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Tag: Monday Morning Art School

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Monday Morning Art School: treading-water syndrome

Coast Guard Inspection, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Canadian-American mystery writer Charlotte MacLeod coined something she called, ‘treading-water syndrome’. This was, “panic at being out of one’s depth. Fear that, if a case did not quickly yield up its secrets, it would remain forever impenetrable.” The character who said that was a middle-age college professor. By putting those words in his experienced mouth, MacLeod was saying that it happens to us all.

That’s just what happened to me at my first professional plein air event. I was slopping solvent around my underpainting, which made everything dark and muddy. Then I tried to use white to lighten that layer. In fact, I was pretty much breaking every painting rule I’d ever learned. Eventually, a friend came over and brought me up sharp: “Carol, stop this. You know how to paint.” I took a deep breath, wiped out the canvas, and painted the painting properly.

The Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

My friend Brad Marshall called what I was doing ‘flailing around.’ It’s a good description of one way in which we temporarily take leave of our senses. But it’s not the only way. There’s also:

  • Creative block: you suddenly have no ideas at all, or if something occurs to you, it doesn’t seem worth pursuing;
  • Obsessing over details: I’ve wrecked some perfectly wonderful paintings doing this;
  • Avoidance or procrastination;
  • Negative self-talk;
  • Imposter syndrome: “Why did they let me in when there’s so many great painters here?” Bobbi Heath can attest to how many times she’s had to talk me off this cliff;
  • Emotional and physical distress: in moments of stress, I’ve learned to look and sound calm, but my gut always betrays me;
  • Seeking external validation: That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it requires that there’s someone around who’s kind-hearted and intelligent enough to give you the right nudge.
Drying Sails, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed.

First principles

I just heard a story about a very competent musician who couldn’t make it in music. His highs were too high; his lows too low. He essentially never found a way to manage his panic.

One way to get over treading-water syndrome is to get older; you’re less inclined to panic in general. That’s not much comfort to younger people. And there are still times when everyone feels like they’ve lost control. How, then, do you get your ship righted with the least amount of psychic pain?

It helps me to have a plan. I approach painting the same way each time, and if I’m feeling jittery, I slow down on the value drawing until my mind submits. I teach every workshop from a syllabus. That’s primarily so I know I’ll cover the important stuff. However, when something unexpected happens, I can take a deep breath, return to my notes and keep going.

A plan is just an external support to our cognitive flexibility and self-monitoring. You can’t beat it.

Skylarking, 24X36, oil on canvas, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Eensy weensy bites

As you can imagine, there’s rather a backlog here after I’ve been gone so long. I’m pretty disciplined about studio work before housework, but some of these domestic tasks haven’t been done since October. If I try to tackle everything at once, I’m just going back to bed until after the holidays. Instead, I’m going to ignore the big picture and tackle one small thing at a time. It’s my best strategy to avoid total paralysis.

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Monday Morning Art School: digital reproduction

Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed.

I get several messages a week asking me if I’m interested in selling my paintings as NFTs. My answer is that paintings are one-off tactile objects, not digital assets. Not that the shills for NFTs like taking no for an answer, but NFTs and fine art don’t really mix.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn a lot by looking at paintings online. The world has been immeasurably enriched by museums opening their collections on the internet. For example, the 99% of people who will never see Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch in person can still look at it brushstroke-by-brushstroke on the Rijksmuseum website. And the digital world has had a remarkable democratizing influence on the sale and distribution of contemporary art and music.

Dawn Wind, Twin Lights, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

But a digital image of a painting is never the same as the real thing. Recent research using Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring may validate this argument. Using electroencephalograms (EEG), researchers at the Mauritshuis in the Netherlands demonstrated that looking at actual paintings stimulates the brain differently than looking at reproductions. “The viewer’s emotional response is ten times stronger when they are face to face with the painting in the museum,” they reported.

Vermeer is what’s known as a linear painter, which means he focused on clarity, modeling, structure, and detail. That’s in contrast to painterliness, which means work that is less controlled, relying more on brushwork and expression. The researchers got similar results from the works of two other Dutch Golden Age painters, Rembrandt van Rijn, who is considered painterly, and Willem Van Honthorst, another linear painter. Apparently, it was the paint itself that mattered, not how it was applied.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869, includes shipping in continental US.

