Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
Brian Williams probably didn’t see dead bodies lying in the street during Hurricane Katrina, and it’s clear that he didn’t come under small arms enemy fire in a Chinook helicopter in 2003. Nor did Hillary Clinton land under sniper fire in the Balkins or Tom Harkin fly combat missions in Vietnam. There’s the institutional blindness …
Adjust the pigments for 21st century tastes and this is a perfect explanation of how paired primaries are actually more versatile than having every pigment on your palette. I’d substitute quinacridone violet for alizarin crimson, and Hansa yellow for zinc yellow. This weekend, I was on the Schoodic Peninsula to test painting sites for my …
Camden and Mt. Battie, by Carol L. Douglas Tomorrow morning, I’m going to the Belfast Creative Coalition’s annual meeting. I’m going because I’m interested in a Land Trust proposal, but mostly to satisfy my curiosity. Belfast is a city of 6,800 people, located in a county of about 38,000 people. Yet Belfast has enough art …
Baby Jake, tiny sketch by me while he slept in my lap. There is a meme panning ugly Renaissance babies. Every time it pops up, I’m reminded that the posters have most likely never painted a baby from life. Most of my successful artist pals are childless. This makes perfect sense in the modern world, …
With a sketchbook, even the Emergency Room is tolerably interesting. This, from last month’s visit. Yesterday morning I struggled up out of sleep to the sound of my phone ringing. My second oldest child was taking her turn with the collywobbles-sans-merci and needed a doctor. Without thinking much about it, I threw my clothes on …
Intrepid nighttime painters in last year’s workshop. Robert F. Bukaty is a photojournalist in Freeport, Maine. He recently wrote about a series of nighttime photos he did in Acadia using his red headlamp (similar to a photographic darkroom safe light) as a paintbrush. The images he created are lovely, and you can see them here. …
Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast, John Singer Sargent, 1882-83. This small, intimate painting was done a year before the infamous Madame X, and was given by Sargent to Madame Gautreau’s mother. Madame X—Madame Pierre Gautreau—is remembered because of John Singer Sargent’s famous portrait. Like him, she was an American expatriate and arriviste, which perhaps explains …
Literature. If you look closely, you’ll find Van Reid in there. Why listen to me talk about art when you can look at windows from Bergdorf Goodman on 5th and 58th in New York City? Their theme this year is “Inspired” and their windows revolve around the arts. The music window is everything you want …
Cece and her self-portrait in progress. Cece has been working on her self-portrait for two weeks; Jingwei for a week. This is a laborious process of learning to measure, learning to model, and then assembling these techniques into an autobiographical whole. This is the hardest assignment I give to high school seniors, and their ability …
Three houses, a bad photo of a decent painting by little ol’ me. It’s a little hard to get an hourly forecast for a specific spot on the Maine coast. It can be pouring in one place and clear in the next town over. However, not only was the National Weather Service calling for rain, …
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