Category: Uncategorized

I’m off on a harebrained excursion to nowhere in particular.

On this trip, I put four easels, three painting kits, one pastel kit, three chairs, three umbrellas, luggage for three people for eight days, a solo art show, three computers, and three passengers in the Prius.

When your adult child says, “do you want to go on a harebrained excursion to nowhere in particular, immediately, and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” you should say yes. That child will soon be entangled in family and mortgages and too busy to be silly.

But if you ask yourself, where does he get these ideas, you already know the answer.

Blizzards? This car has known a few.

I like nothing better than long drives to far-off places, in the company of people I love. That’s how I ended up trekking 10,000 miles across Canada with my daughter Mary, and in a Land Rover tooling around the Hebrides with my family. It’s not why I ended up driving across Patagonia with Jane Chapin, but the net result was the same.

As you’re reading this, I’m gliding west in my youngest kid’s car, heading for Yellowstone. As with that fateful drive with Mary, I’m in a very tired car. In this case it’s the same 2005 Prius I drove for 16 years, now in his custody. That gives me a certain amount of confidence, because I know the car intimately. I’ve driven it in all kinds of places a low-slung hybrid sedan shouldn’t go–through tidal streams and down muddy back roads. Last week it was in the Adirondacks and had an unfortunate incident with a snowbank. My son reports that it shook itself off and continued on.

It was days like this that earned the Prius the nickname, ‘eco-warrior.’

“We could take my truck,” I ventured, but that met with a resolute no. The Prius is about to go over 300,000 miles, and my kid knows I want to celebrate that. Perhaps we’ll stop and buy the old dear a cupcake.

This car was one of the first 30,000 second-generation Priuses sold in the United States. I calculated that if gasoline stayed above $1.85 a gallon and I drove it 100,000 miles, I’d pay for the difference between it and a compact gas-engine car. It turned out to be a great wager. This model was designed and built meticulously to prove to American buyers that Toyota’s hybrid technology was reliable. It’s been remarkably trouble-free.

The back roads of Maine finally convinced me I needed a truck.

I always thought that I’d drive it to 300,000 miles myself, but my life changed. I moved to Maine, where I’m often on rough roads or, worse, no roads. The Prius is an urban and highway car. When Dwight needed a car, I bought a full-size truck, and he bought the Prius from me.

Unlike most young men’s first cars, this one came with welfare checks from the former owner. “Did you change the oil?” “That ‘check-engine’ light is serious; don’t ignore it.” “How are your tires?”

Roadside painting, using a large red canvas for a safety cone. Now I have a truck and a real safety cone.

With a car that old, you have to be prepared for trouble along the road. Mary’s Suzuki Gran Vitara should have been euthanized in Alaska, but we nursed it across Canada. We always knew that if worse came to worst, we could have it towed away and rent a vehicle to get home. The Prius is in much better shape, but it pays to be prepared.

And, yes, I’m bringing a sketchbook and watercolors, but I really hope to use my non-driving time writing and working on my website. Oh, and talking to the kid.

What you learned about primary colors in elementary school is only partially true.

Jack Pine, 8X10, by Carol L. Douglas.

Today’s project is designed to help you learn more about the colors you’ve chosen and to give you more confidence in mixing colors. You can do this in any liquid medium: oils, acrylics, gouache, or watercolor. The examples were done with a Winsor & Newton field kit by my student Sheryl in my Rockport, ME class.

My wheel, above, is an approximation. Every manufacturer formulates its colors differently. Still, I’ve tried to match a pigment name with each spot on the wheel. The biggest circles are what we call the primary colors, followed in size by the secondary colors, and then the tertiary colors.

I encourage students to make their own color wheels based on the pigments they use. But if you want to buy one, Stephen Quiller’s color wheel is excellent.

The outside of the wheel represents the highest chroma (intensity) colors. The center of the wheel represents low-chroma neutrals. The circles in the middle are the common earth pigments.

Start by drawing two circles, one inside of the other, on a piece of paper or a primed white canvas. Then draw a triangle inside the circle to help position your colors.

Sheryl’s watercolor palette, interpreted on the color wheel above. Note how lacking her palette is in cool tones.

