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Monday Morning Art School: drawing a face

Have trouble drawing people? Here’s a way to get a good likeness in a hurry.

Robbie, by Carol L. Douglas
Most artists don’t have trouble drawing individual features. They run into trouble hooking all those parts up into a plausible whole. Sadly, a person’s likeness starts with the overall structure of their head, not with the details. This is a fast and easy way to measure features so you get them straight. The hardest part, I think, is that I’m showing you in words and pictures instead of in person. But if you take the time to practice it, your portrait drawings will improve.
I seldom work from photos, but I’m at the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center this month. That means I can’t conscript any family members to model. Instead, I found this old photo of Sandy Quang on my laptop. (It’s odd because she’s not laughing her fool head off.)
If you don’t remember the rudiments of measuring with a pencil, please brush up here and here before you start.
I start by drawing a line indicating the angle at which the head is cocked.

The second line goes right through the eyeballs. This is not absolutely perpendicular to the center line, but it’s usually close. Remember, you are measuring a 3-D object onto a 2-D surface. It’s easy to mistake these lines for a grid. They’re not; they’re just measurements.
From there, go on to measure the remaining distances as shown above. Eventually, you can add a line for the eyebrows and the bottom of the bottom lip, but I find them confusing at this early stage.
The angle from the bottom of the nose to the pupils is the most important measurement in the face. Check, double check, and then place dots where it intersects with your eyeball line.
Next, draw lines from the bottom of the nose through the center of the pupils. You should create a triangle from eyes to bottom of nose. That’s the most important measurement you’ll do, and the most confusing.
Why are we using an angle instead of straight measurements on the eyes? This is the most important dimension in a human face, and angles allow us to double-check our work. A triangle is a shape, and that’s just easier for the brain to process than a line. That’s why I use angles to measure whenever I can. (Brush up on angle-drawing here.)
Unless the model is looking right at you, each eye is not the same distance from the center line. Check and double-check.
This triangle is the most important measurement in the whole face.

Then draw lines down from the center of the eyeballs to the corners of the mouth. In most people, the mouth is about as wide as the pupils of the eyes, but Sandy’s mouth is narrower than her eyes.

I did the drawing freehand but added this because it’s so difficult to understand from just words.

My last measurement is from the center line to outside of her ear. Conveniently, it’s about the same distance as from her hairline to the bottom of her nose. Remember, all measurements are relative. “It’s slightly less than two noses long,” is how we measure in drawing.

I managed to drop her ear too low at this point; I corrected it as I went. There are always fine corrections to be made. To me, that refinement is the best part of drawing. It’s like doing a puzzle.
Having made all those measurements, I was ready to rough in the overall features. I drew the nose and chin as volumes. (The angled line from the nose was to figure out my ear error.)
The drawing guides are superfluous after this point. Time to erase them and start having freehand fun.
Block in the mass of hair. Your eye perceives shapes and sizes differently depending on value and the color, as we learned here. That dark shape is important.
Refine the features, erasing and redrawing as time allows.
Because I was working with a #2 pencil on a cheap sketchbook, I waited until the end to add the shadow masses. Otherwise, they’d smear.
Throwback Sandy, by Carol L. Douglas

We are taught to draw the human face in ‘perfect’ terms: the eyes are halfway down the head, the tear ducts line up with the edges of the nostrils, the face is divided into thirds, etc., etc. In fact, human faces are infinitely varied. 
These ‘perfect’ laws fall apart especially fast when the subject isn’t white. For example, everything you learned about drawing eyes falls apart with an Asian person with no epicanthic fold. It’s far better to start with what’s really there.

This is a system that works, but you’ll need to practice it a few times before it feels comfortable. If you have any questions, email me and I’ll try my best to answer them.

Safety in small brushes

In life, as in painting, which brush is going to give you the results you crave?