You may recognize this composition

Researchers also reported a ‘sustained attentional loop’ unique to The Girl with the Pearl Earring. People who’ve studied composition will recognize this as a classic triangle composition, a series of focal points designed to engage the viewer. While this composition has been used throughout art history, The Girl with the Pearl Earring delivers it as a quick one-two-three punch-up—lips, eye, earring.

More questions

This was a very small study of a very narrow period in art history, but it raises interesting questions. Would similar experiments on a broader range of art and artists show us, for example, whether other periods of art fare better or worse in reproductions? Would that information help us determine whether one kind of painting is objectively better than another?

The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Mona Lisa are both superstar paintings, known by almost everyone. However, Mona Lisa is almost unviewable in real life, due to the immense crowds thronging its gallery. If similar responses were recorded at the Louvre, would that mean that part of the response to The Girl with the Pearl Earring was due to celebrity?

Nighttime at Clam Cove, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $696 unframed.

An aside about scams

Because my phone number and email address are on my website, I get more than my share of scammy messages. I thought I was expert at weeding through them. This week, one of my students apparently texted me, asking me to follow her new Instagram store. When the texter asked me to send back information, I checked the phone number against my records and realized it was a clone.

What shocked me was that the bot seemed to have some idea of my relationship with my student. Was that AI or a lucky guess? I don’t know, but you can never be too careful.

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Monday Morning Art School: the secret to confident brushwork

I always carry a sketchbook with me when painting, and I always start with a drawing. It saves me tons of time.

People ask me how to develop confident brushwork. The answer is to get better at drawing. Yes, confident brushwork depends in part on painting technique, but it really requires that you not flail around changing things in the painting phase.

“Draw slow, paint fast,” one of my students once said, and I’ve found it as good a motto as any for developing a loose painting style.

Confident brushwork is about simplification, and you can’t simplify when the shapes aren’t right to start with.

One painter’s testimony

Pam’s sketch of her doctor’s office.

Pam Otis is a painting student who’s taken my drawing class. I asked her what her biggest obstacle was. “Silencing that voice inside my head that told me I couldn’t draw,” she said. “What finally put it to rest for me was when you talked in class about the developmental stages of drawing and how adults who say they can’t draw are really just people who got to a certain developmental stage but for a myriad of reasons didn’t take it any further.

“Once I realized that it wasn’t a matter of me lacking talent or competence, just that I hadn’t learned the skills I needed to progress, it made the whole thing less mysterious and more a concrete skill that I could get better at with practice. That was truly life-changing in terms of gaining confidence in myself and my abilities as an artist.”

Most people avoid things they find difficult. “Having the technical ability to draw something correctly makes it so much easier to execute a painting without avoiding hard things,” Pam said. Drawing gives me the space I need to ask questions like ‘What would happen if I…?’”

Drawing by Pam Otis.

Pam says the most surprising thing about drawing is that it’s so interpretive. â€œThere are so many ways that you can use line and shadow to tell a story, and what you leave out can often make for a more powerful image. 

“Drawing gives me time to reflect about my goals for a piece of art, lets me play around with the details and easily make changes. One of my sketches (above) is of a waiting room. I did it on site and it was time boxed. I learned a lot from that little sketch. I redrew the chair a couple of times because I wasn’t getting the legs quite right and I wanted the cushion to be nuanced. It was like figuring out a puzzle.

“It’s fun to spend time creating with other artists, but it’s also fun to draw out in public. This autumn we went to a busker festival and I drew some of the performers while they played and had them autograph my drawings afterwards. It was a nice ice-breaker when I was talking to them, and I had a chance to talk to some people in the audience.

Drawing by Pam Otis.

“There’s still a lot of mystique around drawing, and I like to think that by taking some of my projects on the road, maybe, just maybe that’ll be the thing that inspires someone else who thought that they couldn’t draw to maybe take another try at it with fresh eyes. I’m definitely glad I did.”

If you feel your painting skills would benefit from better drawing skills, I encourage you to take my six-week drawing class starting January 6. I can promise you that your painting skills will benefit.

