fbpx

Tag: Ken DeWaard

Posted on

Weeds, pests and other good design

First intimations of fall, 8X10, oil on prepared birch surface.

Weā€™re in a long run of beautiful weather here in Maine. Ken DeWaard, Eric Jacobsen, Bjƶrn Runquist and I have been out plein air painting as much as possible. I really need to do some paperwork, but thereā€™s no rain on the forecast. How do people in southern California get anything done?

Here in New England, we know that any long stretch of warm, sunny, rain-free weather is the exception. Like squirrels storing up nuts for winter, weā€™re storing up visual memories of these warm days.

Overgrown, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard.

I havenā€™t concerned myself with results. Iā€™ve just painted fast and immersed myself in the process. Are any of these finished? Absolutely not. But theyā€™re better than what was on those boards before.

For some reason, itā€™s been all about the weeds for me this week. Iā€™m a big fan of God-as-gardener; I donā€™t think artificial gardens can touch wild meadows for beauty.

Natureā€™s palette shifts as the season progresses. Spring starts with delicate pastel blossoms blooming alongside the lilacs and dog roses. By midsummer, the blossoms grow more colorful, with crown vetch, clover and fireweed (and the brief, glorious burst of red wood lilies). Now that weā€™re approaching our first frost, we see radiant spirals of white and purple asters among the goldenrod. All are punctuated with the dried husks of milkweed and other earlier-blooming plants.

An unmowed field, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard.

Purple loosestrife is, of course, an invasive pest and noxious weed; the experts all tell us that. They suggest pulling the plants before they can set seeds or, if itā€™s not in a wetland, spraying with an herbicide. (However, it likes its feet damp, so it avoids wholesale chemical slaughter, for the most part.)

Itā€™s been around longer than I have, but its press is so bad that Iā€™ve avoided painting it. However, the color is like nothing else in nature, and it complements goldenrod wonderfully.

The heck with it, I decided. If Eric doesnā€™t mind that itā€™s growing in his back field, neither do I. ā€œThe bees love it,ā€ Eric told me. And anyways, Iā€™m kind of an invasive species here, myself.

Sunbathers at Beauchamp Point, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard.

Iā€™ve painted boats at Beauchamp Point many times, since Rockport is a haven for wooden-boat enthusiasts. This week, I was distracted by a group of sunbathers, laughing and talking in the sweet evening air. Thereā€™s no sand on this ā€˜beachā€™, just rocks and bigger rocks, but thereā€™s something satisfying about stretching out on a sun-kissed boulder. Pro tip: if you want people to leave, just start painting them.

Yesterday afternoon, Bjƶrn and I were finishing up, the others having moved along. An onshore breeze picked up. The temperature dropped, the leaves showed their undersides; a large flock of gulls pirouetted over our heads. ā€œWhere Iā€™m from,ā€ I told Bjƶrn, ā€œthe leaves turning over means a weather change.ā€ Heā€™d heard that too, but no such weather change is on the forecast.

After a lifetime in western New York, I could predict the weather from the sky, the wind, and even the smell of the air. Even after a decade, I have no such ability in Maine. I once asked Captain John Foss, what signs he looked for to predict a weather change. ā€œI listen to the weather forecast,ā€ he told me.

Mark next Friday on your calendar

Grand opening
Carol L. Douglas Gallery at Richards Hill
Friday, September 13, 5-7 PM
394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME 04856

For more details, see here.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Marine art finally escapes drydock

Brigantine Swift in Camden Harbor, 24X30, oil on canvas, framed, $3478 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

This painting benefitted from a good long spell in drydock.

I started it a few years ago on the docks at Camden harbor, for Camden on Canvas. Thatā€™s the brainchild of Colin Page, and itā€™s become a great venue for marine art as well as a successful fundraiser for the Camden Library. (Iā€™m happy to say Iā€™m in again for 2024.)

It was hot, I was parched, and for once the creak of wood and water wasnā€™t moving me. I threw down my brushes in disgust.

ā€œI hate it,ā€ I spat out as I scraped the canvas down. I almost never do that, but I was riled.

