Overcast Day at the coast

 

Overcast Day at the Coast

Acrylic 3" by 5"

This is another small seascape I painted after doing some detail work on a larger painting.  It's an imaginary scene but based on many years of exploring the Maine coast.  I find these quick sketches to be very freeing.  

I go through different phases of sketching.  A few years ago it was a deep exploration of pen and ink. Lately it's been small color sketches in watercolor and acrylic from imagination.  I keep being reminded of how each work informs future works.  While I was painting this small sketch I had a an unplanned trip.  I didn't do it consciously, but when I mixed the paints I flashed back to living over a garage in Westbrook, working on landscape painting with our new arrival (Ari) asleep in the living room.  

It was just one brushstroke but as the paint mixed on the canvas I was transported back nearly a quarter of a century.   This is also what I love about painting on location.  The intense focus and observation of nature, processing it and expressing it on canvas or paper that place/moment in time becomes part of you and you of it.   I urge you to give it a try!

watercolor sketching

I recently started experimenting with compositional sketches in watercolor.  Watercolor allows me to quickly block in a scene, experiment with color and different ideas for the subject.

The corner farm at dusk was just a quick impression I caught a glimpse of while driving home from work.   These sketches were only done in watercolor.

The second sketch of the corner farm is what it might look like as a winter scene with cornstalks as were actually there.  I changed the sky and moved the trees behind the house and moved the house further back in the composition.  I also extended the heighth of the silo.

From these quick small sketches I will continue to refine the paintings with more detailed studies (such as the corn stalks) before launching in to a finished painting.

All of these materials, a portable watercolor palette, a small water container and the watercolor paper scraps fit into a small sketch bag.  It's a quick ready to go at a moments notice.  I've put a couple of small watercolor brushes in a baggy along with pencil and charcoal should I desire to sketch in different media as well. 

Keeping these sketches "sketchy" will allow me to retain the enthusiasm necessary to continue to create and add throughout the process to the finished painting.

Cape Cod - Dunes and Pines in process

Cape Cod - Dunes and Pine

Charcoal on Paper

Cape Cod - Dunes and Pine in Process

This subject was from our trip to Cape Cod last summer (2018).  The sun was very low so that the near dune was completely in shadow, only the top of the pine was illuminated as well as the far dune.  This is another example for me of the benefits of painting on location.  This was an effect on a brilliant sunny day that lasted for probably 10-15 minutes.  I would not have imagined this scene with the back dune illuminated - but there it was.  It was such a striking contrast.

On the right are half a sheet of small sketches done on location at the Cape.   I then did the large colored pencil sketch the top.  I don't work with colored pencil often, but decided to shake things up a bit and do some experimenting.

The small pen and ink sketch was a composition sketch resulting from a feeling from the other sketches and wondering if the background dunes closed the picture in too much.  I then began to work on the large charcoal sketch to further work out the composition.

Eventually I will complete a watercolor and or acrylic of the subject.

There really isn't one way I approach a picture.  Sometimes I work from pencil to charcoal to watercolor to oil.  At other times, I work from watercolor to charcoal.  It just depends on what I'm trying to express and at other times - what I have at hand. 

Every artist develops their own shorthand I'm sure.  I've seen studies by some of my favorites including John Stobart that made zero sense to me, but they weren't for me or even for public consumption.   I also find the process of doing preliminaries is very freeing, and sometimes wonderful things happen that wouldn't have if I had feared to "color outside the lines"

abstract seascape study

Here is another full sheet watercolor study by Elmer L. Ham.   The pictures don't do it justice.  It has an almost abstract quality about it.  It strikes me as another on location study.  Faint pencil lines block in both the major masses of rocks (Feels more like California than Maine to me) as well as of the wave action - see below.

The sense of movement is captured and the white of the paper also is utilized effectively to capture whitecaps as well as foam from waves crashing on rocks.  It all implies to me a familiarity with the ocean as well as this particular location.  That is only reinforced by the deft strokes of a loaded brush throughout the painting.  

This strikes me as a rapidly executed sketch (you have a max of a couple of hours before the light changes too much - and my reality of painting along the coast is that you tend to have a shorter window).  But everything is contained within this first pass to allow the artist to go back at any time to finish the painting or to use this as a basis for a finished painting.

I will show more of his completed seascapes in future posts but I enjoy sharing some of my interpretations of the artists thinking.  They are not complete but , for me, the sense of movement is there and I can hear the surf (it could be the tinnitus but I prefer to think it is the surf)

Sea Glass and Sketches

Had a wonderful time with family and friends Down East!  But those are stories for a different blog.

The sketches from left to right top are Acrylic 4" x 6", Acrylic 12" x 16", Watercolor 8" x 10" and Acrylic 4" x 6"

Bottom Left are two quick pencil composition sketches and bottom right is a partial sketch with notes and some small composition sketches which I will work up into larger compositions and paintings.

The 4" by 6" were a first time experiment for me.  The format did make me simplify very complex subjects.  The jury is still out for me regarding this small format.

The 12" by 16" inch painting is really four sketches in one.  Sky, Water, Distant shoreline and Mid ground cliffs.  I wasn't pleased with the overall composition but for study purposes it was a productive exercise.  I really want to focus more on my paint handling with Acrylics.  Need some new bushes, but more than that I just need to focus on it more.

These color sketches, the time spent observing the scenes, and notes will be combined into new subjects with some photos I took for reference.  The sea glass and pottery were all collected in Eastport in one morning.

Between Cape Cod and Eastport I have enough source material to keep me busy throughout the fall and winter.

I have a new idea for some composition sketches when I return from the trip.

After Ripley

One of my favorite artists, Aiden Lassell Ripley, spent some of his formative years studying the work of Velasquez and Hals while traveling throughout Western Europe, Spain in particular, and North Africa on the Paige Travelling Scholarship from the Musuem School in Boston at the turn of the century.

It is amazing what you can learn from studying other artists.  I much prefer to paint directly from nature, but there are times when studio work is the order of the afternoon.

This is a watercolor I did today, based on Aiden's work.  A poor imitation, but I learned a lot about composition and depth from this excersize.  A fun way to spend a little time between projects.  I

If you've never seen Aiden Lassell Ripley's work, check it out.  I am still amazed at the effects he was able to achieve in watercolor.

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.