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Category: water

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Reflecting on water

At 5 PM today I’ll be participating in an artist’s talk on A Reflection on Water for Maine Farmland Trust Gallery. (It’s online, so feel free to sign up and heckle).

Beaver Dam, by Carol L. Douglas. Available through Maine Farmland Trust Gallery.

People who don’t know me well are sometimes surprised to realize just how ‘green’ I am. I was raised along the Great Lakes in their worst years, when we couldn’t eat the fish or even swim in some places. I’m aware of just how much we humans are capable of fouling our own nests (or in the case of moving manufacturing offshore, fouling the nests of others). I’d prefer that we all consume less, and my family will tell you that I’m quite capable of hectoring on the subject.

I don’t paint didactically, however. I hope my work speaks to my awe at and respect for God’s Creation, but I’m not called to lecture with paint.

Fog Bank, by Carol L. Douglas. by Carol L. Douglas. Available through Maine Farmland Trust Gallery

Water is a loaded and contradictory image. It is both the wellspring of life and its destroyer. Without it, life as we know it can’t exist. Christians are baptized with it; Jesus walked on it and turned it into wine. But on the flip side, water has great destructive potential. I only need to walk down to the harbor to see the power of the North Atlantic against seemingly-immutable granite. When God wanted to destroy civilization, he did so with a flood.

Why is water painted so frequently? Obviously, it’s beautiful and difficult to render in all its complexity. But it’s also a powerful metaphor for life. We humans are fragile vessels navigating seas that are sometimes serene, often tempestuous. In the end, no matter how many people we surround ourselves with, we sail alone.

Home Farm, by Carol L. Douglas. Available through Maine Farmland Trust Gallery

Only one of the three paintings I have in this show is about the sea. In Fog Bank, water obscures our vision. That can be very dangerous here where the ocean and land intersect. In Home Farm, water has been tamed and collected for agricultural use by a prosperous farmer. In Beaver Dam, the watercourse has been altered not by man, but by wild beasts.

Last Saturday I potted around the Steinhatchee River in a pontoon boat with Natalia Andreevaand Mary O. Smith. It’s a short, pristine and very southern river. A large oak was down in the channel ahead of us; we were forced to backtrack and choose a different route. My hydrologist friend Ken Avery told me something interesting about these big snags in waterways: if someone doesn’t remove them, they will ultimately change the course of the river. That’s clear from looking at beaver dams, which are collections of fragile sticks that nonetheless alter streams forever.

Deadwood, 30X40, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas. Available.

It’s also a great life lesson and what I was trying to say in my painting Deadwood (which is too big for this show). Remove the detritus from your life or it will change the course of your existence.

I’ve been working so hard that my house is filthy, so I’m going to take the day off and use water—in a bucket, with a little Murphy’s Oil Soap—to do some fall cleaning. But at 5 PM sharp, I’ll be participating in an artist’s talk on A Reflection on Water for Maine Farmland Trust Gallery. (It’s online, so feel free to sign up and heckle). See you then.

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Monday Morning Art School: Reflections

Time for art class. Get out your pencils and get started.