ā€œI like it,ā€ said Bjƶrn Runquist.

ā€œItā€™s not that bad,ā€ said Eric Jacobsen.

ā€œWhat is the matter with you?ā€ asked Ken DeWaard, who never cuts me any slack.

Whatā€™s the point of having friends if you never listen to them?

The only part I really liked was the filtered, haloed sun, but that wasnā€™t enough to hang a whole painting on. Still, I respect their opinions, so I didnā€™t use the canvas as a sail for my dinghy. Instead, it went into my giant pile of unfinished marine art. It was bigger than most of the others, so I was constantly catching it with my foot or in the corner of my eye. Gradually, it grew on me.

Its spars (the things the sails hang from) are so delicate that they look as if they couldnā€™t possibly survive the North Atlantic. Even worse, they looked cockeyed to me. ā€œYouā€™re a better draftsman than that,ā€ I chided myself.

I almost never take reference photos, preferring to whine at my friends if I discover I need one. However, I did find a picture from the dock that day. Those spars looked just as cockeyed in the photo as they did in my painting. The only other square-rigger I know of at rest is Cutty Sark, in Greenwich, England. Her spars are perpendicular to the keel, but sheā€™s not exactly docked; sheā€™s more trapped, like an insect in amber.

Cutty Sark stuck in her permanent installation in Greenwich. Sheā€™s going nowhere. Photo courtesy of Ethan Doyle White/

I called my resident expert on all matters maritime, Captain John Foss. He told me that, despite the name, a square-rigger can, in fact, turn its spars. They can be angled from running straight across the vessel (‘square’), to a beam reach or even a close reach.

I learn something new every day, darn it.

Marine art is complicted

Many years ago, I was wrapping up a painting on the Camden docks when two young salts stopped to look at it.

ā€œShould we tell her?ā€ asked one, quietly enough that he thought I couldnā€™t hear.

ā€œNah.ā€

I might love painting boats, but I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever done a spot of marine art that didnā€™t include an error or omission. Sometimes theyā€™re intentional, for compositional purposes. Sometimes theyā€™re oversights, and sometimes theyā€™re mistakes. I think this one is fine, but if not, one of my friends is sure to tell me.

Iā€™m in Britain onĀ another lovely, long, blister-inducing hike. Iā€™ve turned my phone off and while Iā€™m gone, Laura will be running the office. JustĀ email meĀ as usual if you have questions or problems registering for a class or workshop. (Who am I kidding? She fixes all that stuff anyway.)

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Main Street, Owls Head

Main Street, Owls Head, 16X20, oil on gessoboard, $1,623 unframed, includes shipping in continental US.

Before I get into this, we’ve updated all our 2024 workshops. We’ll be sending out coupons with discount codes soon; if you’re not on my mailing list already, sign up in the box to the right.

Each week until the end of the year I’ll be giving you a behind-the-scenes look at one of my favorite paintings. These are paintings that are available for you to purchase unless otherwise noted.

Plein air painters sometimes avoid work by endless texting about possible locations. Or, we can get into our cars and drive around, but with gas hovering at $4 a gallon that hasn’t been practical. A good artist can make a painting with the thinnest tissue of material, so you know that when we do that, we’re ducking something.

The empty house with the wild lupines, private collection.

I can almost always persuade Eric Jacobsen to come out to Owl’s Head. It has great fishing shacks and a stellar working harbor. The tiny hamlet of Owls Head has resisted the tarting up that’s marred parts of midcoast Maine. Plus, the Owl’s Head General Store has reopened and my sources say it is as good as ever.

A view of the same house from below on a very foggy day; I have no idea where this painting has larked off to.

There’s a house in Owl’s Head that’s been empty for around eight years (I heard it recently changed hands again; may this time be the charm.) I don’t know its specific story, but the phenomenon of the abandoned house has always bothered me. Sometimes it’s about lack of jobs in an area, or getting behind on taxes. Equally, it can be caused by friction between heirs, divorce or other ructions, which tear away at property as much as they tear away at human beings. But a house is a middle-class person’s biggest asset, so letting one moulder seems all wrong.

