Back in the saddle again

Flowering apple trees at G and S Orchards. Wee (9X12) and by little ol' me.

Yesterday I painted en plein air for the first time since my cancer diagnosis last winter. Yes, I was rusty. Yes, I forgot to bring essential stuff. Yes, I was limp with exhaustion when I was done. No, I did not paint a masterpiece, but I did a nice little field sketch and learned something about young apple trees.

I’ve been fascinated with orchards all winter. This spring I made a cold call to G and S Orchardsin Walworth. The owners promptly invited my class out to paint. I went out there again yesterday and had a few hours before the rains swept back in (although the winds were high enough to do a little free microdermabrasion on my face).

I hope they don't get sick of me any time soon, because I've got a season's worth of paintings scoped out.

I’ve photographed the steps of a plein air painting for my beginning students to study before Saturday’s class. Sometimes it’s easier to understand a process in pictures.

After doing a sketch, I map the painting on my canvas. I've been using watercolor pencils, because they're easy to erase, but any pencil or charcoal works as well.

Then I map out the branches (which are the darks) using a mix of ultramarine and burnt sienna. This view was a little strange because the darks were a grid, but it's important for me to note the branch structures, even though I obliterate them for the most part.

The next step is to mix a matrix of greens. I need all the help I can get to differentiate greens in a field of identical trees in absolutely flat light.

Then it's time to map out the color, working from the darkest to the lightest. After this, you can paint as tight or as loose as you want; the initial steps work for every finishing style.

I didn't want to paint a global view without exploring a few trees first, but isn't this a sweet scene?

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

The large, angry crustacean is on his way to Maine.

The finished buoy. You can buy this!

When I blogged last month asking for suggestions about what to paint on my 2014 buoy for Penobscot East Resource Center’s fifth annual lobster buoy auction, I received four texts in rapid succession:

“Mom! Paint a giant lobster battling the Kraken!”

“Mom! Paint an enormous lobster destroying a city!”

“Mom, paint a big lobster eating New York!”

“Mom, paint a lobster battling an army in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.”

The major change I made was adding Black Hawk helicopters.

When your four most severe critics all come up with the same idea at the same time, you have to run with it. And it fit with the idea that I had been turning over but wasn’t sure how to paint.

Signed and titled by the artist, as always.

It’s no secret to Mainers that lobster prices steadily tanked from 2005 to 2014. At the same time, restaurant prices for lobster remained high. That’s a fascinating disconnect—one I think is beautifully explained here—but the bottom line is that lobster costs more in New York because consumers haven’t a clue what’s happening in local commodity markets.  That means there’s an artificially big profit being made, and it isn’t happening on the docks of coastal Maine.

When you live in a Magical Duchy, you don't need to go to the Post Office. You just put your package on the back of the truck and it miraculously gets mailed.

A situation that needs fixing but seems to be out of the range of mortal ken calls for a superhero. Who better than a large, angry crustacean from the Atlantic depths?

I like painting from life, but that's a little difficult in this case.

Last week I was reading about the influence of 19^thcentury Japanisme on western art and thinking I was absolutely free of it. But I have to admit that I owe a nod to Godzilla, and maybe to King Kong as well. (After all, the Empire State Building is somewhere in that mish-mosh.) The Black Hawk helicopters, however, are just modern America.

Looking around for pictures of lobsters last month, I came across this rhyton from the Met, c. 460 BC, in the shape of a lobster claw. Good to know lobsters are an eternal verity.

The auction will be held Tuesday, August 5th, 2014 at the Fishermen’s Friend Restaurant in Stonington, ME. If you’re in Stonington this summer, you can stop by and see all the buoys and vote for your favorite (as long as it’s mine). You’ll also be able to bid on your favorites online. Watch this space for more information.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

Comparing yourself to others

Romance of Autumn, 1916, by George Bellows. I’m leading with a painting that makes me squirm every time I see it, to make a point: if you judged Bellows by this single painting, you’d think he didn’t know how to mix or apply paint. But he knew exactly what he was doing, as his catalogue attests.

The other day Brad Marshall jokingly asked us whether he or Anders Zorn was better looking. We of course immediately said that Brad was. “Oh, well, Zorn was the better painter,” he replied.

“Not better, just different,” I answered.

As mature artists, most painters have achieved mastery over their materials.  What we react to isn’t their technical skill, but how they speak to us. When we don’t like their work, it’s usually more a question of not responding to their worldview than that they are technically deficient.

Illustration to Dante's Divine Comedy, Hell, by William Blake. Blake was painting his edgy, uncomfortable, oddly-drafted work at a time when the highly-finished Grand Manner was in vogue. No wonder that his work was almost forgotten until he was rediscovered by Victorian England. Today he is widely recognized as one of the greatest artists England ever produced.

It’s only in the learning phase that one painter is ‘better’ than the next, and even that is transitory. Some of us are faster learners than others, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be better painters in the end.

Last weekend, one of my beginning students got very frustrated. She was having trouble understanding why I asked her to lay down paint in a specific way. It didn’t help that her classmates were sailing through the exercise.

“I feel like everyone is doing a great job except me,” she said.

Childhood's Garden, 1917, by Charles Burchfield. His genius lies in his spirit and vision. He is often called the dark Edward Hopper, but many of his paintings radiate happiness.

Like most artists—experienced or not—she really has no idea where her strengths lie. She is emotionally transparent, so what she feels vibrates through her drawing. When she’s happy, her trees dance, the pavements sing. When she’s not happy, her canvas glowers.

That is a kind of talent that can’t be taught or bought, but can only be nurtured like a seedling set out in a garden bed. And it’s so easy to knock such a talent apart, because it comes from one’s inner vision, and that’s a fragile thing.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!