Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
I’m going to look at this in the studio later and see if I can regain the sense of the Mercantile looming. Shadows, perhaps. My flagging energy has been at war with the calendar. Two weeks from tomorrow I fly to Scotland for a wedding. That pretty much marks the end of my working summer, …
A million quiet moments of beauty are in every vista. (Photo by Sandy Quang) One of the tasks of a plein air painting teacher is to locate painting sites. Not only must they have good subject matter, but they must be safe, have sufficient parking, and give access to a bathroom or a quiet stretch of shrubbery. They should …
Along the Na Pali Coast, oil on canvas, 48X72, by Brad Marshall. I met Brad Marshall on an overpass in Queens many years ago, on the way to a party at the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria. The shindig was drowned by torrential rains but we’ve been pals ever since. Besides being a …
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 material—your technical approach to the work. There is the subject. The meaning comes from …
The Mamaroneck River, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas My teaching year ends at the beginning of June, when I start my summer wanderings. So I was conflicted when V— contacted me about lessons. She is a well-known lithographer and designer. Normally I’d jump at the chance to have her join us, but there’s …
Unfinished, by Carol L Douglas, 16X20, oil on canvas. (The color is distorted because it was dark when I shot this.) Over the past three years, I have become enamored of the luminist paintings of Fitz Henry Lane. That doesn’t mean I want to paint like him, but I love the space and light in …
Doodled illumination, by Gail Kellogg Hope My pal Gail Kellogg Hope is home chasing a toddler around. Gail’s a trained artist, with an MA in art education from RIT. Occasionally she gets bored and does something ‘arty’ although she doesn’t have the mental space or energy to paint seriously right now. This is why she …
Continue reading “If you don’t have something good to say…”
Serina Mo and yours truly, filming in Mt. Hope Cemetery. (Photo by Chad Dusenbery.) Yesterday I made a painting tutorial with Serina Mo. This project has been delayed because of equipment problems, so we were running later in the season than we’d intended. Sunday dawned clear, windy and very cold. I’m accustomed to painting in …
Composition VII, 1913, by Wassily Kandinsky. Three artists arrived at the idea of pure abstraction at roughly the same time: Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich. This was not coincidence; all three believed in the spiritual properties of abstraction, an idea they got from the rich stew of spiritualism swirling around turn-of-the-century Europe. One of …
Continue reading “Color and meaning (color temperature, part 2)”
Autumn is the best time of the year to paint en plein air in Rochester. The light is beautiful, the foliage is an ever-changing kaleidoscope, and the weather is usually more stable than in summer. If you’re a new painting student, we’ll start by experimenting with different kinds of media, learning the fundamentals of drawing, …