This is not a painting of that abandoned house. Rather, I painted it from that house’s front yard. I’d intended to paint the house itself once again, but as Eric and I stood scoping our vistas, I realized that I’d always wanted to paint the view downhill. That hip-roofed foursquare house is a coastal Maine gem, and its owners have carefully preserved its charm.

Fishing boat at Owl’s Head, private collection.

Eric set up looking uphill, and I set up looking downhill. This is where I developed my own version of Ken DeWaard’s Park-N-Paint, where I sit in a lawn chair in the bed of my truck with my feet up on a box. It’s so relaxed that Colin Page once asked me, “Carol, can’t you at least look like you’re working?”

That illusion of inertia must work, because when I was done, Eric said, “that’s great, Carol.” For once I agreed with him. It remains one of my favorite paintings.

Main Street, Owl’s Head is 16X20 and available for $1623. The whiff of seawater and sunlight is included free.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Beauchamp Point in Autumn

Beauchamp Point, Autumn Leaves, 12X16, framed, oil on archival canvasboard, $1449 includes shipping in continental US

Each week until the end of the year I’ll be giving you a behind-the-scenes look at one of my favorite paintings. These are paintings that are available for you to purchase unless otherwise noted.

Ken DeWaard, Eric Jacobsen and Bjƶrn Runquist all live near me. In a normal year (unlike this one, where I’m tied to the studio making Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters), we paint together a lot. Not only are they very funny, they’re also quite tall, so I have artists to look up to.

Beauchamp Point (Autumn Leaves) was painted on a sunny fall day with Ken, on the dirt road that circles Beauchamp Point. It’s very much a local watering hole-I mean that literally, since there’s a protected swimming area with great smooth granite rocks on which you can sun yourself after your salt water dip. At the very tip of the point, there’s a land preserve that you can only access by paddling.

Spite House, located on Beauchamp Point in Rockport. Built around 1806 in Phippsburg, Maine by Thomas McCobb, this lovely colonial mansion was loaded onto a barge in 1925 and towed up the coast by tugboat. It was bought by Donald Dodge of Philadelphia who wanted it moved to Beauchamp Point in Rockport, where he planned to reside in the summers. Even the foundation was taken down and marked for re-setting on the new site. (Courtesy Digital Maine)

However, Ken is a disciple of a method he calls Park-N-Paint, which means that we never stray from our cars. I appreciate that, since my painting pack weighs about 40 lbs.

On this sparkling autumn day, the shadows were long and the sun was brilliant and warm. Ken painted the shadows on the rising forest slope. I looked down the road itself. There was almost no traffic, because very few tourists realize how lovely Maine is in October.

Rockport harbor is little changed from the time this postcard was made, as it’s home to many wonderful wooden boats even today.

The colors were brilliant, with every leaf picked out in jewel tones. As ever, I was reminded that we artists only produce a poor approximation of God’s handiwork. However, there’s something to be said for the way we interpret it. Plein air painting is truly a cooperative venture between nature and man.

You can buy this painting by clicking through here. I might even throw in directions to our secret swimming hole.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: simplifying shapes in the landscape

Thinking about the landscape as a series of planes will help you create depth in your painting. 

Ice Bound Locks, John F. Carlson, courtesy Vose Galleries

When Eric Jacobsen told us that he was teaching the theory of angles and consequent values in his recent workshop, I was baffled by the big words. “What’s that when it’s at home?” I asked him. Ken DeWaard was equally confused, responding in a torrent of emojis.

“C’mon, guys, it’s John F. Carlson 101!” Eric exclaimed. Bjƶrn Runquist immediately checked, and announced that there was nothing about any angles on page 101. (Actually, it’s in chapter 3; I checked.)

It’s no wonder that Eric’s no longer returning our calls.

Sylvan Labyrinth, John F. Carlson, courtesy of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

All kidding aside, Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting is a classic. His theory, although it has a high-flown title, is actually quite intelligible to even the meanest intellects (and you know who you are, guys).