The best laid plans

My assistant (or boss), Laura, who’s 31 weeks pregnant, has been bunged into the hospital for the duration. That means, sadly, that the last step of my Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painting will not be wrapped and beribboned for Black Friday. I can’t launch it without her help. It also means I’m in Albany for some unspecified time, since someone needs to rassle the four-year-old while his dad’s at work.

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Monday Morning Art School: questions for artists

Regrowth and regeneration (Borrow Pit #4), 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I’m finally heading home. Although I’ve been in the west for almost a month, it’s in the Hudson Valley that I’ve run into smoke from forest fires. Life can be odd at times.

I’ve been on the road for a month, which has meant lots of driving and painting punctuated by intense social situations. There are certain questions for artists that are asked at every event. Artists should know how to answer them; they’re the equivalent of our elevator pitch. Here are my answers; what are your answers to these questions for artists?

Eastern Manitoba River, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How did you become interested in art? 

I’ve been drawing and painting since I could hold a crayon. It’s hard for me to separate art as an ‘interest’. (Most people start life drawing intensively but give it up in later childhood. I don’t know why.)

Art history is really just the pictorial reflection of human history, and I spend almost as much time thinking about it as I do in creating art.

The Late Bus, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What are your influences? 

As a young woman, I was influenced by the Northern European Renaissance, in particular, Albrecht DĂźrer. The Italian Renaissance was based on secular, classical ideals while the northerners emphasized realism and faith.

Today I think more about the Canadian Group of Seven and Australian Impressionism. Both have a passion for place, something shared with great American regional painters like Maynard Dixon, Edgar Payne and Grant Wood, among others.

What is your preferred medium? 

Whatever tool happens to be in my hand at the time. I carry a sketchbook around with me.

What are your goals? 

To continue to paint and teach as long as the body permits.

How do you define success? 

Being able to sleep at night.

What are your most valued skills?

An almost-indefatigable work ethic.

What is your favorite and least favorite aspect of being an artist? 

An art career indulges my independent spirit, but that same trait makes me sometimes work myself to exhaustion.

I’m intrepid, but the flip side of risk is occasional insecurity.

What do you wish you’d learned in school?

How to run a business. I’ve had to teach myself, and it was much more difficult than learning to paint.

What inspires you? 

The beauty of Creation. I used to be far more interested in humanity, but now I mostly think about how much we’re all gasping for untrammeled nature.

When is your favorite time to create? 

Morning.

How do you know when a piece is finished? 

I can’t stand thinking about it anymore.

What is the hardest part of creating a piece? 

Finding uninterrupted time. It’s shocking how much of my day is taken up with the business of art. I always have more ideas than I can execute.

How has your style changed over time?

I am no longer interested in faithfully rendering reality.

What is your point of view? 

My work here, and whatever talent I have, is a gift from God, and my job is to use it to the best of my ability.

How do you handle negative criticism? 

Badly; who doesn’t?

What have you learned from criticism? 

On reflection, I often have to admit that it was at least partly justified. On the other hand, although I believe there are immutable elements of design, there’s no reason to believe that the juror de jure has ever learned them. In the end, I take my own measure.

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Monday Morning Art School: plein air festival etiquette

Country Road, 14X18, oil on archival canvasboard, available through Sedona Arts Center.

There is something about Casey Cheuvront and Upper Red Rock Loop Road. Last year, a woman parked herself in front of Casey and gave her clients a long spiel about the magnetic energy of the rocks, while rolling magnets around on a metal plate. Another guide occupied the same spot to talk about ley lines. It’s distracting to have people looming in front of you, obscuring the view.

On Saturday evening, Casey, Ed Buonvecchio and I set up to paint the sun dropping over Sedona. We were careful to follow the etiquette of a plein air festival, which includes:

Snoopy in the shade, 8X10, oil on birch, available through Sedona Arts Center.
  • Respect the venue, and follow any rules;
  • Don’t disturb others’ enjoyment of the natural surroundings;
  • Don’t plant yourself in the middle of a path;
  • Clean up after yourself;
  • Engage with interested passers-by;
  • Be considerate of other artists. This means giving fellow artists space to work, and not getting in their sightlines.

