent the day today on the phone talking to paper reps to no avail—none of them were set up to have a retail customer come in and fondle their samples.

Finally, I found a throwback, a lovely woman named Cheryl who works in a paper warehouse in Buffalo. She was willing to take the time to work with me on my very small order. Quickly we ascertained that in the limited time we had, our color choices were ivory, ivory, or ivory. Luckily, the bride likes off white, and I have some accent sheets from a prior project that will dovetail quite nicely.
There are some things you just can’t order blind over the internet: sun-kissed garden tomatoes, silk lingerie, and paper you’ve never seen, touched or felt. I solved today’s problem but I don’t know what the long-term answer will be.
Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Last evening class of summer

When we realized our Auburn Trail site wasn’t going to work, we put up this nifty sign. Went back after class to take it down, and it was gamely hanging in there!

The wise artist investigates locations by painting them repeatedly and in depth, which is why Cezanne had his Mont Sainte-Victoire, Homer his Prout’s Neck, and Van Gogh his Saint-RĂ©my. This is why I usually hold my evening plein air classes in the same location for a full season.

Last evening class of the summer and I finally found a painting site that tripped my trigger. That’s Catherine, Sandy and Carol in Powder Mills Park.

This summer, however, we were a restless group. The Erie Canal at Schoen Place worked for a while, but didn’t have enough variety for an entire summer. Tinker Park seemed too manicured, and the part that is compelling (the swamp) is a long way back from the parking lot. The Center at High Falls closed and took away our High Falls restroom. Barben Farm is lovely, but I didn’t want to wear out our welcome.

Isn’t it lovely?

Wednesday evening promised to be very fine. We decided to try our luck with the Auburn Trail in Victor. A rails-to-trails project, it is about 9 miles long, following the old Auburn and Rochester Railroad. The site we were interested in is a thousand feet or so off the road, where a spur of Irondequoit Creek crosses the trail.

Young Sophia is trying to take credit for Sandy’s painting.

My initial scheme was for our mobility-impaired student to zoom down the path on her walker. (She’s very quick; she just needs support.) However, the trail was very recently graveled, so the surface was too soft for her walker’s wheels. My second scheme was to move the barrier cones aside and drive her down in my car. My conscience kicked in, however, and I couldn’t do it. No cars, I admitted to myself, meant no cars.

Carol Thiel brought some paintings to show us from a recent paint-out in Saranac Lake. I particularly like the middle distance in this one.
Isn’t this a neat idea? Old textbook, repurposed as a sketchbook. Great for value studies.

So we relocated to the fish hatchery at Powder Mills Park, and there we found the beautiful painting site we’d been searching for. Virginia was overjoyed to paint pond scum. The rest of us concentrated on more conventional views. Meanwhile, cedar waxwings flitted around us and a bluegill cavorted in the shadows. It was a magical end to summer.

And Lyn’s painting went head over teakettle on the ground, followed by her cup of mineral spirits, which sat in a puddle on the top of the painting. All in all, a great time was had by all.
Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Camden Plein Air, 2013

A Fitz Henry Lane Kind of Day at Camden Harbor, oil on canvas, 12X9

On Sunday I zoom back to Maine to participate in the Camden Plein Air Paint-Out and Wet Paint Auction being sponsored by Camden Falls Gallery.

Over 20 artists will be painting en plein air in and around Camden from Monday, August 26 to Monday, September 2, Labor Day. A live auction will be held at the Bok Amphitheatre in Camden Harbor Park (behind the public library) on Saturday, September 7 from 6:30-7:30 pm, following a reception from 5:30-6:30 pm. Proceeds will benefit the Camden Windjammer Festival, Camden Public Library, and Penobscot Marine Museum.

This year’s participating artists include: Tania Amazeen-Jones, Bill Barton, Todd Bonita, Paul Bonneau, Lee Boynton, Ian Bruce, Allen Bunker, Beaman Cole, Dan Corey, Alison Dibble, F. Michael Dorsey, Stephan Giannini, Eric Glass, Alison Hill, Kirk McBride, Aline Ordman, Colin Page, Judith Schuppien, Diane Scott, Janet Sutherland, Michael Vermette, and little ol’ me.