By Sheryl Cassibry, in gouache. Occasionally, I like to brag on my students. These are all from yesterday’s class.
Yesterday my class painted on the public landing at South Thomaston, watching the Weskeag River burble its short, strapping way to Penobscot Bay. I was, as I often do, coaxing a student to use a bigger brush. My students accept the reasoning behind this, but they often revert back to smaller brushes by the time I visit their easels again. It feels safer.
“What a metaphor for life!” exclaimed Roger Akeley. “You want to paint bold, but you run back to the tiny brush!”
 By Roger Akeley
He is right. In life as well as in painting, there is a time for measured, patient, diligent action, but there’s also a time for bold deeds. The trouble is, by the time we’ve reached our mid-twenties, the bold has been trained right out of us.
Bold carries a more obvious risk of failure. This is illusory. Bold alone carries the potential for greatness. Safe is a one-way ticket to mediocrity.
My youngest nephew joined our class yesterday. He’s going into the eighth grade.
I’ve been pondering the lyrics of Needtobreath’s Slumber this month:
All these victims
Stand in line for
The crumbs that fall from the table
Just enough to get by…
It’s a sadly-apt vision of most of our lives. We hang on from paycheck to paycheck, with no real plan for the future. We want a better job, the opportunity to live somewhere else, satisfying relationships and real community. Yet we stay rooted in our spots, unwilling to make the hard choices that make real, significant change.
By Rebecca Gorrell, in acrylic.
When should you reach for the bigger brush? Assuming you’re not a miniaturist, the answer is: nearly all the time. Most of the struggle in painting is getting the big relationships right. The rest is just detail. If modern painting has taught us anything, it’s that excessive detail is extraneous and often intrusive. It can interfere with the viewer’s ability to understand emotional truth. Detail, in painting, should be saved for where it really matters.
By Jennifer Johnson, in oil. Sorry about the glare.
I’m an artist with the soul of an accountant, myself. I like order; I actually enjoy math, spring cleaning and vacuuming. There are no fuzzy edges in any of these tasks. When I’m done with them, I have a sense of simple satisfaction. But they aren’t central to my life.
By Jen Van Horne, in oil.
The Pareto Principle implies that 80% of our results come from 20% of our work. This doesn’t mean that fussing isn’t necessary, but that it should come at the end, when the work has assumed its overall shape and statement.
By Sandy Quang, in oil.
Using a bigger brush isn’t necessarily more emotional or less rational. In fact, it’s usually the other way around. When I have my monster size 24 flat in my hand, I’m very thoughtful about where I set it down. Flailing around is much easier with a size six filbert. Extend that metaphor to life. It’s much easier to complain about your home town than it is to clean the basement out, sell up and move. In fact, we all complain a lot. But which is going to net you the real results you crave?
I’ve got one more workshop available this summer. Join me for Sea and Sky at Schoodic, August 5-10. We’re strictly limited to twelve, but there are still seats open.

Monday Morning Art School: the basic rules of oil painting

This weekend’s workshop was all oil painters. This gave me the opportunity to review some fundamentals.
Nicole Reddington’s painting ruthlessly subjugated detail for design, and was tremendously powerful for that. I wish I had more student work to show you, but I can’t find my camera!

Use enough paint

Using too little paint is a rookie error. Too little paint on your palette means you’ll try to stretch it with solvent on the bottom layers or medium on the top layers, and before you know it, you’re going to have a mushy, monochromatic mess on your hand. In the northeast, that soup usually assumes an unpleasant green tone.
Modern paints are formulated to use almost straight out of the tube. They may need a small amount of solvent for underpainting, or a dab of medium to create a juicy top layer, but too much of either ruins paintings.
In my weekly classes, I don’t let students touch painting medium until they have the steps of constructing a painting firmly in hand. That’s hard to do in a workshop, but remember that painting medium is a boost, not a crutch.
Sandy Quang’s painting of a downed tree.
Big shapes to little shapes
Stop thinking of your value sketches as something you must get through before you get to the fun of painting. They’re the most important part of the process, and they’re also a lot of fun.
I like to do lots of preparatory sketches before I start to paint, either in marker or in monochromatic watercolor. The abstract pattern is far more important than the details. In the early phases of a painting, you must relentlessly sacrifice detail to the good of the whole.  This is true whether the results you want are hyper-realistic or impressionistic.
The untrained eye looks at a scene and thinks about it piecemeal and in terms of objects: there’s a flower, there’s a path, there’s a tree. The trained eye sees patterns and considers the objects afterward.
Is there an interesting, coherent pattern of darks and lights? This pattern is the primary issue in composition.

