Haberdashery

Haberdashery

There were three big, exciting purchases that I made when I graduated from college.   A car was first; a Dodge Omni, (brand new and shiny forest green)  and, hard to believe - a mere $4800.   The second seems a little strange now that I think about it, but it was an Electrolux top-of-the-line vacuum.   I think I actually paid for that via installments.  I hardly remember, as it certainly wasn't as exciting as the automobile!   The third big purchase was a Singer sewing machine.   It was state-of-the art at the time and I remember the sales person convincing me that the embroidery wheels were so easy to use that I was going to want to use them often.    For the record, I have never used them.  :)

The car and the vacuum cleaner are long gone, but my sewing machine is as functional now as it ever was.  This truly was an investment - and still going strong.    It has been set up in my studio now for a couple of months as I worked on face masks for my loved ones.  I clustered together some of the sewing notions (a.k.a. haberdashery) attempting to arrange a pleasing composition.   My composition expert helped with it, and soon it was time to break out my paints.

Inspiration from Historical Hassam

Marlborough Street - Childe Hassam

Every Spring, the Copley Society of Art holds an event called "Fresh Paint".   Dozens of painters head out into the streets and waterfronts of Boston to capture the scenes in the open air tradition, better known as "en plein air."

To this year's event there was an added twist.   We were invited to choose a painting from a list of forty famous Boston based paintings and use that painting as inspiration in the creation of our new piece.    I selected painter Childe Hassam's Impressionist painting of Marlborough Street shown here.

Inspired by Hassam Marlborough Street

My version, inspired by Hassam's city-scape, a corner in Boston's Back Bay, is missing the horse and buggies and the long dresses.    The red rooftops, long shadows and stoop-front roses remain very similar.

Festive Windowboxes

Little House and Snowy Greens

Every year as Christmas approaches, I work on at least one holiday painting. This year, one became four paintings as they were fun to create

The plan was to give the gallery a related grouping during the run up to Christmas.   Window boxes decorated for the holidays became the theme.   This idea came to me as I start thinking about how to decorate my own real window boxes.  The options are endless and I hope my real window box has as much color.

Red Ribbon Window Box

And speaking of color, the palette knife was useful for laying on the thick masses of cascading greens and flowers.  It was also good for creating rustic clapboards with a bit of scraping and multi-layering.

'Tis the Season!

Window Box Splash

Ornaments and Pink Ribbon

Under, At & Over Water (Aka - The Span of Angels)

Folded Sections of 7 foot canvas

This piece is a fairly ambitious undertaking at 84 by 36 inches.   I plan to hang vertically, envisioning a wall with a cathedral ceiling.   I was breaking my own norms and truly making it up as I went.   (What?  Not the usual formula?)

I'll be in a much larger studio soon and it will be a real treat.   In my current studio I worked on sections of the canvas, unfurling each section and clipping up the folded parts.  I worked the elements in succession, the sky, the far distant mountains, the mid-ground meadow, the shrubs on the shoreline, a sandy beach, the chop, and finally, the underwater world.  

The Span of Angels

The angelic cherub in the clouds is fishing (of course :)) and the fishing line spans all the elevations down into the tropical reef, where an angel fish is deciding whether to bite.     Well I've told you too much already, but there is much left to do on this one - mainly making the elements more harmonious with one another.  

Stay tuned for the final product in a few weeks.

Coffee on the Front Porch

Coffee on the Front Porch - Stage One

Sitting on a warm front porch with a strong cup of coffee in the middle of summer vacation, for me, works more like a sedative than a pick-me-up.  I was sitting there staring at the flower pots and pink roses, my eyes practically glazing over.   Should I paint these translucent petals?   What else would I include?  Everyday scenes are so obvious that they are often overlooked and/or deemed unworthy as the subject of a painting, but I was surprisingly happy with the result.