Casey was tucked into the shadow of a juniper, painting the sunset. A swarm of photographers suddenly surrounded her. It was a workshop. Despite there being tens of thousands of acres of open land around us, and paths leading in every direction, they were packed so tightly around Casey that she didn’t have room to move.

Hailstorm over Coxcomb, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, available through Sedona Arts Center.

“Do you mind?” the instructor asked. “We’ll only be a few minutes.” Forty minutes later, they finally shoved off, but the light, and the moment, had passed.

It all starts with drawing

“You don’t always do a value drawing, do you?” Ed asked me. On the rare occasions when I skip one, I regret it.

Unfinished painting of dawn. I spent a morning sketching options, a morning transferring my best sketch by grid. I’ll start adding color this morning.

I’ve been going out at 6 AM to paint the dawn. In two days, I’ve done several sketches and gotten my final idea transferred to canvas. (I still have some foreground issues to work out.) My canvas is gridded because, yes, I do a value drawing and then transfer it to my canvas.

That proved very handy last evening as the shadows changed by the minute. I was able to reference my drawing when the light had gone. When you think you don’t have time for a value drawing is when you need it most.

Painted at the speed of light, 11X14, oil on birch. I haven’t decided if it’s finished.

Show ponies

Hadley Rampton and I were sitting on a fence watching the scrum at our first quick-draw. “I think plein air festivals are like the rodeo,” I mused. “We all know each other, we all go around the same circuit, we compete for the same prizes.”

“I’ve thought about that,” she responded, “but I think we’re more like show ponies.”

And on that note, I’m off to paint the dawn again. I’m sorry these missives are so brief, but plein air festivals mean long days of painting.

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Monday Morning Art School: setting up a still life

I start teaching my Rockport Immersive workshop tomorrow morning, and our forecast is for 100% chance of precipitation. I have a backup plan. Yesterday, in my amble through the woods, I cut various blossoms and berries.

Setting up a still life is great fun, but when you’re doing it for a roomful of artists, different rules apply. You treat it more like a still-life-scape, from which each painter can pull bits and pieces.

Whether you’re doing it for one or ten people, setting up a still life is excellent training. There was a period in my life where I painted a still life every morning, before I got on to my ‘serious’ work. It’s how I learned to paint with assurance.

Choose Your Objects

My theme for this still life was autumn, “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Formerly, I’ve done still lives based on internet memes, nonsense my kids wandered around singing, or things I like to do. Even a simple book of matches can be an arresting still life.

Get in the mood

In autumn, the mood is lush; easy, peasy. Other still lives may not be so simple. They may be austere, luxurious, absurd or romantic.

The color scheme is an extension of mood. In this case, it’s purple and gold, reds, russets and yellow. If I were doing something romantic, it would be lighter and more ethereal. If I’m being snarky, all bets are off.

A variety of shapes, sizes, and textures is more important than content. That’s why I threw in the pewter and aluminum. In this instance a drape would be overkill, but don’t discount fabric as a shape- and pattern-maker.

Two closely analogous items.

There are times when I’m looking for contrast, and times I’m looking for closely analogous objects.

Composition is key

I spent as much time gathering and arranging this still life as I would spend painting it. True, it’s massive, but in some ways, that makes it easier.

  • Do you have clearly articulated focal points?
  • Have you layered objects to create depth?
  • Is there a good pattern of lights and darks? Warm and cools? A good color pattern?

Don’t be afraid to keep fiddling right through your compositional sketch. You may find better ways of looking at the objects.

Lighting

I prefer natural light when possible, as it gives livelier color and a softer shadow pattern. Positioning your still life near a north window will give you the most stable light, but there are times when strong raking light is appropriate—but you must work faster.

Natural light is not always possible. If you set up artificial lights, don’t put them too close to the subject. Make sure there is fill light in the shadows, and think of the composition mainly in terms of the cast shadows.

Negative space

Negative space is the area surrounding and between the subjects. These interstices define and highlight the main elements, creating balance. Effective use of negative space creates interesting shapes and patterns, draws attention to the main subject, and adds depth to the overall piece.

Some artists use still life shadow boxes. I don’t because they excessively control light and composition. When I paint still life, I just ignore what’s behind it. That gives me the opportunity to create what I want in the interstices. It’s good practice in not being excessively driven by what you see.

