Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
âBloomfield Farm,â by Carol L. Douglas. The soft rolling hills, hazy light and deep, gravelly soil are typical of the western part of New York. This has been a week of retrenchment, the backroom work that has to happen so that one can go back to the rough-and-tumble brush duel. Among other things, I met …
âMarshes along the Ottawa River, Plaisance,â by Carol L. Douglas. I set off on this journey with only three pre-conceived painting ideas: Kluane Lakeand the Liard River in Yukon, and Nepean Point in Ottawa. None of them have worked out exactly as planned. Iâve avoided painting cityscapes, as this was meant to be an exploration of the Great White North …
âTamarack bog,â by Carol L. Douglas While painting the bogs along the boardwalk to Liard Hot Springs in British Columbia, I was interrupted by a park vehicle that needed to pass. The driver and I peered at each other and realized weâd met last year. Heâd given us a ride back from the hot springs …
Mary, Queen of Scots by Jacob de Wet II, from the Great Gallery at Holyrood Palace. Edinburghâs Palace of Holyroodhouse is apparently where the Queen stores the motley family geegaws that donât fit in her other palaces. There is one room that should be of interest to art aficionados, howeverâthe Great Gallery, which originally served as the Palaceâs …
âDyce Head in the early morning light,â 12X9, oil on canvas board, Carol L. Douglas Itâs unusual to come home from a week of painting empty-handed, but it just happened. I painted 13 works in seven daysâseven at Ocean Park, six at Castine. Four are on display at Jakeman Hall in Ocean Park for rest of the season. …
The Red Truck, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas I believe that creativity rests less on freedom than on structure. Iâm not the only person whoâs discovered that genius requires discipline: from this Navy SEAL asserting that everything starts with making your bed to Mason Curreyâs Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, the idea permeates current …
The Harvest is Plenty, 36X48, by Carol L. Douglas On Friday I had the opportunity of hearing Dr. James Romaine give a gallery talk at Roberts Wesleyan. He described a piece of art as working in three spheres. There is the materialâyour technical approach to the work. There is the subject. The meaning comes from …
Running feet, oil on canvas, 24X36, Carol L. Douglas If you think painters have a hard time, you should consider the unpublished novelist. He struggles for months or years on a single work, getting very little feedback. When itâs finished, he peddles it to publishers through a faceless formality called the query letter. He has …
Lapis lazuli eyes in the 25th century BCE Statue of Ebih-II (eastern Syria). Todayâs misinformationcomes from the same fount that gave us yesterdayâsâfour-coned woman.â Itâs the idea that the ancients were somehow ignorant of the color blue, as evidenced by the fact that Homer called the ocean the âwine-dark sea.â Fragment of a fresco from the …
Continue reading “Debunkery #2: Yes, there was blue in the ancient world.”
Tetrachromacy means that you have four types of cone cells in the retina. Tetrachromats exist among birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and insects, but in most mammals there are two kinds of cones, and in humans and some of our primate relatives, there are three kinds. As you remember from high school, there are two types …
Continue reading “Debunkery #1: No, youâre probably not a tetrachromat”