Coffee on the Front Porch - Stage Two

Our east facing front porch transitions from full sun to shade at midday and by afternoon only the far end railings and flowers catch the sunlight.   The bright, warm annuals stood out in vivid contrast to the dark shadowy green.    My favorite coffee cup and pink plastic spoon scored a place in the painting as well.

Coffee on the Front Porch - Final

Rocky Outcropping - World's End

Hull Harbor Overlook - Stage One

Hull Harbor Overlook - Stage Two

The South Street Gallery in Hingham invited me to participate in a paint-out event at World's End in Hingham, MA, a beautiful penninsula that is a part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Park. The paintings are part of a silent auction taking place this June (2017) and a portion of the proceeds benefit The Trustees of World's End.

Painters drew lottery numbers which corresponded to several scenic locations on the World's End map.    I picked two numbers, leading to the discovery of a deer gathering spot along the shore.   How did I know that?   Well after trekking down a steep grassy slope, following a very narrow deer-sized opening in the tall grass, I came to a flat spot where the grass was freshly flattened, as if something had been lying there.  

Rocky Outcropping - World's End

Further evidence was the fact that during my post-paint-out visit, Opie, my grandpuppy, was a bit crazed as he apparently caught a scent on my boots.     This view faced the long neck of land that comprises Hull, MA, although there were rocky outcroppings between me and Hull.  Spring Worlds End facing the Hull Side.

Watering Can with Carrots






Watering Can with Carrots

This week I was sorting through seeds and planning my 2016 vegetable garden.  I guess I am officially "thinking Spring."   I was remembering last year's buckets of tomatoes, a bumper crop.   I typically take pictures of even mildly noteworthy things so I was sure there must have been some summer harvest photos.


Composition Thumbnail

I found a decent photo of some freshly pulled carrots piled in front of my old watering can.   I used that shot as inspiration for this painting, at least for color and shadow.   The photo's overall composition was lacking so I re-arranged the objects on a 3x3 sticky note trying for more pleasing shapes.

View from Bear Mountain Lodge

View from Bear Mountain Lodge - Stage One

We packed up our gear for hiking and painting and headed north into New Hampshire for a mid-January getaway.   There has been relatively little snow so far this season in New England, but as we reached the White Mountains it got a little whiter.   By the time we reached our destination in Bethlehem, NH, north of the notch, it had the look of winter.



View from Bear Mountain Lodge - Stage Two

The back deck of our lodging at Bear Mountain Lodge faced northeast with a spectacular view of the White Mountains.    When the skies were clear, Mount Washington was the furthest visible peak and its snowcap was lit up brightly when the sun was on it.  

The decision of what to paint first was inevitable and I never did get to a second painting.      I had brought a 12x24" canvas board which worked out well for a wide, sweeping landscape view such as this. 

For most of the painting session it was cloudy and grey.  Since I wanted to depict a sunlit scene, I had to switch gears whenever the sun peaked out - observing and mixing in more yellow color and blue shadows.  (The variation from minute to minute is always the challenge of plein air!)    For most of the painting session, Mount Washington was not even visible, but I was determined to include it and had to act quickly when it made an appearance.  (See white peaks behind birches on the left.)



View from Bear Mountain Lodge - Final (Maybe)

 I'll be letting the super thick impasto cure for a while before I decide if any additional changes are needed.   I know the color is the way I want it, but compositionally, I may insert another rock or two in the foreground.

Market Square

A few months ago, I put a sharp corner of a framed painting through the middle of a large (30 x 48 inch) in-progress painting.   I may have shared that sad story back when it happened?   I pulled the ripped canvas off the stretcher bars, sized up a nice new length of gesso'd linen, and stretched it again.   I toned it with a mid-value neutral color.  That was several months ago - and there it sat.    The weather was nice as a plein air painter, I enjoyed plenty of beautiful days outside.


Market Street - Stage One


As soon as the temperatures started to cool I turned my attention to the studio.  I placed the BIG blank canvas on it.   I wanted to start planning out this large studio work.  I had the urge to include every attractive element I had been painting or photographing in the past few months. 