Because I won’t be teaching, I will do my best to post my day’s painting live each day.

Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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That “how-to” I didn’t do yesterday…

Megunticook River at Camden, ME, 9X12, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me.
Yesterday I intended to write about how I do field sketches, but distracted myself with raving about a most-excellent new student. Today, then, I get down to business. This is my method of producing a relatively-quick, finished field study with a minimum of “flailing around,” as my pal Brad Marshall so memorably termed it.
My first step is a value study. Whether I do this with charcoal, greyscale markers, or pencil is immaterial—if the value structure doesn’t work, the painting won’t work. 
A value study can be done in charcoal, with greyscale markers, or in pencil.
As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to decompress the center of the painting and omit a wall that encroached on the view from the left, and both—in the end—proved to be the lesser choices. I can’t call those highly-subjective decisions “wrong,” but I did change my mind halfway through.

The Megunticook River wending its way through Camden’s old buildings. Isn’t it beautiful?

 My next step was to draw the picture on my canvas. This is never simply a question of transferring my rough value sketch; nor is it a finished drawing into which I paint. What I do is a carefully-measured map of the future painting. I find this particularly useful when painting architecture, where measurement matters a great deal. I generally do this drawing with a watercolor pencil. I can erase to my heart’s content with water, but when I finally start painting in oil the drawing is locked into the bottom layer.

Not a transfer of my value study; not a “drawing” per se. A map for the finished painting.

 From there, I blocked in the big shapes, paying attention to preserving the values of my sketch, and working (generally) from dark to light. This is especially important if you plan to take more than a few hours to do a painting, because it allows you to paint through significant changes in lighting.

I say “big shapes,” but while I focus on these, I do not obliterate all the drawing I did earlier.

It was upon reaching this degree of blocking that I realized how little I liked this scene without the wall on the left pushing in against it. Putting it in over wet paint (without a drawing) resulted in it being somewhat vague compared to the rest of the painting, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. (Whenever I do something like this, I amuse myself by speculating on what art historians might adduce as a ‘meaning’ of my painterly screw-ups.)
I plan to repaint this scene next week, when I participate in Camden Falls Gallery’s Plein Air Wet Paint Auction. But more on that tomorrow.

Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Painting side by side with a beginner, you learn things

My painting (left), my student’s painting (right).
I had the opportunity this week to paint side-by-side with a student. He has painted exactly three observational pieces in his life, all under my tutelage. However, as a lifelong builder, he actually has pretty decent drawing chops; he just hasn’t dignified his sketching by calling it art.
The Megunticook River runs beneath and between old mill buildings in Camden, ME.
I set out to do a how-to post about my technique for developing a field sketch. He just happened to be standing next to me, or so I thought.
The Megunticook River runs underneath and around old mill buildings in downtown Camden, Me. I loved the light on the water and the shimmering reflections of the white buildings in the background. However, I felt that it would be better to decompress the gap between the far buildings and remove the building that squeezed the scene down from the left. My student chose to represent the scene exactly as he saw it. About halfway through the painting, I realized that my editorial changes—intended to let the scene “breathe”—had in fact robbed it of its idiosyncratic charm. I would not have realized this had I not been looking at his painting taking shape next to mine.
Working a pretty narrow view, in a pretty narrow space.
The owner of the business next door stopped by several times to see what we were doing. He raved about this man’s painting. But my student—like so many of us—couldn’t hear that praise as genuine, or doesn’t understand how truly gifted he is to be able to do this on the third try. 
His palette, acrylics.
“Someday, they’ll be talking about you as the new Grandma Moses, and I’ll be a footnote in your personal history,” I told him.
His finished painting. 
Sometimes you need to see a painting dignified with a frame; it is as if it puts on its tuxedo and is ready to perform. So I tossed his painting in a frame while I framed mine. I think he suddenly realized just how good it is and was shocked.
Later this week, I’ll post my step-by-step instructions. After all, technique is important; the joy of painting… well, that is something far greater.

Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Three paintings on the block in Castine, ME

Midsummer Reverie, 6X8, oil on canvas.  One of three paintings for sale at Castine Historical Society today.
I finally figured out what I like so much about Castine, Maine—it reminds me of Lewiston, NY, where I spent a good deal of time in my salad days.
Anyone who knows Lewiston will recognize a parallel with this from Castine’s history: “In 1607, Samuel de Champlain, the great French explorer and colonizer, sailed up the Penobscot River and wrote of the beauty of the river and its shores. Four years later Father Pierre Biard, a French Jesuit, met here with a group of Indians
”
Owl’s Head Light, 8X10, oil on canvas.  One of three paintings for sale at Castine Historical Society today.
That was three years after Champlain went through Lewiston, but WNY’s Jesuit didn’t arrive until 1640 or thereabouts. Lewiston had RenĂ©-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Fr. Louis Hennepin; Castine had Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin.
Both regions were contested territory long before the surrounding forests were of much value, because both were on navigable routes into the interior. That means that both places have a great depth of native, French and British pre-colonial history packed into them.

Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove, 12X16, oil on canvas.  One of three paintings for sale at Castine Historical Society today.
I have three paintings in the Castine Historical Society Art Show and Sale, which ends today. (One of the downsides of not blogging while traveling is that you don’t stay current.) I also recently heard that my mermaid buoy for the Penobscot East Resource Center auction was purchased by a Vinalhaven fisherman. There’s something darn authentic about that.
Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The Corn Harvest (alt. the Harvesters), 1565

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
The Corn Harvest (alt. the Harvesters), Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder, 1565
Bruegel’s great device is in putting important action of his painting into a seemingly unimportant corner—in this case, in the far distance, a group of villagers are cock throwing, a blood sport  in which a rooster was tied to a post and people took turns throwing coksteles (special weighted sticks) at the bird until it died.

This is one of a series of six paintings depicting the change of the seasons, the most famous of which is The Hunters in the Snow.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The Meeting (Bonjour Monsieur Courbet), 1854

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
The Meeting (Bonjour Monsieur Courbet), Gustave Courbet, 1854
Courbet was one cocky artist, and he knew how to work at his own celebrity. In this painting, Courbet painted himself meeting his patron and supporter, Alfred Bruyas. The servant is—duh!—servile, but patron and artist are meeting on the same social plane.  Gone is any idea of the artist as a hired hand; here Courbet announces his own genius.
Courbet was controversial, charismatic and absolutely political. He was uncompromisingly realistic in both his landscape and figure painting (which were, in some cases, absolutely pornographic). I can’t aspire to his artistic genius, but I sure like his approach to life. On the other hand, he died of liver failure at age 58.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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On the Delaware River, 1861-1863

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
On the Delaware River, 1861-1863, George Inness
That’s the Delaware Water Gap in the background. US Interstate 80 runs through it now, making it difficult to know whether such a limpid pool ever existed in this spot. But there is no mistaking that peculiar mountain range.
My geology text says that a water gap is carved by water flowing across a mountain ridge, but I find that impossible to contemplate. Evidently, it indicates a river that is older than the current landscape, which is why they’re common in the old, old Appalachians. I associate them particularly with Pennsylvania.

We focus so much on the Hudson River School painters that we sometimes forget Inness and the other tonalists. 

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Le pont de Narni, 1826

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
Le pont de Narni, 1826, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, oil on paper, the Louvre.
This oil sketch, done on site in Italy when Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was thirty, could have been done by a 20th century California realist, or in fact been done today. 
While the Impressionists are generally credited with inventing plein airpainting, Corot was doing it decades earlier. Unlike the Impressionists, he was mixing his colors, and he didn’t have access to the full gamut of pigments they did.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!