Georgetown Inlet

This watercolor sketch of an inlet in Georgetown, Maine serves a couple of purposes for me.

One, I'd been so focused on pen and ink drawings I missed painting.  In addition to composition and design, I truly enjoy working with  color and paint- watercolors in particular.  For whatever reason, I find it more enjoyable (and more efficient) to experiment with watercolor than the other mediums I work with (Acrylic, Oil, Goache, Charcoal, Pencil).  The medium of watercolor itself, I find it to be the quickest medium to get ideas to paper.   Some of that is simple physics - water flows quickly and smoothly.  Another reason is the ease of transport and clean up of watercolor.  I also began my artistic journey with watercolor so that is the medium I've worked with the longest.

One piece of advice I would give, is take whatever advice that is given to you for what it is worth for your journey - not as gospel.  One of the most common pieces of advice that I recieved is that watercolor is very difficult to work with.  That once you make a "mistake" you cannot correct it.  If we go into anything convinced that we cannot correct mistakes, that we must be "perfect" - we are unlikely to try in the first place or to persevere when we encounter the inevitiable challenges that go hand and hand with learning.

Don't get me wrong, classes or advice from those more experienced can be incredibly valuable and can save you a lot of learning time.  Just don't be afraid to forge your own path.

This studio sketch (living room actually) was an interpretation of a sketching trip Julie and I took to Georgetown Months ago.  I look forward for going

It was a grey day when I was sketching on location but for the purposes of the watercolor I wanted I experiment with different effects that sunlight would have.  This sketch has also given me some different compositional ideas.

What I've started doing now is storing sketches and paintings (when possible due to size) together for future reference.  For now, my pen and ink sketches are all still in the original sketchbook as I often find when sketching on location I'll find a subject for a quick margin sketch that fits with other subjects (such as one page of reflections) for potential future development.

The Georgetown area is so beautiful, I can not wait to go back.  And talk about having a magnificent "office!"  We are so lucky to live in Maine.

Georgetown and Tenants Harbor, Maine

Here are a few working sketches that I completed while picking up some of my paintings from the Plein Air Painters of Maine show at the Georgetown Library.  It is such a beautiful area.

The sketchpad I use is a simple 11" by 14" Acid Free medium weight paper. This first page represents some quick sketches I made sitting on a granite bench right alongside an inlet.  I generally make a few quick compositional sketches of scenes I am considering as well as local sights that could turn into additional paintings or elements that I might add into the composition later.  In other words real local buildings or natural scenes that you wouldn't see from this point of view but that anyone familiar with the area would be recognized.

This was a grey day and quite windy, but enjoyable.  Two ducks kept me company the entire time I sketched.  One black, one white.  Both very busy fishing.  I'm going to change the mostly hidden modern car port for a lobster shack that I remember (or imagine I remember) from Higgins Beach.

I plan to adjust the patterns of the lobster traps in the final painting as I've begun at the bottom of the page.

The sketch below is of a working wharf in Georgetown.  I happened to stop by as the days catch was being brought up to the wharf and then loaded onto the waiting truck.  I'm going to move the boat unloading to the near side of the wharf in the final picture.

To the right in the margin is a sketch of some fascinating reflections in a small building next to me on the location of the sketch above.  I could see reflections as well as into the building and out the other side.  It reminded me of something that Andrew Wyeth might paint ( no pressure there :)  

I recently purchased the book Wyeth and Kuhners.  It was filled with many of working sketches leading up to the final paintings.   It was very interesting to "see" his thought process behind some of his finished paintings.  The older I get and the longer I paint, the more my appreciation of his work grows.