Market Street - Stage Two

What would that include?   Rustic buildings, stone walls, Irish farmhouses, festivals full of color, sunlit boats with pretty reflections, seals sunning themselves, bees buzzing around my pink and yellow zinnias, fireworks, city skyline.  Very exciting! This was the brainstorming phase of composing the piece.   I guess I could have jammed in all the attractive elements I had been envisioning, turning it into a fantasy painting, but realistically I needed to decide on a theme.

I did some sketching and printed a few of my favorite festival and marketplace photos, assembling a horizontal collage of scenes that were attractive to me.   I worked on building up a dark and light pattern that was appealing.    I wanted a "random - but planned" series of "lightest lights."    

Even as early as Stage One image above, the abstract dark and light pattern is visible.   The warm afternoon light highlights the old village buildings and market umbrellas.  The light spilled over onto the street, giving the illusion of a bright glare.   The stone archway on the left framed the bright light of the next alley over.   The shadows would be cool and blue, but not too dark.   Generally, even the shadow areas of a cityscape with bright warm light benefits from the reflected light.   The light tends to bounce around and provide ambient light even to the shadow areas.   (Photographs do not record this reflected light by the way - that's why "from life" painting is so much better!) The color temperature scheme (warm light and cool shadow) and the shadow directional scheme (late afternoon backlighting)  would be important supporting information.

Sunlight String

This painting has been on and off the easel for four months so there were several stages of progress.   I won't share them all but one thing I did was to use a sun string to guide the direction of my sunlight.   I attached a long piece of wood so that it pointed high up above the large canvas.  I tacked a long piece of string to the top of the wood.    As I painted the lighted areas, I stretched the string tight and that showed the angle of the rays of light coming from my "pseudo sun" at the top of the wood.   I wish I took a better photo but in the narrow photo, the wood and the string are somewhat visible.   This method would be useful if you aren't painting on site, or if you were on site but the light changed dramatically before packing up.



Market Square

I guess I like the anonymity of the figures.   I also love the idea of supporting the growers, buying their fresh products and turning that into a culinary comfort for their family. So where is market square, who are these people and why two thoroughfares?




Something Out of Not Much

South River Park in Progress

I've been painting enough to know that it is not necessary to drive around, wasting time looking for the "right" place to paint.   A few other factors now take precedence over a perfect vista, like a convenient, safe, free parking spot for one.   There is a fairly new open space in Marshfield called the South River Park on the main drag in Marshfield directly across from the Hess Station.  

The first time I visited the park I was a little disappointed.  I thought it would lead to a long river trail, but discovered that what you see from the street is just about the extent of it.   It is my understanding that this little park project is a piece of a longer range plan to connect some open spaces along the South River, so perhaps my expectations will be fulfilled at some future point.



South River Park Final

So I took advantage of this convenient, safe, free parking (with a brand new sheltered picnic area) to paint this scene.    The light was pretty on the variety of summery greens and the paved walkways.   The condemned structure in the background was rustic enough to translate into a pseudo-farmhouse.    The layout of the park was interesting enough to inspire the light and colors you see in the photo.

One Word and A Twenty Inch Square

Canvas Stretched onto Cradleboard

This year's challenge for the North River Arts Society event is to transform a twenty inch wooden cradle board into a work of art - and - somehow integrate a word into the creation.  Signing up for these challenges is exciting because it really makes one push out creations that otherwise would never have been conceived.

Staring at this nice cradleboard square of sturdy wood, it did cross my mind that it could serve as the base for a three dimensional creation.   3D has never been part of my repertoire - and call me cautious - but I didn't want to risk doing failed experiment with a creation that would benefit the organization.  So my first step was to cover it with gesso'd canvas.

Thumbnail charcoal

I don't typically work on squares and every time I do, I really enjoy it.   Composition "rules" that are generally followed for rectangular canvases, aren't necessarily in play for squares.   For example the widely accepted guidance of not placing the center of interest in the middle of a rectangular canvas, can usually be ignored for squares.   Symmetry works just fine on a square.



