Rockland Archives | Page 4 of 5

June 11, 2013

My new field easel

Slik tripod, Guerrilla painter easel head, and En Plein Air Pro shelf.

After I posted last week about my search for a new plein air easel, I found this little number on Amazon. Oddly, while it is listed as being made by Guerrilla Painter, it isn’t on their website. Perhaps it’s a discontinued item.

My brother had actually drawn up a plan to make me a very similar item, but I know he’s relieved to be excused. It seems absurdly overpriced to me, but it’s also exactly what I needed to retrofit my existing tripod into an easel. Like all Guerrilla Painter items, it’s extremely well made. Unlike my Guerrilla Box, however, it’s very lightweight.

Or, I can turn the head 90 degrees and put my palette to the side. Not sure why I’d do that, but it’s nice to know I can.

I have a Slik tripod that’s a little heavier than I’d wanted—about 5 pounds—but very strong and easy to set up and take down. The Plein Air Pro shelf fits it perfectly, and the easel head works very well with its quick-release head.

I like being able to move my painting to different angles, which is why my lightweight Mabef beechwood field easel with its pivoting head has been the easel I’ve returned to after each flirtation with a different (and mostly more expensive) system.

I don’t generally watercolor like this in the field, but if I wanted to… or, I could put a board in there and a tablecloth over the whole thing and serve afternoon tea. Or, I could take the easel head off and use the tripod to take photos!

This being a component system, I can easily buy a replacement carbon-fiber tripod that will weigh less than 3 lbs. and set me back—oh—not more than $450. But right now, that extra two pounds seems bearable for the price.

The bubble-level is there for leveling a camera. But I think this means I can stop carrying a separate level around in my kit.

The En Plein Air Pro shelf is really intended for watercolorists, but I’ve decided the cup-holder might come in handy for coffee. (Not that it will really show when my palette is open.)

Dismantled and dumped on my steps. Will fit easily in my backpack.

This set-up means the only wooden box I’ll be carrying is my palette. All my other tools are in plastic bags or bins—lighter in weight, easy to toss if they get gummed up, and easily replaced at the hardware store.

It does need to be field-tested, and I’ll be doing that tomorrow. I’m especially interested in how the tripod and my umbrella get along.

And if you haven’t signed up for my Rochester classes or Maine workshops, what on earth are you waiting for? August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast. Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

June 9, 2013February 13, 2024

How much should I charge for that painting, anyway?

My wall at Red Barn Gallery. If luxurious surroundings scare people off, then it makes sense to not have luxurious surroundings.

Charge by the inch, of course. (I’m not kidding.)

This is the most emotionally-fraught question I hear from beginning painters. You can simplify the issue greatly by setting aside your emotional involvement with your art and basing your selling price on the size of the piece and your selling history.

If you’ve never sold anything before,there is no way to deduce a selling history: only the market can do that. But most beginners price their work too cheaply. That can actually hinder sales. Nobody else is going to value what you don’t value yourself.

Survey other artists with the same level of experience and set your first prices in line with theirs. Experience and competence are not synonymous. Most artists are terrible judges of their own work, seesawing between believing they’re geniuses and believing they’re hopeless. Such a subjective judgment should never guide pricing.

It’s not just brushwork that sets market price. Check out the regional market in which your competitors are selling, their affiliations, and their history of shows and sales. Be honest with yourself. Thomas Kinkead may have been a lousy painter, but his canvases are worth many times what mine are. He was an extremely talented marketer who created a nationwide niche for his work.

I believe in giving paintings to non-profits for their charitable auctions. It’s a good way to leverage your talent to help others. It gives exposure and a sales history, and if you err in the pricing, it’s not a fatal mistake. (But don’t do it for a tax deduction; these donations are generally not deductible.)

Painting sale — Whether selling in a gallery, online, or at a festival, the principles of pricing remain the same.

Once you’ve sold something—to a friend or family member, or at a charitable auction—you have a sales history, albeit an imperfect one. From this, you can extrapolate a pricing structure.

Let’s say you gave an 8X10 watercolor of the Old Red Mill to your local historical society, which turned around and sold it for $100. Great! You have a sales history from which to calculate prices. Just figure out the value per square inch and calculate from there.

Knowing that many artists are arithmetic impaired, I’m going to spell this out for you. Square inches=height times width, so your 8X10 painting is 80 square inches. Dividing the $100 selling price by 80 gives you a value of $1.25/square inch.

So to use this to calculate other sizes, you’d end up with:
6X8: $60
9X12: $135
11X14: $240
12X16: $315

Now, on the edges, I might adjust a little, since charging $15 for a 3X4 painting would be absurd, and charging $1500 for a 30X40 would surpass what anyone would pay for an untried painter. But it’s a formula I’ve used successfully for years. Framing costs scale up and down in the same way, and the bigger the painting, the more work it generally represents (unless you’re playing games and your large canvas is merely a schmear).