We’re going to start with paint straight out of the tube. The colors on the outside of the wheel are modern pigments. They’re the highest chroma. The earth tones are historic pigments and less intense. Black falls in the middle.

Use only the paints you carry in your paint kit. No painter has everything. One point of this exercise is to find the holes in your color space.

Find the closest thing you have to true red, blue and yellow. Choose paints that don’t have overtones of other colors. You might not have a color that is a true primary. Don’t force another color into that spot. Sheryl’s kit didn’t have a clear blue. She put both her blue dots to the left of the primary blue square, because they were both a little on the violet side. Another common paint is cadmium yellow medium. It’s actually pretty orange, so it goes to the side of true yellow. Label your colors, if you know their names.

Sheryl’s finished wheel, showing various mixes of pigments. Yours should look something like this.

You will have some tubes in your paint kit that don’t belong on the outside of the color wheel at all. Besides the earth tones, tubes that contain more than one pigment are less intense than straight pigments. (Pigments are usually listed on the tube.) Approximate where they go. For example, Sheryl has sap green, which is mix. She put it slightly inside the pure-pigment wheel, because it’s on the dull side.

Check your color wheel to see where you have gaps. Sheryl’s paint wheel is strongly weighted toward the warm colors—reds and yellows—and short on the blues and violets.

Draw a dotted line from two pigments on the outside of your color wheel—say quinacridone rose to ultramarine blue. Then make a mixture of those two colors and put a circle of that paint between the two. These are the neutrals you can make with your palette. Repeat this with different combinations until you get bored.

The complements you choose will have a big impact on the end result. Raw sienna is warmer than burnt sienna, so the final greys are warmer too.

A student asked for book recommendations for Christmas. I’ve gone over my own bookshelves in my mind’s eye. If the binding is worn from overuse, or it’s a new acquisition I’m excited over, I’m recommending it.

I frequently recommend Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It lays out the fundamental rule of artmaking: if you want to be an artist, you have to make art, lots of it, over and over again.

Drawing is a skill, not a talent. Not being able to do it holds you back as a painter. Sketching from Square One to Trafalgar Square, by Richard Scott, is a series of exercises that will take you from simple measurement to complex architecture.

Art of Sketching will help you expand your drawing to be more intuitive and spontaneous. The Practice and Science of Drawing is a classic Harold Speed text from Dover Art Instruction. It’s dated (especially in its opinions of ‘modern’ art) but contains much useful information on drawing technique.
If you’re looking for similar exercises in figure drawing, I recommend Drawing the Human Form, by William A. Berry. It’s based on anatomy, not style.

Every art studio should have one anatomy textbook. I love Atlas of Human Anatomy, by Frank H. Netter. Netter was both a doctor and an artist, and he did his own beautiful illustrations. There are other, art-targeted, anatomy books, but this provides all the information I need. Since you’re not practicing medicine, you can buy an outdated copy.

Landscape Painting Inside and Out, by Kevin Macpherson, is a clear, concise guide to getting paint from the tube to the canvas.

I have a shelf full of watercolor books, but my primary pigment reference is a website, Handprint, by Bruce MacEvoy. This has replaced the classic Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green, by David Wilcox. There are many different ways to get watercolor on paper. If you want to buy only one book on the subject, try The Complete Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook, by Gordon MacKenzie.

There are two color books I love. The first is Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color, which is filled with exercises to understand how color works. It’s fifty years old. The writing is dense to our modern sensibilities, but stick with it.

Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, by Philip Ball, is a brilliant, readable treatise on how chemistry and technology have combined to influence art. (It’s far better than Victoria Finlay’s Color, which is merely a travelogue.) When you’re done reading it, you should have a firm handle on the differences between earth, organic and twentieth-century pigments.

I have shelves full of catalogues raisonné, museum guides, and other illustrated histories of art, but following are a few of my favorites:

The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, by David Silcox, deals with the painters who’ve most influenced me as a landscape painter. Growing up in the shadow of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, I had no concept of twentieth-century realism, but there it was, being made right across border from me.

John Constable: The Making of a Master, by Mark Evans, illustrates a simple truth of landscape painting: it all starts outdoors. I also have Constable’s Skies by the same author. It’s a beautiful picture book.