Once Upon a Storybook - Stage One

In the spirit of the "people" work I've been concentrating on lately, I sketched out some scenes with small children playing.  I have been experimenting with unusual head placement/angles and one of my latest favorites is the head down angle. I composed a scene in which small children are gathered around a checkerboard - see thumbnail to left.    


After completing stage one, I swapped out the checkerboard for a large picture book - with, of course, a word.

I first positioned their heads within a circle drawn within the square.   Additionally I roughed in two tangents, the calf/shoe of the boy on the left, and the arm/hand of the boy on the right.   The book forms a strong quadrilateral shape to balance the square and circle.

Important:   If you are interested in the painting, it will be auctioned off Memorial Day Weekend at the North River Arts Society Festival of the Arts in Marshfield Hills, MA.





Once Upon a Storybook

Shady Porch Next To Audubon

It was early on day four of a July heat wave when we got our paint-out started, mainly trying to avoid the sizzling midday sun.   

It was already 82 degrees at 9am.  Maybe it was the heat getting to me but I felt uninspired as I looked around the Daniel Webster Audubon in Green Harbor.   There was plenty of nice scenery, much of which I have painted before.   Nothing was jumping out at me which is unusual.

Underpainting

There was plenty of green.   I had brought along a large canvas that had been underpainted with a colorful textured abstract.  I knew one thing;  I was going to guarantee myself shade for the entire duration of painting session.   Two large maple trees stood by the two picnic tables and I picked the one closer to the small private residence that abuts the preserve.    A border of flowers with bright orange tiger lilies ran along the road in front of the house with a small front porch.   The morning sun was behind the house and the porch area was shaded which created a dark backdrop making the lilies look even brighter by contrast.


Bright Flower Border - Stage One

I had a brand new, ding-free palette knife so I began mixing up some piles of color with it




Bright Flower Border - Stage Two

.   Instead of switching to brushes, I spread the color on with the knife to start.   With brushes I tend to paint thinly, building up layers gradually.   With the knife, I go thick right from the start giving the painting a whole different feel.     It's a lot of fun to paint this way and the result is thick and colorful.

Toddler Art

Toddler Art I

A year ago, a precious little baby came into this world, marking the start of a new generation in our family.   A one-of-a-kind work of art was begun for this baby-to-be.  We didn't know if it would be a girl or a boy at the time so bright colors and vivid value contrasts (infants like that) were used to make a wall hanging a baby might like.   I thought back to when I was a young mother pacing gently around the house with a baby on my shoulder.  When it was time to wind down at the end of the day I would turn them so that they faced a window or a picture.   Where's the ball?   Where's the dog?  Where's the tree?   See the doggy?   Those memories spawned the first Toddler Art painting.   Brianna is turning one, so happy birthday pretty girl!

Toddler Art II

Two months ago, a second precious little baby of this next generation came into this world.   When I say little, I mean little - too many weeks early.   Our family has held a collective breath, put faith in a fantastic medical staff, devoted parents and God, saying countless prayers with a focus on this amazing little miracle baby.  To everyone's relief and with much joy, we learned that tiny Will has achieved the milestones necessary to go home with Mom and Dad.   The original painting is en route, special delivery, and here is a photo of it,  the second Toddler Art painting - dedicated to another precious baby, William!

Painting of Epic Proportions

I have been itching to start a large painting.   Within the last few months, I have painted dozens of canvases, mostly small except for two paintings that were 24"x36.”  The same day I visited the Gardner Museum for its re-opening, I swung up the street and drove by the Boston Dick Blick store, the proverbial candy shop for artists of all kinds.  I told myself that if I could get a parking spot at a meter, I would stop.   As I turned the corner from the Fenway onto Boylston, a car pulled out right in front of me and directly across the street from the Blick Store entrance.  It was meant to be.