“Every good picture is fundamentally an arrangement of three or four large masses,” Carlson began. That’s as good an organizing principle as any in art. Value is what makes form visible, so we should see, translate, simplify and organize form into value masses.

Carlson wrote that any landscape would contain four groups of values bouncing off three major planes:

  • The horizontal ground plane;
  • The angle plane represented by mountain slopes or rooftops;
  • The upright plane, which is perpendicular to the ground plane, such as trees.

In the middle of the day-our most common circumstance for painting-the value structure would be as follows:

  • The sky is our light source. It should be the highest value in our painting.
  • The ground plane gets the most light bouncing off it, so it should be the next-lightest plane.
  • The angle planes such as rooftops or mountain slopes, are the next lightest planes.
  • The upright objects in our painting, such as trees, walls or people, should be the darkest value element.
Snow Lyric, John F. Carlson, courtesy of The Athenaeum

That doesn’t mean that the shapes are crudely simplified, as a glance at Carlson’s own paintings confirms. The shapes can be beautiful, elegant, complex, and lyrical without too much value overlap.

Thinking about the landscape as a series of planes will help you create depth in your painting. However, it can be tricky to see the landscape as a series of planes rather than objects. It can be helpful to keep each value group completely separate, with no overlap of values, but, in reality, there will always be overlap.

Your assignment is to find a photo among your own snapshots and reduce it to a series of four values. Then paint it.

As you try to integrate this idea into your painting, exaggerate the separation of planes.

Of course, there are many circumstances where this doesn’t hold true-where the sky is leaden and darker than a snow plane, or when the fading evening light is hitting the vertical plane rather than the ground. But understanding it will help you paint the exceptions in a more arresting way.

This post originally appeared in 2021, but the information bears repeating.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art Schoolā€”Greeking

Ice Cream Stand, 8×10, Carol L. Douglas, $652 framed includes shipping.

Artists use the term ‘greeking’ to describe writing that isn’t writing, text that isn’t text, in a painting. The term comes from typography. There’s a famous passage that starts, Lorem ipsum dolor sit ametā€¦ It gets subbed in anywhere where the words aren’t already available to the designer.

This text comes from an essay by Cicero, and has been used by typesetters for this purpose almost since the start of moveable type. I don’t know which surprises me more-that typesetters in the 15th century knew Latin, or that so many of us today can recite a fragment of Cicero without having a clue about its meaning.

Medieval scribes were schooled in Latin, but not Greek. When they encountered Greek in a passage, they would note, graecum est; non potest legi (It’s Greek, so it can’t be read). Today we say, “it’s all Greek to me,” meaning it’s in a foreign language. Thus, a Latin placeholder ends up being called greeking. Makes perfect sense.

Poosie Nansie’s Inn, from Picturesque Ayrshire, 1900, by William Harvey. This was a popular subject for photographs due to its association with Robert Burns.

When is greeking appropriate?

Actual words are powerfully potent in visual imagery, as advertising attests. For a more high-brow example, think of Robert Indiana‘s famous LOVE icon and how it immediately changes the landscape when in sculptural form.

There are times when words can stand alone. For example, you might paint nocturne of a bar and put the single word ‘bar’ over the transom, to convey something about the destination to your viewers. That would read differently than if you carefully scribed Poosie Nansies, etc. on the wall of a painting of that Scottish inn. In the photo above, we’re instantly drawn to the text at the expense of the people, road, and fabulous chimney pots. The photographer couldn’t help it, but we painters have the option to deemphasize the writing in favor of the longer view.

We greek words to avoid overemphasizing their meaning at the expense of your overall design.

The Washing Buckets, 20X16, Ken DeWaard, courtesy of the artist.

How do I do it?

In oils, greeking is very simple. You simply scribe in some approximation of text and then push the background colors against it. You can do that neatly, as in Ken DeWaard‘s example above, or mushily, as in mine, at top.

Tums Bottle, watercolor, approximately 4X5, Carol L. Douglas.