Stop thinking of drawing as something you have to get through, and start doing your dreaming in a sketchbook.
Darks to light
In oils, it’s easy to paint into dark passages with a lighter color; the reverse isn’t true. Put down white paint too quickly, and you’re going to fight all afternoon to avoid fifty shades of meh.
This doesn’t mean oil painters don’t jump around after we set the darks; we can and do. But that dark pattern controls your paintings.
Don’t choose slow-drying or high-stain pigment to make your darks. The umbers are great because the manganese in them speeds drying. However, I don’t want to carry an extra tube just for this. I use a combination of burnt sienna and ultramarine.
A student’s palette… This is the color space in which the modern painter can work. It sizzles.
Fat over lean

Odorless mineral spirits (OMS) replaces turpentine as the modern solvent. This is different from medium, which is some combination of oil, drying agent, solvent and varnish. Paint with solvent in the bottom layers. Paint with medium in the top layers. As noted above, use both sparingly.
The more oil in a layer, the longer the binder takes to oxidize. This keeps paints brighter and more flexible. However, oil also retards drying. Using too much in underpainting will result in a cracked and crazed surface over time.
The makers of Galkyd and Liquin say their products are designed to circumvent this rule. However, we have no track record for these alkyd-based synthetic mediums, whereas we have centuries of experience layering the traditional way.
Even if we could change it, why would we want to? Underpainting with soft, sloppy medium gives soft, sloppy results. The coverage is spotty and thin. The traditional method is tremendously variable and gives great control. It just takes a little while to learn it properly.
Next up, a watercolor workshop aboard American Eagle, June 10-14, and my annual Sea & Sky workshop at Acadia National Park, August 5-10. Email me if you have any questions.

Party dogs

What is art? That’s something nobody can agree on.

Great Danes and Doberman Pinschers talk about what they plan to wear to my daughter’s wedding.
Last night I assembled an august panel of artists to help me with a project. Barb is a printmaker with an art degree from University of Maine. Sandy is a gallerist with degrees from Pratt and Hunter College. Together, we dressed 42 dogs in wedding finery. (As so often happens in sweatshops, I ‘forgot’ to pay them.)
“Is this art?” I asked two other artist friends.
“It’s like asking if a soy product in the shape of a chicken leg is food,” said one. “Technically, yes, but it’s bad food.”
“I guess the individual sculptures are art,” hedged the other, who then raised the question of whether they’re craft or even, just possibly, crap.
Two coats of silver and three of glitter… good taste, by the way, is repressive at times.
‘Artistry’ is easier to define than art itself. That means the skill necessary to produce a work of the imagination. But what defines the product of the imagination as art rather than engineering or craft?
Ars longa, vita brevis, wrote Hippocrates. He probably meant that it takes a long time to acquire and perfect artistry, but that the practitioner has only a short lifespan in which to practice. We repeat it, instead, to mean, “art lasts forever, but life is short.” That is, of course, a modern conceit. The ancients understood that “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:18)

Barb felt that a DeWalt glue gun was not the tool for the job.
Platosaid that art is always a copy of a copy, an imitation of reality. This leads us from the truth and to illusion, making art inherently dangerous. (Rich words from a philosopher!) Elsewhere, he hinted that the artist, by divine inspiration, makes a better copy of truth than may be found in everyday experience. This makes artists prophets of sorts.
A lot of artists have had a go at defining art. Many are coy, like Marc Chagall, who said that “Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers–and never succeeding.”
Even in non-traditional art, imitation is a recurring theme. “Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary,” said Paul Gauguin. What makes an Andy Warhol painting of soup cans different from the soup cans themselves? Intent and meaning. Pablo Picasso said that art is a lie that makes us see the truth.
In some way, art is the taking of an idea and making it manifest. Otherwise, it’s just a fleeting thought.
Sandy and I sewed their garments, Barb dressed them.
People frequently debate the line between art and craft. Art is useless in practical terms; it exists solely to drive emotion and thought. Fine craft does that and more. It must serve a practical purpose along with being beautiful. Since I didn’t drill their noses out to hold flowers, my party dogs fall on the side of art. 
Neither fine art nor fine craft are mass-produced, however. That is manufacturing. Those brass birds from Home Goods, as inscrutable as their meaning and purpose might be, qualify as neither art nor craft.
“The craftsman knows what he wants to make before he makes it. The making of a work of art… is a strange and risky business in which the maker never knows quite what he is making until he makes it, wrote R.G. Collingwood in The Principles of Art. That sounds very nice, until I think of dye-master Jane Bartlett throwing pots of color into the snow to see what shows up. Her textiles end up as clothing, but her process is wildly unpredictable.

Monday Morning Art School: drawing a globe

Start with the mechanical measurement and work your way down to the details.