Among the items I purchased were two 30x48 inch canvases...wow.   They are 1 3/8 inches deep, triple gesso, on medium weight canvas.   I don’t know if these “heavy duty” parameters matter much, but it sure is exciting to think that they might.   It is probably analogous to the woodworker who goes for the 6x6 post instead of the 4x4 post.  Heavy duty feels better - special.

One week later and the canvases are shouting out to me.   Big canvases mean big decisions, bigger chunks of time and commitment.  Painters are encouraged to create a body of work that has a theme or a recognizable style.   I am just not interested in producing the same subject over and over.  I produced the cranberry series, which was fun and successful, but I'm done with that for now.   I hope that my thick, bumpy trademark texture is recognizable style enough.  Hmmm...what to paint?? 

Finally I decide to start a winterscape since we finally have snow cover after an unseasonably mild November, December and January.      I looked through an old picture folder from a trip to beautiful Newfane, Vermont a couple of years ago.   I found four beautiful shots that my husband took.   The compositions are all are exceptional without any cropping, but I need to convert these images to the dimensions of these 30x48 inch canvases.  

If you want to be bored, continue reading this paragraph.   If a golden rectangle interests you, look it up online and continue with the paragraph.  Thirty by forty-eight inches are Golden Rectangles so I open a Golden Rectangle converter tool on the web.  I use the pixel counts in my picture editor to crop the pictures proportionate to the Golden Rectangle and hopefully creating an exciting design.  As I sized the images, it looked like the four pictures really comprised two very nice complimentary pairs.   I would paint both canvases at the same time.   Wow.  Twenty square feet of blank canvas.  

I used the photos to rough in the compositions.   The left canvas is a morning photo of me walking up Mount Putney.   The snow was so brilliant under a soft yellow and pink winter sun.    The right hand canvas is the Newfane common in front of the columned courthouse late in the afternoon.  The shadows are much deeper and the sky much cooler and bluer.  

This is a project of epic proportion for me.   I am forced to use a step stool to comfortably work the tops of the canvases. Meanwhile, over the past few days a the snowy scene that I had planned on using outside my slider for my value and color reference, is gone.   I continue to work on the structural elements to keep the project moving forward.   I look forward to snow to get a real color reference scheme.   Stay tuned...this will take a while.

Chocolate

There are people who don't like chocolate and there are people who love it and every level in between.   Then there is me.   I am off the chart. 

If I was stuck on a desert island with limited choices for food, chocolate would be one of them.  Chocolate syrup goes in my morning and afternoon coffee.  When I travel, I pack cans of chocolate syrup.  My automatic dessert preference is chocolate.  

Several aspects of chocolate make it so appealing including its taste, texture and endomorphinic rush.   I stop short and worry when I hear a health news story regarding chocolate.   To date, they have only reassured me, thankfully, that chocolate continues be shown to have health benefits (probably not sugar as binder).    I really ought to offer myself up to the medical world as the person to study for the effects from large amounts of chocolate and save lab mice from their tortured little worlds.

Block In

Drug of Choice 9x12 inch

It is fitting then that chocolate should be elevated beyond the kitchen shelf and honor it with an oil painting.   This larger-than-life homage to chocolate was started at Christmas when the house was fully stocked with chocolate in several different formats, syrup, cocoa powder, bon bons and chocolate kisses. 

Gotta Get Gardening

We live in an ideal ocean location, the only (very minor) drawback is the modest size of our property.  Each year we convert a little more footage into garden space or plant another container of lettuce or herbs.  I'm certain that my ancestors were farmers.   Then again, wasn't every one's?   Lack of acreage is not going to squelch my inborn need to grow things, and I love working out in the garden.   Gardening is a distant second to painting, and since this still life combines two of my passions, it was particularly enjoyable to create. 

The night before an extra long class session, I assembled a few gardening essentials and set up my spotlight.   I was tempted to simplify the set-up, swapping items in and out. I knew that I would have extra painters' eyes on it from fellow students, as well as advice from my teacher the next day.  I decided to go for all of it.   If it bombed, I could always simplify it or just try again.   I consulted with my composition expert (my husband).   He tweaked it and blessed it.  I took a picture and printed it so that I would remember how to set it up.