In watercolor it is a little more difficult, since you can’t push the paint around in quite the same way. If the text you’re greeking is darker than the background, just scribble it in. If you have to reverse it, I find it’s easiest to write it in with your light color, let it dry, and then push the background in around it.

Try it; it’s fun!

My 30 Watercolors in 45 Days Challenge is an excellent opportunity to try greeking. Anything packaged in your home is bound to have words on it. Or, paint a sign in a landscape and experiment with how muddled or clear you want it to be. How does the painting read differently with different levels of clarity in the text?

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Is that painting finished?

Drying Sails, oil on canvas, 9x12, available on my website later this morning.
Drying Sails, oil on canvas, 9x12, available on my website later this morning.

When Iā€™m wondering, ā€œis this painting finished?ā€ the answer is usually yes.

Camden Harbor before the day begins, 8x10, oil on canvasboard, available on my website later this morning.

Iā€™ve been carrying a small 8x10 around in my backpack for a few weeks, hoping to run into Ken DeWaard so I could ask him if he had a reference photo from that day. Itā€™s of the ketch Angelique, on the left, and Lazy Jack II. Iā€™ve got a good visual memory, but that was last summer or perhaps the summer before. Not only has the detail faded in my mind, any sense of what I wanted to ā€˜finishā€™ has disappeared as well.

I caught up with him Tuesday, when our respective painting classes ended up on the same beach. (If you havenā€™t seen this story from Owlā€™s Head, itā€™ll encourage you to keep your footsies out of deep water this summer.) Ken shook his head and said, ā€œI got nothinā€™,ā€ and laughed. ā€œIf it was earlier this summer, maybe.ā€ Such a day is indistinguishable from a thousand other painting days, unless it results in a painting one loves enough to keep. (We paint a lot of dreck along the way.)

I propped it up on a bench and pondered. Is it really not finished? Thereā€™s detail Iā€™d love to add, and the masts look chunky. But they so often do on windjammers, which were originally built not as yachts but as working boats. The color is coherent and evocative, and the brushwork is unified and expressive. Whatā€™s really left to add?

Owl's Head, Early Morning, 8X16, available.

The painting of Owlā€™s Head lobster boats, above, is another example of one I toted around until I realized it was done. I recently popped it into a frame and now I love it just as it is.

Iā€™m in a boat-painting tear, and itā€™s not always going well. ā€œIā€™m channeling George Bellows,ā€ I told Bobbi Heath as I hacked farther and farther into the weeds on a canvas that probably ought to go in the woodstove. As always, the problem started out compositionally, but the students in my Zoom critique class suggested that I get rid of a big green dumpster on the dock. That helped, but itā€™s still way too busy and way too brightā€”without Bellowsā€™ incisive wit and commentary. No reference photo will save this canvas. Itā€™s overbaked and underthought.

Meanwhile, I met Bjƶrn Runquist to practice our chip shots in advance of Camden on Canvas. ā€œThereā€™s a nice angle of Lazy Jack from that bench over there,ā€ I told him. Had either of us been smarter, we might have asked why I wasnā€™t painting that schooner myself. The answer, riding in my subconscious, is that sheā€™s a daytripper. You canā€™t trust her. You get her limned in, all beautiful, and she up and leaves you. Sure enough, thatā€™s what happened to Bjƶrn. Oops.

Coming Around Owl's Head, 6x8, is available through Cape Ann Plein Air's online sale.

It had rained, so Lazy Jack was running her sails up and down to dry them off. This is a subject that fascinates Ken DeWaard, so I try to avoid it. Occasionally, however, itā€™s irresistible, because it adds another compositional dimension to boats in harbor. Having learned my lesson, I finished the painting, at top, quickly, before I forgot what I was doing.

Iā€™m absolutely horrible at taking reference photos. I get caught up in the moment and the light. By the time I remember, itā€™s too late. Still, itā€™s something Iā€™ve resolved to do better. But taking the painting back into the studio and adding details has the potential to stomp on its beauty. When Iā€™m wondering, ā€œis this painting finished?ā€ the answer is usually yes.