All illustrations are by Carol L. Douglas (left) and Sandy P. Quang (right)
By now, the long slog to decorate for the Christmas holidays is in full swing. If you haven’t got your tree up, you’ve at least located the boxes and asked your family to help you carry them down from the attic. (Good luck with that, by the way.) Find a simple, round, reflective ornament. That’s your subject for today.
Those of you who don’t believe in Santa Claus can find a spherical object to substitute. A ball or a snow-globe will work just fine.
The ornaments in question.
Some of you might know Sandy Quang; she was my painting student in Rochester. She went on to get a BFA from Pratt and an MFA from Hunter and now works at Camden Falls Gallery. She came by yesterday to hang the high ornaments on my tree.
I asked her if she wanted to draw with me. As my students do, she had her sketchbook tucked in her backpack. “Which one do you want?” I asked her. She chose the spider ornament.
Last week, I wrote about drawing a glass dish, which is a series of ellipses on a central axis. A circle is easier to draw than an ellipse; it’s an ellipse that is symmetrical on all sides. A sphere appears to be a circle when it’s viewed in two dimensions. This is an unbreakable rule.
Noting the axes.
Both of us started with the axis of our drawing. For me, that was the vertical axis; for Sandy it was the axis holding her circles together. I mention this because when people say “I can’t draw!” they seldom realize how much of drawing is mechanical, simple measurement.
We both added details. Mine were the ellipses on the collar of the ornament; Sandy’s were the beaded legs of the spider and her first markings for reflections.
Next, we both put the appendages on our spheres. For me, that meant measuring the ellipses in the collar, as I demonstrated in detail last week. For Sandy, it was the beaded spider legs. Sandy was starting to note the overall areas of reflection in her spheres.
Marking out the outlines of our reflected shapes.
Sandy and I chose different approaches in the next step, dictated by the paper we were working on. Because I had a smooth Bristol, I was able to blend my pencil line into smooth darks with my finger. Sandy could only work light-to-dark on the rougher paper she was carrying. That gives you the chance to see two different approaches to shading.
We both worked on shading next. I finished my shading with an eraser, Sandy couldn’t do that because her paper was too rough.
Sandy has a shadow under her final drawing because the ornament was sitting directly on my coffee table. I put the reflection of myself drawing in my ornament.
All drawing rests on accurate observation and measurement. Get that right and the shading and mark-making is simple. And remember, you’re welcome to post your finished work on the open Facebook page, Monday Morning Art School.

World’s Okayest Mom

Lonely rubber ducky in Camden harbor.

Lonely rubber ducky in Camden harbor.
You might know my young friend Sandy Quang. She was my painting student for a long time, then my studio assistant, and sometimes my workshop monitor. Most recently, she worked at Camden Falls Gallery.
Sandy’s parents run a restaurant called Dac Hoa. It’s a small eatery on the edge of downtown Rochester, known for its fresh Vietnamese, Thai and Chinese food. Ha, Kahn and Nu know this range of cuisine because their families left China during the Chinese Civil War and settled in Vietnam. After the fall of Saigon they moved along again, eventually ending up in Rochester. I respect them for their courage, hard work, and integrity. Through Sandy, we’ve become friends.
"My parents’ restaurant," graphite on paper, approx. 16X18, 2008, by Sandy Quang.
“My parents’ restaurant,” graphite on paper, approx. 16X18, 2008, by Sandy Quang.
When I was a kid, I had a crush on an imaginary boy called Homer Price. I loved him because he was nice and could fix anything. Years later, I met him in the form of a gangling high school student. We’ve had four kids and grown grey together.
At the time, I didn’t know anything about Homer Price’s creator, Deer Isle’s own Robert McCloskey. I’d never seen his other children’s book classics. But I raised my own kids on a steady diet of his books. My youngest took Make Way for Ducklings very much to heart. The lad loved everything about ducks. “Well, that’s cute,” I thought. His obsession about ducks was just one of those things that were in the background of our collective family consciousness.
And then he was slightly older and we were at Dac Hoa during a Christmas season very much like this. He was restive and annoying, as little boys are wont to be. Looking to amuse him, I showed him the roasted ducks in the window. To this day, I have no idea why I thought this would be a good idea.

"Sandy’s parents’ restaurant interior," graphite, approx. 18X24, 2008, by Zeyuan Chen.

“Sandy’s parents’ restaurant interior,” graphite, approx. 18X24, 2008, by Zeyuan Chen.
He dissolved into howling, violent grief. Our dinner, obviously, was ruined. The lad cried for days.
“That boy is going to be in therapy for years,” I thought ruefully.
Last week we were in Dac Hoa celebrating the same kid’s 20th birthday. I asked him if he remembered the incident with the ducks. My husband pulled an exasperated face. Nu laughed. And my son also laughed. I’m so relieved.
I simultaneously believe that parenting is our most important job and that kids make their way somehow despite it. I guess for this youngest one, “World’s Okayist Mom” was good enough.
Christmas is the season of grace-made-manifest through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. It’s nice to know I’m forgiven.