America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, by Judith Barter, et al, is a catalog of Depression-era paintings by some of America’s most important painters. If you’re a fan of Regionalism, you’ll like it.

William Blake’s Watercolors to the Divine Comedy, 2000, by David Bindman is only available on the used-book market now, but it’s one of my favorite books. Of course, I’m energized by Blake and Dante; if you’re not, you won’t care.

I keep returning to Dover Publications’ Albrecht Dürer woodcut and engraving books. They should be subtitled, “so you think you can draw?”

F.C.B. Cadell by Alice Strang, is a book I refer to for composition inspiration. He’s my favorite of the Scottish Colourists.

Frederic Remington: The Color of Night, by Nancy Anderson, et al. One could argue that Remington invented the nocturne. Certainly, nobody did it better.

Vital Passage: The Newfoundland Epic of Rockwell Kent with a Catalogue Raisonne of Kent’s Newfoundland Works, by Jake Milgrem Wien, is a book I just purchased and love. My buddy Stephan Giannini tells me I should also read Kent’s own travel memoirs, which are extensive. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives by Jessica May, et al, is a catalog for a show originating at Portland Museum of Art and Brandywine Museum. Wyeth was, of course, much more than an illustrator.

(As ever, I am not getting a spiff for these recommendations. I used Amazon links for convenience, but by all means order these from your local bookseller instead.)

“You cannot step twice into the same stream, said Heraclitus (more or less). That’s true of painting, too.

I no longer remember what Catherine Bullinger and Brad VanAuken were laughing about.

“What do you charge to teach a private lesson?” a fellow teacher asked me. I never teach them, I responded. They aren’t the best way to learn to paint.

In a perfect-size class, the group works like an ensemble and there’s a great exchange of information. For me, that’s between 9 and 12 students in the studio and 6 to 12 in the field. Any more and I’m not giving enough attention to each person’s questions, problems and successes. By necessity, a larger class is based more on demos and lectures and less on one-on-one support.

But a too-small class has its problems too. It’s hard to develop a rhythm.

Learning to paint is not like learning a musical instrument. There, the creative impulse is mostly borrowed, in the form of the musical score. The teacher’s job is to help his student render that music with fidelity, but also with joy, life and meaning.

As you play through your piece, he watches and listens with great concentration. He notes awkward fingerings, flagging rhythms, wrong notes, and peculiar interpretations. Then he takes you through those problematic passages again and again until you get them right. It’s your job to go home and practice until your technique is encoded in muscle memory.

That need for one-on-one attention would make it difficult to teach a roomful of piano students simultaneously. And, of course, it would be utter cacophony.

I may dictate the subject, but each interpretation will be radically different.

In painting, however, the student is the primary creative force (which is why those paint-and-sip nights are so awful). Yes, I dictate what my students will paint. But their interpretation is always personal, starting from the moment their charcoal hits the paper.

“You cannot step twice into the same stream, said Heraclitus the Obscure. Unlike a pianist, a painter never navigates the same passage twice. I may talk with students about brushwork, demonstrate it, and even have them copy a technique on small corners of their paintings. But as soon as they’re back on their own, they’re in a thicket of their own devising. My role is to advise them, based on my own experience as a painter.

That involves lots of waiting to see what’s going to happen. If the class is too small, I find myself interrupting too frequently. Suddenly, I own the process, not my students.

Teressa Ramos in a class along the Erie Canal.

I was reminded of this in yesterday’s (perfect-sized) Zoom class. I’ve been talking with one student about loosening up and making big, wet washes for water and sky. She is a happy-go-lucky person, but that wasn’t coming through in her brushwork. She did six iterations of clouds. They were all just too tight. She seemed frustrated and on the verge of giving up for the day. I walked through what I meant once more and moved on, hoping that she would hang in there and try again. On that seventh try, she made a lovely, energetic painting of clouds. She simply needed time for the concept to click.

Students learn a lot from each other, too. In a group of twelve, everyone hears what I’m saying to the other students. Usually, the questions and answers are universally applicable. And if nothing else, they’re bound to be entertaining.