The next day I arrived for the long class with my favorite objects.  I replicated my composition on a high side table.   A fellow classmate was attracted to my set up as well.  I invited her to paint it along with me.    She obviously would have no way of knowing that I had done an elaborate walk up to get this collection of what looked like casually placed objects to their very particular placements.   She began shifting the items around; I began shifting from foot to foot.    She wisely noted that it was pretty complicated and simple is usually better.   I finally - and I'm sure awkwardly - confessed that I intended to paint it exactly how I had set it up because it was kind of complicated, and given that the setting was a classroom.   We discussed the possibility that she might crop her view of the set up.  Cropping had been a recent class lesson.  In the end, she decided on another set up, which I might add, was simple, fresh and beautiful.

My goal was to make sure that the gloves were most prominent painting element.   The form of my hands and the hours they spent leathered in them produced an imperfect but realistic cast. I liked the way the spotlight picked up just the edges of the fingers.  I had to continue to reassess as the painting emerged.  It seemed like each item I worked on would take its turn jumping into the spotlight, before it had to be subjugated to the gloves.  My fellow students and teacher, as I had hoped, pointed out some critical errors.  One of the seed packets looked like a "bandaide," and was too distracting.   The red handled clippers placed in the back would add some height on the right.  The long format class was so engrossing that I didn't break much.  

Gotta Get Gardening

The following week I added the twine, an important and much used gardening item.  The twine winds from one side of the painting to the other.   I started with a somewhat deep value, placing dots indicating where the twine would go. I gradually brought up the light level in certain places.  I used a dryish brush to denote a few stray fibers that were picking up light.

Lots of success with this painting, including being a finalist in The Artist Magazine Annual Competition.   It is still available!

BUY NOW

Christmas Still Life

We always decorate for Christmas on Thanksgiving weekend.   In one of the boxes was a still life that I did in December of last year.      Now the fact that this painting got packed into the decorations last year means that I thought it didn't need any more work.     It was a red poinsetta to the left and a white tea pot in front on the right.   I stared at it in amazement.   The muddy pink/red petals were too uniform, lacking shadows and variety.   The green leaves and green ornaments competed with each other and were too light.   Rather than the spout and the handle of the teapot being aligned at 180 degrees, the spout looked like it came out awkwardly at about 157 degrees.

I grabbed it, marched to my studio and leaned it on the ledge over my palette.   Once a canvas makes its way to this spot, it is about to become a subsurface for a new painting.   Within a day the awful Christmas still life became a red, gold and green swirl of color.  It actually makes a very attractive abstract.   I wish I had taken a picture of it prior to putting the swirls on it so I could remember what it was that so disliked. Why didn't my eyes see the flaws last year when I first painted it?    You really do become blind to the distortion somehow.     So now I had a nice colorful ground for a new painting, but no longer had a Christmas still life.    Which brings me to the painting I did today.

Three of my favorite Christmas decorations are included.  They include a ceramic Santa moon wall hanging, a weathered looking French horn and a jingle bell instrument.   I like rustic looking items over glittery ones, and I chose to use a piece of black foamcore for the background.   My husband is a composition expert and he actually arranged the items for me.  Getting the Santa moon to be suspended against the background took some ingenuity.  (Fishing line, tape, spotlight, knot tying and a jar candle to be exact.)  

Placing the spotlight at a low angle produced some nice background shadows, especially of Santa's profile.  I like how there are three tangent circles in the Santa, the bells, and the horn.   There is too much wet paint right now to finish the bells, but I will be using my silver cup experience to improve those - hopefully.     I am also thinking about adding a sprig of holly that sort of sits on the back of the horn.    Comments?

Like last year's still life painting, this one will get packed away with the decorations.   It will be interesting to see what my impartial, fresh artist eye thinks of it next year.   Will it too become a ghost for a painting future?