Wherever we go, that’s where the party’s at

"Parker dinghy," by Carol L. Douglas. 8X10, oil on canvasboard.

“Parker dinghy,” by Carol L. Douglas. 8X10, oil on canvasboard.
On Friday, Brad Marshall and I had only a short time to paint before he had to head back south. We decided small watercolor sketches were all we could pull together in the time we had. Sandy Quang is my former studio assistant and is now working at Camden Falls Gallery this summer. She joined us with her sketchbook before work. Since we weren’t using easels, the simplest thing was to dangle our feet in the water and draw the lobster boat on the next dock.
Sandy, me and Brad hard at work at Camden harbor, with our feet in the water.

Sandy, me and Brad hard at work at Camden harbor, with our feet in the water. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Jalbert)
Across the harbor, another painter was working away at his easel. It was George Van Hook.  I called him on my cell phone to say hi, since my voice would never carry that far over open water. He was ready for a short break so he came over and joined us on our dock.
I never know who I’ll see at Camden’s Public Landing, but there’s always someone I know—a sailor, another painter, or a Camden or Rockport friend just enjoying the sun. And I’m always meeting new people, too. For me, plein airpainting is often about balancing the party with the need to do serious work.
We didn't have time to paint anything polished, so we each did little watercolor sketches before saying goodbye.

We didn’t have time to paint anything polished, so we each did little watercolor sketches before saying goodbye. This was mine.
Later that day, my husband and I joined painter Bobbi Heath and her husband aboard their lobster boat for dinner. Moored in Tenants Harbor, we were surrounded by wildlife. An osprey took up residence on the mast of a neighboring boat, chirruping to his mate who flew nearby. Suddenly he dropped into the sea like a rock, and rose with a fish in his beak—and then he was gone, bringing home the bacon. A seal poked his dappled nose out of the water nearby. Black Guillemots—a kind of puffin—potted around us as we ate. The light dropped and the evening breeze picked up, and we glided back to shore under a sliver of new moon.
Lobster dinner on a lobster boat.

Lobster dinner on a lobster boat. (Photo courtesy of Douglas J. Perot)
Today I start a series of wild perambulations, which include Acadia National Park, Scotland, and an Alaska-to-Nova-Scotia painting trip (plus three more events in Maine). I expect to be home for good in mid-September. On Saturday I finished the painting above, which is of a Parker dinghy built on Deer Island, NB. That allowed me just enough time to pack and get to the Schoodic Institute, where I met up with this year’s workshop students.
After dinner at the Commons, Ken and Corinne Avery and I spent some time looking at aurora borealis predictions. Turns out these can’t be made very far in advance, but there was some possibility of solar-wind activity last night. The partly-cloudy sky was predicted to clear by 11 PM.
My first realization is that I need an app for this. My second is that they exist. Since I’ll be spending much of the next month traversing prime Northern Lights territory, I need to figure one out.
Alas, the aurora borealis didn’t show up. It’s a whole new week, however, and thePerseid meteor shower is expected to peak on Thursday and Friday. Who needs sleep? I do, of course. But I feel the likelihood of a spectacular night-sky event in my bones.

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. 

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. 

Freaky coincidence or what?

Jingwei Yang’s painting from Anna’s garden.
I’ve known Anna since she was a mere slip of a girl. She’s married now and two months ago she and her husband bought a lovely home in the city. Anna has always been musical but never, to my knowledge, interested in making visual art. I was most surprised when she called me about a month ago to ask about painting lessons. Most people ease into painting gradually, but she went out to Hyatt’s and got all the necessary tools and has been practicing at home.
Sandy Quang’s painting from Anna’s garden.
Last week I took my class to Anna’s new home to paint her small backyard pocket garden. It is clearly the garden of an artist. She told us the former owner was an art teacher at Rochester’s School of the Arts and her late husband was also an artist.
Nina Koski’s painting of Anna’s garden.
After class, Anna gave me a tour of her house. About halfway through, I realized the late husband in question was Peter Berg, who was a well-known Rochester painter around the time Anna was born. I never knew him, not living here at the time, but I knew of him from my friend Sari Gaby.
I do believe houses can have a spiritual temperament, and I wonder if Anna’s house has a painter’s temperament. Perhaps those old pantiles and oak pocket doors gave her a gentle nudge toward painting.
Nate Tomlinson’s painting from a different garden day.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!