Reflections off American Eagle in Stonington, watercolor, by Carol L. Douglas
Artists often trip up on the stochastic processes: things that have a general pattern but can’t be predicted precisely. We tend to either ignore the pattern altogether or overstate it into rigid regularity. These are everywhere in nature: in the distribution of leaves on trees, wildflowers in fields, the cleaving of rocks, and the behavior of water.
The surface of water is one of the most fascinating and difficult things to paint. It can be utterly still, or random and choppy, or it can create orderly patterns of surface ripples or waves. When it hits an obstacle like a ledge or the shore, its surface behavior is dictated by what’s underneath. In a rainstorm, fresh water floats on the surface of salt water, adding another pattern.
I like to sketch what the surface of water is doing. This changes quickly, so it helps to do this in a fast-working medium like pencil or watercolor. I did the above sketch while anchored off Stonington last week, but you don’t need an ocean for this exercise. There’s standing water almost everywhere: in ponds, lakes, or streams.
Light reflects identically but opposite. That’s immutable. What changes with water is the shape of the surface.
Reflection involves two rays – an incoming (incident) ray and an outgoing (reflected) ray. Physics tells us that the angles are identical but on opposite sides of a tangent. This is immutable. It’s why reflections that do not run in a generally-straight line down to the viewer are always wrong.
If water were perfectly still and perfectly reflective, its surface would be a mirror. Two factors prevent that. First, some rays of light are absorbed, and not reflected. This is true in both directions. Some of the light from the sky is absorbed. At the same time, we can see some of the color (or objects) under the water. Furthermore, the surface is never flat; it’s wavy or worse, just like a fun-house mirror.
The surface of the water at the Isaac H. Evans’ berth in Rockland.
In most cases, a sea wave’s surface is also windblown and irregular. That makes its surface infinitely varied. Rays are reflected at many different angles, radically disrupting the image. This gives the surface of the sea or its spray a solid or matte appearance.
Where we see directly into water, it’s the least reflective. That can either mean looking straight down or into the face of the wave. These surfaces are most likely green or brown in tone, depending on what’s underneath. The tops of the waves reflect the sky, but the sky isn’t the same color in all directions. Other surfaces reflect what’s in the distance—moonlight, other boats, structures, trees. Often these last reflections take the form of rings.
In relatively still water, reflections are irregularly elliptical.
In relatively still water, reflections are generally elliptical, although those ellipses may join in long strings or have vibration interference depending on the surface breeze. As the water becomes less still, water generally sorts itself into waves with identifiable patterns.
Waves can range from very tiny ripples to towering structures nearly a hundred feet tall. Most of us see waves as they approach the shore. There their behavior changes radically. They tend to pile up as the water gets shallower, effectively growing taller and slowing down. As they break, all predictability ends. The spray from a breaking wave can and does go anywhere.
The light stream is fresh water on top of salt water during a rainstorm.
Your assignment, then, is to find a body of standing water somewhere near you, and draw or paint the reflections. Don’t worry about the setting; we are only concerned with the behavior of the waves you are seeing.
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Hydrate or die

Plein air painters may not often break a sweat, but we’re exposed to the same environmental stresses as athletes.
Niagara Falls, pastel, Carol L. Douglas.
Yesterday, I wrote that when my painting goes south, I ask myself basic questions about my process and the ergonomics of painting. Then I proceeded to ignore my own advice. I felt terrible all day, fighting a headache and fatigue. At 2 PM I took aspirin with a cup of coffee and tucked myself in my bed for a few moments to wait for them to work. At dinnertime, I awoke with a start when my friend Barb hallooed from my kitchen.  I’d missed an appointment and wasted an afternoon.
I wasn’t particularly overtired; I was thirsty. Proper hydration is as much a priority for plein airpainters and long-distance travelers as it is for athletes. Although the results of drinking insufficient water are less spectacular for us, they’re no less real.

Headwaters of the Hudson, oil on canvas, Carol L. Douglas.
I often bring my water bottle with me, only to use it as a wind-weight on my easel or for wetting paints. Why am I so resistant to drinking in the field?
The problem isn’t the opportunity to drink fluids; it’s the opportunity to expel them. Even if you’re accustomed to peeing in the woods, it isn’t always possible. Le pipi rustique is simply more difficult for women than it is for men, and I subconsciously avoid it.
As a teacher, I’m mindful about not putting my students in situations where there aren’t bathrooms. As a painter, I’m more willing to go off the beaten path.
Curve on Goosefare Brook, 8X6, Carol L. Douglas.
The same is true with being on the road. Beverage options are limited to coffee, water, or sodas. Rest stops are few and far between, and stopping takes time. Fast food, should you be unlucky enough to have to eat it, is loaded with sodium. While one could prepare food and beverages at home, it’s a third level of packing, on top of equipment and clothing. I never seem to have the time to do it.
It’s true that the benefits of water have been oversoldin recent years. Still, water is important, and we suffer when we don’t drink it. Our bodies are about 60% water. It plays a role in every major system. Cells that don’t maintain the proper electrolyte balance shrivel, resulting in muscle fatigue. Water helps our kidneys excrete toxins and keeps our bowels happy. It lubricates our joints and regulates our body temperature. It helps transport nutrients.
Kaaterskill Falls, by Carol L. Douglas.
Plein air painters may not often break a sweat, but we’re exposed to the same environmental stresses as athletes: heat, cold, and wind. Hiking with our kits, setting up, and tearing down are physically demanding. If we’re not hydrated, we can’t perform at our highest level.
So I’m resolved—once again—to drink more fluids, even when it’s difficult. Now, if anyone has suggestions on how to succeed at that, I’d love to hear them.

An addendum: I had an eye exam this afternoon, and I suffer from a common ailment called epithelial basement membrane dystrophy. That’s a fancy way of saying “dry eyes,” and it just underscores the need to drink more water.