Don’t fuss endlessly with passages you’ve already laid down. This sucks all the life out of your painting.

Blueberry barrens, Clary Hill, oil on canvas by Carol L. Douglas. Available through Maine Farmland Trust Gallery, contact Karen Giles.

“Don’t nullify,” wrote watercolorist Stewart White. “Know the mark you want to make before you make it. And once it’s made, don’t try to erase it; it just gets muddy otherwise. Watercolor reveals everything.”

That’s excellent advice. Nullification is bad in every medium, not just watercolor. It leads to weak painting.

By nullification, I don’t mean just scrubbing or wiping out. I also mean repeated overpainting and reworking of the same passages.

Blueberry barrens, Clary Hill, watercolor by Carol L. Douglas. Available through Maine Farmland Trust Gallery, contact Karen Giles.

Francis Baconscrubbed intentionally, using the technique to depersonalize his portraits. You could say he’s the exception that proves the rule, since his technique points out how badly we view nullification.

In most cases, painters nullify because:

• They haven’t planned sufficiently, or
• They don’t like their brushwork.

Processprotects us from the need to nullify. By working out errors in a study phase, you avoid splashing them out on a big canvas. But even the most carefully-conceived paintings will have errors. Unless it’s a real whopper, just leave it. The human mind loves mysteries, and what happens between you and your paint is sometimes the greatest mystery of all.

Clark Island Rocks, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas, available through Carol L. Douglas Gallery, 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME.

Yes, you can lift watercolor with a scrubber, but it leaves an unpleasant softness in the paper. (Frank Costantino reminded me recently that scrubbing works better on hot-press paper.) In oils, you have more leeway: you can scrape with a palette knife and then wipe off the residue with a cloth. But even so, any alterations in alla prima painting will result in softening the line and contrast.

Nullification is not to be confused with the subtle modifications we do at the end of a painting. That’s often where real artistry comes in, in the heightening of contrast or subduing of less-important passages. One of the reasons I hate hearing students tell each other, “not another brushstroke!” is that it doesn’t respect these critical, end-of-the-painting choices.

But painters do sometimes endlessly fuss with passages they’ve already laid down. This sucks all the life out of their painting. Sometimes we do it because we haven’t got the color right, and we want to modulate it. If the value is right but the hue is wrong, it’s probably best to just leave it alone.

Bracken Ferns, oil on canvas by Carol L. Douglas, available through Carol L. Douglas Gallery, 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME.

Just as often, painters nullify because they don’t like their brushwork. The basic requirements for good brushwork are as follows:

• You’re using decent brushes (that doesn’t mean expensive);
• You’ve amply experimented with all the directions your brush can travel and the ways it can make lines;
• You know how to properly marry edges where appropriate;
• You can draw with a brush as easily as with a pencil;
• You’re not dabbing or poking dots with the point of your brush;
• You can make both long and short strokes.

Brushwork is as unique as handwriting. If you can do the things noted above, the problem may be that you just don’t recognize the good qualities in your own brushwork. In that case, “not another brushstroke” is actually appropriate. You need to give yourself time to become accustomed to your own mark-making before you can see its beauty.

Your assignment this week is to do a small painted study that takes you less than one hour. The subject is immaterial. Then, set it aside for two weeks. After that, I want you to look at it and analyze it against the requirements for brushwork above. And ask yourself, do you like it better than you did the moment you finished it? If yes, then learn to embrace your own brushwork. If no, then figure out why.

Organizations like Parrsboro Creative are pioneering new ways to connect with art audiences.

Morning on the Bay of Fundy, by Carol L. Douglas. I had hoped to reprise this view in the other direction this year.

In the normal course of things, I’d have nothing to do with video, despite it being the hottest way to connect with viewers. I don’t watch TV or movies, not because I’m a culture snob, but because I just never got in the habit.

But this is a year of change. This weekend, Parrsboro International Plein Air Festival (PIPAF) goes live, virtually. Or virtually live. When there’s no established language to describe what you’re doing, you’re on the edge of a whole new world.

At a time when many of us are hunkering down, Parrsboro Creative decided to push. They brought in a new communications director and designed a virtual auction. “I’m really excited and, yes, nervous to see how this is all going to work out,” board member Michael Fuller said.