Be inventive

I’ve painted pretty absurd still lives, including toilet paper, bubble wrap, bacon and a tin-foil hat. Still life is only as boring as you make it. Don’t be afraid to be weird.

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Monday Morning Art School: what is fine art?

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What is fine art?

Fine art serves no practical purpose. It’s created for its aesthetic value and emotional impact rather than to do anything useful.

Calling something ‘fine art’ is not an assessment of quality. Something can be utter dreck and still fall under the heading of fine art, and fine craft is frequently better-executed than fine art.

The line between fine art and other disciplines is blurry. For example, Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth were primarily illustrators, but they’re also considered among the best painters of their generation. And by any narrow definition of purpose, most pre-Renaissance painters would be lumped in with illustrators, since one of their main goals was to explain and amplify the Bible. What is fine art, then, is a difficult question to answer.

Sunset over Cadillac Mountain, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling.

What is the difference between fine art and commercial art?

The primary difference between fine art and commercial art is intent.

While fine and commercial art are both tools of communication, fine art’s focus is emotional, visual, and intellectual. Commercial art is made to sell a product, service, or idea. It is functional.

Fine art generally seeks to speak to its audience one-on-one, whereas commercial art is directed towards markets.

Fine art is judged on creativity, expression, technical skill, and its intellectual underpinnings. The individual artist and his or her vision is paramount. That means fine artists have the freedom to produce work that nobody cares about (although that’s likely to result in penury) whereas commercial artists generally work under another person’s guidelines and requirements.

Camden Harbor from Curtis Island, oil on canvas, $2782 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Do fine art and commercial art use the same media?

There is no distinction between what is used in fine art and what is used in commercial art, although certain media (for example oil painting or lost wax casting) are more suited towards fine art. Other media (for example, neon or digital imaging) are more suited toward commercial art.

Belfast Harbor, oil on archival canvasboard, 14X18, $1,275 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

What is the difference between fine art and fine craft?

The line between fine art and fine craft is even squishier. Traditionally, fine craft creates functional objects, although that has never been absolute. Grinling Gibbons was Britain’s most celebrated woodcarver. He was an excellent businessman and much of his work falls firmly in the area of fine craft. However, he also produced amazing confections in lime wood that transcend any purpose.

Since both fine art and fine craft can create decorative objects, the distinction is usually a matter of focus.  Fine craft is said to emphasize skill and technique, whereas fine art emphasizes ideas.

The most comfortable distinction is in media. Fine craft includes ceramics, glasswork, textiles, woodworking, goldsmithing and other disciplines where the materials are critical to the results.

Which is best?

Since the 18th century, critics and gallerists have tried to rebrand fine art as an intellectual discipline, (although its practitioners generally remain stubbornly practical). Because of this, fine craft, illustration and commercial art have been perceived as lower art forms. This is an absurd distinction, and one that has led us to the worst excesses of conceptual art.

I’ve been both a commercial and fine artist, and I pursue some crafts. None is inherently better than another; it’s all a question of what you’re called to do.

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Monday Morning Art School: How long does it take to get good at drawing?

Yesterday’s outdoor church service and picnic, drawing by Carol L. Douglas. I knew I didn’t have time to draw each figure, so I made them a single mass.

On Sundays, I have between 35 and 40 minutes to draw, because that’s how long Quinton Self will preach. After decades of drawing in church, I can tell you exactly where the pastor is in his or her sermon; I almost always wind up at the same time.

It’s helpful to know how long you have to draw, because you can choose your level of finish in advance. A 30-second gesture drawing and a three-hour portrait can both be stylish, finished drawings that tells the viewer something about the subject. But for either to work, they must be planned.

A preparatory drawing for a painting.

What’s the difference?

Gesture drawing captures the essence and movement of a subject quickly, focusing on flow and rhythm. A finished drawing involves refining details and form for a polished representation. The technique in gesture drawing is loose and spontaneous, whereas finished drawings require precision. Gesture drawings may take just a few seconds, while finished drawings can take hours or even days, depending on complexity and detail.

A quick sketch, not more than ten minutes.

