Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
This exercise is like learning perspective. You’ll never draw this way in the real world, but practicing it will improve your harborside skills. Cadet, by Carol L. Douglas I tell my students that it’s best to paint a boat from the deck of another boat or a floating dock. If you can’t, then keep your …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: how to draw a boat”
Whether you want to make a drawing as detailed as Prud’hon’s or as simplified as Gauguin’s, the process is the same. My precious linen drape. If you’re lucky enough to own a worn mid-century linen tablecloth, don’t get rid of it. It can stand in as a drape under a still life, or as a sheet …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: drawing draperies”
There’s now a Facebook group for you to post your homework, folks. You’ve all seen artists holding a pencil up like the clip art below. What they’re doing is rough measuring. It’s simple. Just hold the pencil up like a ruler in front of the object you’re drawing. Move it around to see the relative height and …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: How to draw almost anything”
I teach a painting process. Are the personal epiphanies just an extra benefit, or are they actually the heart of the matter? Becky being mugged by a seagull. Schoodic Point is the crown of Acadia’s Schoodic Peninsula. It is so vast that I save it for later in the week, when people have gotten the …
In the absence of a world-class volcanic event, we can expect a typical, stunning coast-of-Maine summer. What better way to spend it than painting outdoors? There’s been only one time in American history when summer failed to show up. That was 1816, and it was caused by the eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Dutch …
Continue reading “In the absence of volcanoes, learn to paint”
Rivendell, by JRR Tolkien (Tolkien estate) The other day, I found the above picture of Rivendell for a friend, and it struck me anew that J.R.R Tolkien was an accomplished illustrator. He could have worked as an artist had he not had an even greater facility with the written word. “Who taught him to paint?” I …
Continue reading “Who taught JRR Tolkien to draw and paint?”
Now is the time to buy an artist you love—possibly even yourself—a special gift for Christmas. Spend a week painting with Carol L. Douglas in one of the most beautiful venues in America—inspirational, mystical Schoodic in Maine’s Acadia National Park. And if you reserve before January 1, you can save $100! Far from the hustle and …
Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1888, Paul Gauguin. If still life couldn’t express emotion, Van Gogh’s sunflowers wouldn’t move us. I have a young Facebook friend on the other side of the country who likes to draw. I try to give him pointers long-distance, but that isn’t always easy. His problems are less technical than emotional. …
Passing a kidney stone. Did I mention there’s very little privacy in a hospital ward? Yesterday I found myself bunged into the hospital. (This is about the miasma that passes for a climate here in November, and it’s nothing to worry about.) Luckily I nabbed my toothbrush and sketchpad on the way. It ran into …
Two pieces of silverware and a coffee cup: a tricky thing to draw. But when you’re done, you’ll have the basic tools to draw anything. Yesterday’s lesson on the pencil and thumb method was easy to teach in person, but difficult to write out in steps. Today’s lesson, on using angles, is easier to write, but will …