Reflections to the Nth

In a recent painting class, Jody Regan challenged us to explore reflections.   What happens to lines, colors and light when reflected by a mirror, water or some other surface with glass type properties.   I just happen to be working on several cranberry bog paintings, all of which contain water of some sort.    What I learned from the class exercise is that water reflections are a bit more forgiving than a mirror and shiny object.  

I selected a silver creamer and a flashy striped fabric.   As if the reflections on the creamer weren't challenging enough, I hiked up the difficulty by setting the creamer on a square mirror.    So now, the creamer reflected the stripes, and the mirror reflected the creamer with the reflected stripes. Picture it? 

One other challenge was that this fabric had a myriad of multicolored stripes.  I didn't want to paint every stripe for sure.  I designed a new fabric in the painting - which then had to be reflected correctly in the silver.

Remember yesterday's hommage to subtlety?  Subtle this is not.  It's fun to blast out straight tube color once in a while, especially after the grey painting day yesterday.

I have a new technique for optical blending.   I think I invented it, but it's probably been around for centuries.  Instead of placing colors next to each other with a brush (that the viewer's eye will mix), I put narrow skim-coat stripes of the blending colors on my palette, then scrape up perpendicularly with a palette knife, then draw the strips of color out with one slow and steady stroke.  That's how I did my red-yellow-red stripes (after having done it the hard way first).   It does skip in places, but I like the painterly effect that has.   I think the fact that the creamer is not so painterly, but more realistic is a style I like.         I learned quite a bit about reflections in the last couple of weeks.  I  learned that a silver creamer is not silver.  It's a muted version of every color around it with a touch of white at the end for the illusion of shine.                                                                           

Noone is going to want to hang this in their house being as garish as it is.   That's okay.  I really like it for what it is. 

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Thank you to my teacher, Jody Regan for sending me this picture. She took it at the beginning of class.  It is my brush drawing of this painting.  I was recycling an old canvas that had been a color exercise.

Painting What You Love

It is natural to want to paint those people, places and things that you love.   If you know the person, place or thing intimately, this knowledge helps immensely as you get into the painting process itself.   You could argue that this knowledge makes the painting easier and more true.  You can also argue that if you paint what you see with a true artist's eye, you can paint anything.

What if you don't love the subject?

I found out first hand that I didn't need to love the two stars of a recent painting class in order to enjoy the experience and have a decent outcome.   Enter "Dolly" and "Pretty Boy," Solomon Island parrots.   For my whole life it was reinforced that birds inside a dwelling are a sign of an impending death (source...Irish superstition). Not only that, but I was nervous about having to paint these two birds because at any minute they might lunge off their perches and claw at me.  Well, there was no drama whatsoever. 

Why by the end of the 2 hours, I was thinking they were actually pretty cute.   In fact, they started saying words - unintelligible to me - but I started repeating to them what I thought they had said.   My lesson learned was to not have such a closed mind on painting subject matter. 

Paint what you love - or don't love.  Just paint.

Plein Air from Anywhere

I have spent a fair amount of time searching for great locations to paint.  In the past few weeks, I have tried to resist the urge to wander around in the car, wasting precious painting time and just park.  

I was heading back from Boston on scenic Route 3A.   My thinking was to stop somewhere in Hingham or Cohasset.   Before I knew it, I was in Scituate - next town - Marshfield.   I circled around the rotary at the start of the Driftway and pulled into the parking lot for what looked like a public works building.   Beyond the parking lot was a beautiful pond with box turtles sunning themselves and plenty of gold and orange reflecting across the water.   I didn't even know this spot existed.   I set up and got to work.  What a spot - beautiful and right on a rotary of all places.



Scituate Rotary Pond



This next one is of the rotary itself.  It felt a little crazy at first as I was composing because of my usual quest for a perfect location.   Here is Rotary Motif #1. 





Studio Photo of Scituate Rotary