Why draw in the first place?

I primarily draw as the first step in designing a painting. It’s far faster than sketching out the idea in paint, only to realize that the composition I had in mind is weak. I’ll draw when I don’t have time to paint or it’s not appropriate (as in church). But all that implies that drawing is somehow lesser than painting. Drawing is a powerful form of expression on its own.

Sometimes I’m the only one who’s amused. From a poem by John Betjeman.

How long does it take to get good at drawing?

It’s a disservice to beginning painters to not insist that they first learn to draw. It’s also a disservice to let them think that drawing is a magic trick or something we’re born knowing innately. Anyone of normal intelligence and vision can draw; they just need to learn how.

It doesn’t take long at all to learn. I taught my friend Amy Vail to draw in one short session; a week later, she was drawing like an old pro.

And sometimes I’ll work out something I don’t plan to paint.

From sketch to realized work

Sometimes you need to sketch before you can draw. Finished drawings require composition, proportion, lighting and perspective, just as finished paintings do. Andrew Wyeth created many drawings before he dragged out his paint kit, and many others just for the sheer joy of drawing.

Knowing how long you have to draw is your best tool to finish strong. That’s not always possible; for example, you will never know how long you have to wait at the doctor’s office. But when you do, you can direct your pencil to what matters in a sensible way.

I don’t have a drawing class scheduled, but if you want to take it next time it’s offered, email me here and I’ll put you on a list.

An apology

Right before I left to teach aboard American Eagle last week, my laptop converted itself to a brick. (That happens to me frequently, and I can’t really explain why.) Friday’s blog post was written on my phone, and it reads like it. Sorry about that.

When I got home, I told my daughter I needed to order a replacement. “Don’t do that!” she said. “Your new one is already there!” I’m typing on it now, using remote desktop. Any bumps in the road going forward are just from reinstalling software and restoring my last backup. I hope this one lasts longer than 29 months I got out of the last one. Sigh.

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Is the ocean a reflection of the sky?

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

If you’re looking for me this weekend, I’ll be out on Penobsot Bay, teaching my Art and Adventure at Sea workshop aboard American Eagle. That means no connectivity and therefore no blog post on Wednesday. One of the most common questions I’m asked is, how do you paint water. Water is so immense, slippery, and mercurial, that it is impossible to nail it down into a schtick. Instead, the painter must rely on observation.

Heavy Weather (Ketch Angelique), 24X36, oil on canvas, framed, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Is the ocean a reflection of the sky?

Reflections are a distortion of the surrounding environment. That’s true whether you’re painting them on the ocean or in a glass of water. These reflections are never going to be consistent but they will follow the laws of physics.

Imagine an ocean that is perfectly flat, and that you can walk on water. Looking at your feet, you can see straight down into the water. It’s not reflecting anything. Looking at a rubber ducky floating ten feet away, you’re looking at the surface at about a 26° angle. You’ll see a reflection of the ducky, the sky, and a glimpse of what’s under the surface. As you look farther away, the angle gets smaller and smaller, and all you see is the reflected sky.

Reflection involves two rays – an incoming (incident) ray and an outgoing (reflected) ray. Physics tells us that the angles are identical but on opposite sides of a tangent. This is why the reflection of a boat needs to be directly below the real object in your painting. You can add other colors into that area, but the reflection can’t be wider than the object it’s reflecting.

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Water is transparent, but it has a shiny surface. Some rays of light make it through and bounce back at us from the sea floor. Reflections in glass work the same way. You can see through the glass in the surface that’s facing you, but the curving sides reflect light from around the room. Because glass is imperfect, these reflections will be distorted.

The ocean complicates matters by being bouncy. Even on the calmest day, the surface of water is never perfectly flat; it’s wavy or worse, just like a fun-house mirror. Waves are a series of irregular curves. How they reflect light depends on what plane you’re seeing at that nano-second. It seems like the easiest thing to do is to capture it in a photo and paint from that, but what we see in photos is sometimes very different from what we perceive in life.

Instead, sit a moment with and watch how patterns seem to repeat. They’re never exactly the same, since waves are a stochastic process (think random but repeating). But they’re close enough to discern general patterns.