I would not set my prices in stone on the basis of one sale, of course. You should continuously update your prices based on your average sale prices for the prior year or two. The goal of every artist ought to be to sell at constantly rising prices. When you find yourself “painting on a treadmill” to have enough work for your next show, it’s definitely time to charge more. Each time you show, your work will be better known, and over time your prices will rise.

When I first started painting, I used to factor in two things I’ve since learned are totally irrelevant: how much time I’d spent, and how good I thought it was. Frequently I’ll struggle with a canvas for months, working out a problem I don’t even know I have, and the next painting will be faster, fresher, and more successful. You’ll also eventually realize you’re not the best judge of your own work. The work you think is brilliant may ring nobody else’s bells, while the painting you considered tossing may actually sell very quickly.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Canyon Color for the Painter, Sedona, AZ, March 10-14, 2025
Advanced Plein Air Painting, Rockport, ME, July 7-11, 2025.
Sea and Sky at Acadia National Park, August 3-8, 2025.
Find Your Authentic Voice in Plein Air, Berkshires, MA, August 11-15, 2025.
Immersive In-Person Fall Workshop, Rockport, ME, October 6-10, 2025.

June 5, 2013

What did the sea say to the mermaid?

It’s a Merdonna and Child. Or something.

When this buoy arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, certain members of my family were flummoxed. “Who sent us an oversized dreidel?” Since I was expecting it, I recognized it for what it was, but then wondered whether it was supposed to go dreidel-side up or dreidel-side down. A cursory search on the internet was useless—evidently, Mainers are not into social conventions like which end is up.

I took a guess, and put the stick on the bottom. Too late to worry if it’s wrong.

How do you paint on a buoy? Lash it to your easel.

I am painting it for a fundraiser for the Penobscot East Resource Center to be held later this month in Rockland, ME (more on that later). One would imagine it was a simple matter of filling, sanding and priming the surface, but, as usual, I’m pressed for time.

The biggest problem in painting on a curved surface turned out not keeping the figure proportional (as I expected) but drawing a straight horizon line. It’s very difficult to lay a ruler down on a cylinder. Tomorrow I’ll mark it with string.

There was a time when I used these wee little brushes a lot. That was a long time ago.

Eventually I bungee-corded it to an easel, but I’m only going to be able to paint on one side at a time. So much for working all parts of a painting at the same rate of development.

Sandy just told me she learned in her Renaissance art history courses that the infant Jesus always looks so weird in order to prefigure Christ’s death. I think that’s a fiction that comes from art historians never actually painting. Just try drawing a squirming, wailing baby—without photography, you’d have to drug the little darlings to get them to hold still. My mermaid is a little hackneyed, but her baby is coming along well.

Baby’s cute. Mom needs work.

I have to leave in a few minutes to go teach at Schoen Place on the Erie Canal. There are no buoys there; there are (to my knowledge) no fresh-water mermaids either. Have a happy evening!

August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME. Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

Oh, BTW, what did the sea say to the mermaid? Nothing. It just waved.

June 4, 2013

Hey, Carol, what am I supposed to buy for this workshop?

Years ago, I took a figure workshop from a well-known American figure painter. On receiving his supply list, I noted several pigments that are not normally on my palette. Two were transparent earth colors; one was Naples yellow; one was cadmium green. I duly bought them, took the workshop, and came home having never touched them. The transparent earths were occasionally useful for glazing, but that $20 tube of cadmium green sat in my cabinet until it thickened and died.

I never want to do that to anyone. (Not that I’m totally immune to it; my oldest students will remember my infatuation with Payne’s Grey back in the day.)

Here are my paint supply lists for both local plein air painting (in Rochester) and workshop painting in Maine this summer:

· Watercolor

· Pastels

· Oils

I expect that experienced painters already have a palette they like and tools they’re comfortable with. If you have questions about why I have something included, just ask; you may already have something that can substitute.

Nevertheless, there are certain paints I recommend at the expense of others. For example, it never makes sense to buy alizarin crimson. The real thing (PR83) is extremely fugitive,*
so many manufacturers have decided to make “hue” formulations that mimic it. Many of these are either also fugitive and or so high-stain that they tend to bleed up through drying paint. Yet alizarin crimson is a staple in the paintboxes of so-called traditionalists.

How much more sensible it is to buy straight up quinacridone magenta (PR122) and mix it to the color you want when you need it!

Another example is Naples yellow, which was originally made of yellow antimony (PY 41) and is one of the oldest of pigments. Unfortunately, it’s also extremely toxic. There are a million proximates on the market—so called “convenience mixes”—because that dense, chalky yellow is extremely useful in landscape painting. But why carry a convenience mix when you can make up something equally as useful from yellow ochre and white, which both have a million other uses on the palette? (Yes, I know some of you watercolorists take great pride in never using white, but when you use a Naples yellow you’re using white whether or not you admit it.)

On the other hand, there arepigments that make reasonable substitutions. For example, I want oil painters to have a high-stain greenish blue, but phthalo blue cyan (PB15:3) will just do as well as Prussian blue (PB 27) if that’s what you have.

Recently I wrote about hues and the Color Index system. Handprint has a more detailed explanation here. For the sake of efficient painting, I urge you to avoid hues and convenience mixes. Single pigment paints are most efficient in the field.

*”Fugitive” just means the pigment fades over time, and real alizarin crimson—an extract of the madder plant—is among the most fugitive pigments of all.

May 31, 2013

Painting at Olana

Painting at Olana, the estate of Frederic Church, with fellow members of NYPAP, for the 2nd annual Ted Beardsley Memorial Paintout. Again, I’m a little rushed, but here are snapshots of what I did yesterday.

Olana overlook, approaching sunset, 12X16 oil, by little ol’ me.

Bea Gustafson painting the sky.

My first sketch, about 45 minutes. I am not accustomed to the long view, living on the Lake Plains as I do. Pretty cool view, but it wasn’t until evening that I really figured it out.

Second painting, Dame’s Rocket in an old orchard.

It wasn’t until I was totally tapped out that I realized Olana is totally organized to the sunset. As Thomas Cole lives across the river, I wondered: was Thomas Cole a morning person and Frederic Church an evening person? If so, each would be happiest with their own view.
August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast. Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

May 29, 2013

Thoughts of Maine

Downtown Rockland, not exactly last week. (Rockland Main Street, Inc. website.)

A few people have asked me why I—a person with a decidedly urban personality—like Rockland, ME so much.

If we were in Rockland this evening, we could attend a lecture at the Farnsworth comparing Giotto’s “Life of Christ” and Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” Rockland is a town of 7,297 people, in a county of 39,736—and this is the off-season.

To compare, I checked the schedule of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. (Rochester has a population of 210,565, in a county of 744,344, and that’s the gallery of the well-regarded University of Rochester.) Tonight they are offering… well, nothing. But yesterday we could have done “Yoga at the MAG.”

Lyceums and Chautauqua assemblies were wonderful American 19th century phenomena, concentrated here in the Northeast and in the Midwest. In fact, the Chautauqua movement was founded just south of Buffalo in 1874, at the New York Chautauqua Assembly, which lives to this day as the Chautauqua Institute.

They served up a heady stew of evangelism, populism, education and entertainment. There was an assumption—now largely gone, alas—that the average man hungered for culture, education and entertainment. Today we watch reality TV instead, and most institutions honestly believe that nobody cares to think Big Thoughts anymore.

But back to Maine: the Farnsworth is a fantastic place, well worth a visit. But it’s just one of many fantastic places in this area, which is why I’m so anxious that you join me for one of my workshops. We’ll be painting at lighthouses, beside quiet coves, along rock-strewn beaches. We’ll be going to Monhegan to paint as well.

And if you ever doubt whether this teacher is worth her hire, let me tell you that I know where the bathrooms are.

August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME. Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

May 28, 2013

Do you want a little paint with that wine?

Sue at the end of a wonderful evening painting at Durand Eastman. Nobody else painted a watercolor like that, I assure you.

The first time I heard of a Paint Night Event was when a student came back from a business trip to tell me he’d participated in one. Since I like wine and painting, I recognized it immediately as a tremendous idea, one I wish I’d thought of myself.

The premise is simple: a bunch of people gather in a bar or restaurant and paint under the direction of an instructor. The price varies from £40 in London (with hors d’ouevres) to $35 – $50 in Boston (with two cocktails) to $45 at the unbelievable 84 franchises of “Painting with a Twist” (with wine).

This is not painting instruction in any real sense; it is more like “follow the leader” or arts-and-crafts at camp. The instructor stands at the front of the class and guides the participants step-by-step through a set piece. If everything goes according to plan, the 30 or so participants should all end up with exactly the same painting.

Catherine and Lynn at sunset at Lock 32. A highly suspicious plastic cup, if you ask me.

To a painter, this seems weird—almost as weird as getting a paint-by-number kit for one’s birthday. But to non-artists, it seems to be tremendously satisfying. I’ve talked to people who’ve really enjoyed it. And if it motivates a few people to be interested in really learning to paint, that would be fantastic.

The problem is that painting is ultimately a powerful form of personal communication, and that requires a journey of discovery—not solitary, exactly, but individually guided.

We have been known to drink wine in our summer plein air classes as well, but usually under the trees as the light softly fades and we’re cleaning our brushes. Speaking of which, we move to weekday evening classes this month. If you’re interested in joining us, contact me by email.

Nobody should expect to turn out work that looks like mine or anyone else’s in either my classes or workshops. I’d feel like a total failure if that happened.

August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME. Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

May 27, 2013