Me too, Michael. I’d normally be packing and checking my gear and frames right now. Instead, I’m trying to master video so I can pull my weight this weekend.

Breaking Dawn, by Carol L. Douglas, painted at PIPAF. With typical perversity, Mother Nature has promised Parrsboro a perfect weekend this year.

I cut this short videofor PIPAF at the harbor, doing it in one take because I had no idea how to trim or splice. Then I made a time-lapse video of oil painting for my students. It was in three pieces so I was forced to learn to splice the sections together. ‘Terrible’ is an understatement, but I could at least show them the oil-painting process without using up an entire class. I was surprised to find that it was an effective teaching tool, despite the poor quality.

Although I quickly learned there’s a reason TV stars wear makeup, I haven’t time to master that too. Also, I need my hair trimmed.

I made a similar tape for my watercolor students. I’d noticed a ‘pause’ button, so decided to try it. I didn’t understand that it was pausing the video but continuing the audio. It gobbled up the most important parts of the demo. The camera shook in the wind; the lighting was terrible. Worse, I recorded it sideways. I had no idea how to turn it right-side-up.

I did a value study and painting before realizing the camera was sideways.

In other words, I’m pretty bad at this. But if they can design a whole new event up there in Parrsboro, I can master an itty-bitty phone. In a normal year, I could go to Maine Media Workshops and take a class, or perhaps ask my talented pal Terri Lea Smithfor help. But we’re all on our own right now, so I’m teaching myself.

I set up again. I’d figured out how to get the twist out of the camera angle, and corrected the lighting. For a few minutes, I forgot about the camera and just enjoyed drawing. It was a glimpse of possibility. But when I looked at the finished tape, I’d recorded it upside down.

Upside down. Sigh.

Each time I start anew, there’s rebellion deep down in my psyche: “I’m too old for this!” But I’m appreciating the kick in the pants more than I’m resenting the inconvenience. On one level, coping with lockdown has breathed new life into my routine.

This is one of three virtual shows I’m participating in this summer. The others are Two Hundred Years of Farming: a Bicentennial Celebration by Maine Farmland Trust, and the 13^thAnnual Paint for Preservation by Cape Elizabeth Land Trust. These organizations are using this time to develop new ways to connect with audiences. They are pioneers, and what they discover will long outlast the pandemic. They deserve our support.

I do not want to be a teacher who paints, but a painter who teaches.

Student work on Clary Hill. Plein air will always be my first love.

My friend occasionally acts like a break on my reckless ambition. I whine, “I’m tired,” and she reminds me that artists need balance or the creative impulse goes phut.

Having done both, I know that creativity requires more (or different) energy than putting up hay. I can force myself to mow or clean when I’m dead tired, but if I sit down at the easel in that state, nothing’s happening. We need rest and solitude to be makers, whether that takes the form of pottery, poetry or software.

With a Maine student who prefers to remain nameless (but not faceless).

Still, there are those who take that too far. The world is littered with people who endlessly chatter about the art they no longer do. Painting requires the discipline to sit down at your easel every day and face the blankness of unrealized thought. This is something I admire about my friend and long-ago student Cindy Zaglin. She’s had many distractions in life, including two bouts of cancer and Hurricane Sandy wrecking her workplace. But she is devoted to painting, and she never stops.

Writing, teaching, and marketing are distractions from our core work. The irony is that they also part of our core work, because art has to be put in front of viewers in order to sell.

Kamillah Ramos painting with me in the ADK. One nice thing about Zoom classes; you never need to brave the weather.

I do not want to be a teacher who paints, but a painter who teaches. And yet I now have two online classes, both with students I love. More importantly, I promised my local students that we would resume live plein air classes as soon as the state allowed it. We’re at that point now.

You don’t need to be in Maine to take my online classes, by the way. We have students from Texas, Indiana, and New York joining us. That diversity more than makes up for our cancelled workshops and events this summer.

Victoria Brustowicz and Teressa Ramos at my last class before I moved to Maine. It’s great having sme of my Rochester friends in my classes again. Note the mask; it was pollen season. I was way before my time.

Starting June 23, Tuesdays, 10-1, ZOOM session:

June 23

June 30

July 7

July 14

July 21

July 28

Plein air local class, starting June 25, Thursdays, 10-1, meeting in and around Rockport, ME:

June 25

July 2

July 9

July 16

July 23

July 30

Continuing ZOOM evening Session, Mondays, 6-9 PM, three dates left (There are a few seats left; I will prorate the fee):

June 15

June 22

June 29

Painting is so often a family affair. I miss young Sam Horowitz, and I also miss his mum and brother, both of whom I’ve had in my classes.

We cover the same subjects indoors and outdoors:

• Color theory
• Accurate drawing
• Mixing colors
• Finding your own voice
• Authentic brushwork

We stress painting protocols to get you to good results with the least amount of wasted time. That means drawing, brushwork and color. I’m not interested in creating carbon copies of my style; I’m going to nurture yours, instead. However, you will learn to paint boldly, using fresh, clean color. You’ll learn to build commanding compositions, and to use hue, value and line to draw the eye through your paintings.

Watercolor, oils, pastels, acrylics and—yes, even egg tempera—are all welcome. Because it’s a small group, I can work with painters of all levels. The fee is $200 for the six-week session.

All my classes are strictly limited to twelve people.

Email me for more information and supply lists.

Empty shelves in our stores are a warning to us all, but will we listen?

Captain Linda Striping is one of the works now available in my outdoor gallery, open Tuesday-Saturday, noon to five.

I like to buy local, but we haven’t been able to do so. Refurbishing my husband’s office was always on the docket for April. It got done, but not necessarily in the way I envisioned.

The only major purchases I was able to make locally were the paint and ceiling fan. His sit-to-stand workstation was always going to be special-order, but the printer stand, cabinet and area rug would have come from stores near us, had they been open. Roughly a thousand dollars that could have been spent locally went instead through Amazon and Wayfair directly to off-shore manufacturers. I wonder how much of our ‘stimulus money’ took the exact same winged path out of the United States.

Quebec Brook, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas. Available.

Once I was sure my outdoor gallery idea would work, I realized I needed a tent. To me, this has emotional shading, since I spent years on the art festival circuit. Last week I wrote about Wegmans and how they’re weathering COVID-19. I realized that Wegmans is not afraid to go back to selling bulk pasta. I can feel okay about raising a festival tent again.

My previous tent was a 10X10 E-Z Up. I was happy to find it for $200 twenty years ago. That $200 is now worth $300 with inflation, but I can buy the same model online now for $168.43.

There is nothing shoddy about this tent, despite its price.

I need twice as much tent now, so I paid $200 for a vinyl carport at a local store. I winced when I read “Made in China” on the box, but it was the only option I could find. Just like all that flat pack furniture in April, it’s surprisingly well-made.

Three Peas in a Pod, by Carol L. Douglas. Available.

What if I’d wanted to buy an American-made tent? As far as I know, the closest purveyor is Fred’sin Waterford, NY, but I couldn’t just go to their showroom and pick one out. They’re handcrafters of specialty tents. That’s where American manufacturing has been trending for the last fifty years—we make beautiful, expensive things, rather than the cheap, utilitarian stuff that everyone needs.

Teaching online, I’ve realized I need a headset to be audible to my students. I ordered one on May 27. As of yesterday, it hadn’t shipped. That tells me that our supply lines are as stretched for Amazon as they are in my local grocery store.

Autumn Farm, by Carol L. Douglas. Available.

Buycott is a phone app that purports to be your moral shopping guardian. Scan a barcode and it will tell you whether the maker violates moral issues that concern you, like slave labor or fair trade. It’s a good idea, but I just want to know where things are made. “Made in the USA” on the box means very little; it can mean that the items were assembled and packaged here from raw materials that were sourced entirely overseas. (Since there are no American pigment manufacturers anymore, the same could be said of my paintings.)

I can buy local produce and with some effort, locally-grown meat. But I can’t buy locally-made tents or vinyl signs. The empty shelves in our stores should be a warning to us all. Fixing this problem will require both political will and the willingness to pay a fair price for goods. Will we just forget about it as soon as the crisis is over?