Beautiful Dream, oil on archival canvasboard, $1449 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Solid objects can also trip you up in their reflections. Consider the humble spoon. It’s concave. That distorts its reflections. There’s no point in trying to predict what you might see; it’s best to just look. Likewise, a mirror only reflects straight back at you if you’re in front of it.

There are times when the ocean makes no reflection at all. Only smooth surfaces reflect light coherently enough to make reflections. That’s why burlap has no reflections. Sometimes, when water is being wind-whipped, it doesn’t have reflections either. To paint such a sea, keep the contrast low. A grey, windy day, or a turbulent sea will have a surface too broken up to reflect anything but the most general light.

Some people say that reflections should be lower in chroma than their objects, but I don’t think that’s true. Often, the ocean seems to concentrate color. Sometimes, the water will be lightest at the horizon; other days there will be a deep band there. However, the farther away, the more its colors shift toward blue-violet.

Paintings by Ray Roberts, courtesy the Page Gallery.

If you’re in town this weekend

Colin Page tells me there’s still room in Oil Painting On Location in Camden, Maine with well-known western artist Ray Roberts. That’s next Saturday and Sunday, September 21-22 from 9-4, and the fee is $300

This workshop will be in oils, but all media are welcome.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: do you see what I see?

Marshes along the Ottawa River, Plaisance, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

There is a young maple tree that I watch from my living room. This morning, it’s green overlaid with bronze. The maple behind it has a golden hue where it’s hit by the sun, but the part in shadow is a very dull blue. Closer to my house, the neighbor’s tree is developing dull violet overtones.

We old-timers say that maple trees start turning color before the kids go back to school. That’s not strictly true, because maple trees change their color throughout the season, starting with the brilliant red buds that we recognize as one of the first signs of springs. New leaves are chartreuse and mature into the full-throated, deep, dull “wall of green” that’s the undoing of many painters. There summer sits for a few hot weeks before it begins to slide inexorably into the cooler air and warmer tones of fall. By autumn’s end, all the deciduous leaves will be gone except those of the young beeches and oaks, which will dry yellow and bronze on their stems and create a quiet susurration in the winter woods.

The Pine Tree State, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

But ask us what color a tree’s leaves are, and we’ll invariably say, “green.” We won’t specify the glossy dark green of summer oak leaves, or the delicate light green of the katsura tree. (I have one in my back yard, and as the leaves dry and fall, they smell like apple pie.)

The green that many painters use for foliage bears about the same relationship to the natural world’s green as Gatorade does to juice.

The Vineyard, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Do you see what I see?

Sometimes I paint with sunglasses on, because I like painting contre jour and the light hurts my eyes. As much as people tell you not to do that, I never notice much problem matching values; my glasses are limiting the light reflecting from my paint and canvas as much as they are the light bouncing off the ocean. (Where they make a difference is in specular highlights, but forewarned is forearmed.)

Visual perception varies from person to person, but within our own brain, we make consistent adjustments. If you always see things as pinker than I do, you’ll see your paints that way, too, and unconsciously make the correction. Not that we really know what anyone else sees; how could we measure that?

Are you looking or thinking?

We humans are too smart for painting. We paint with our reason rather than our eyes. For example, we ‘know’ that the irises of the eye are round. We paint that without noticing that for most of us, our top lids cut off a wedge of this pie shape. We know that barns are red, so we don’t notice that the bright red barn on a far hill is in fact objectively brown; our minds interpolate the color for us.

“Eastern Manitoba Forest,” Sandilands National Forest, Manitoba

What do you really look like to others?

“Who is this old woman looking at me in the mirror?” my mother once asked me. Most of us carry around a mental snapshot of ourselves that’s a combination of all our prior selves, real or imagined. That can make a candid photo or unexpected compliment tough to take.

That’s, I think, the same phenomenon as described above. Our inner selves know us rather than see us objectively.

What’s the solution?

Time and practice are the great healers for this problem. Meanwhile:

• Consciously look at things as if you were seeing them for the first time. 
• Take the time to measure; that forces you to be objective.
• Draw or paint the same subject from different angles.
• Look for subtle color shifts and patterns.
• Observe light and shadow without thinking about what object you’re drawing.

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: