Scarborough Barn

This sketch is an elaboration of an on location watercolor completed in Scarborough Maine more than a decade ago.  This is one example of why I do enjoy the challenges of studio work from on location paintings.  

I hope to be able to take various elements that do exist (though not in this exact composition) in a place and bring them together into a scene that people feel as though they've been there.  In this case, the ocen in the distance with a small peninsula and a barn on a sloping hill tucked amongst elm, spruce, and other hard and softwoods encroaching on what was, at one time, a working farm.

The trees existed, but for the purposes of the picture I reversed them.  I'll do another color study as the original painting was done in the fall.  The Ocean was not viewable in the acutal setting due to the heighth of the surrounding forest but it would have been where I've indicated it in the drawing.

Find your own way, study with moonlight

I've always been fascinated and drawn to the effects of moonlight.  It always seems so mysterious to me.  In particular, in the winter, a full moon and frozen ponds and marshes would expand the world I could explore as a child.  It opened up corners of the woods often closed off in different seasons.  Even very familiar places seem different at night, and moreso in the moonlight.

I also vividly remember the brilliance of the moonlight dancing on the ocean - particularly in the cold winter air.

Here is a study for the second in the planned series of Androscoggin River paintings.   A night scene.  I've thought about doing painting series of a particular scene for years now and occasionally I've done it but in a time period of years not weeks.  I'm not sure exactly what has motivated me to purposely paint and draw this series, other than the incrdedible contrast of this change of season from Winter to Spring.

This scene was done primarily with indigo with a few highlights/ darklights with prussian blue.  I do enjoy monochrome painting as it really forces me to focus on value and composition - errors in which can sometimes be masked with the use color.  There's still work to do on the composition.

I've also been struck by the varied surface of ice on the river.  Some areas windswept reflecting light like a mirror - others still snow covered. The patterns of darker and lighter cracks in the ice definately lean to the abstract

One of the most common misperceptions about watercolor is that once you touch paint to paper, you cannot undo anything.  I've not found that to be the case - with very few exceptions.   You do have to plan your darkest darks and lightest lights out first but beyond that, I've found watercolor to be very flexible and suited to a wide variety of techniques.  Find your own way.  You certainly can learn from others but be confident and experiment - you will develop a style and method that is all your own.

Why I Love Plein Air Painting - Reason 1007

This morning started as just one of those mornings.  Got out of bed, stepped on the cat, )(the cat's fine), spilled morning coffee - you know the kind of day.  Nothing major, just irritating.

Later I took a short ride to see what was happening at the river bend today.  It was beautiful.  The sun was high, the ice was reflecting the sun, at times making difficult to see, the ice almost silver.  There were dark channels of open water working thier way through the ice pack creating a dramatic contrast to the silver ice and the trees were backlit so strongly they had an almost flat appearance.

More striking were the sounds of the day.  The wind blowing some stubburn   brittle brown leaves which had held on all winter.  When the wind held sustained gusts - you could observe the ice rolling ever so slightly, but it was the sound of the ice moving which really was the attention getter.

I did a very brief compositional study in Pen and Ink today.  Including a particularly interesting (to me) tree to be included in finished paintings.  I acutally spent more time taking some brief observational notes.



I began a large compositional sketch in charcoal a little while ago - just the very beginning of a sketch.  Then everything clicked.  The past few days of observation plus many random observations over the years.

From this one composition I'm going to do five subjects - which will all be different - and all based on my own observations of nature.  My own much simpler version of Monet's haystacks or Cathedrals.  Three daylight scences with differnet lighting as observed and two night scenes.  Am excited to get started.

The previous day, I'd done some four compositional studies from another vantage point.  They are sketchy (no pun intended) but turn out to be great time savers for me.  In a matter of minutes I was able to determine that an idea I had for a painting wouldn't really work as I'd envisioned it (rather than finding out at the end of a painting) and then eventually settling on a different composition to explore in more detail later.




Back to why I love painting on location - not simply the artistic problem solving - though that is satisfying by itself.  Most of all, the feeling of peace nature instills in me - no matter the day, no matter the time.

Approaching Abstraction?

One of the experiences I enjoy about painting on location is how strong an impression spending time observing nature leaves on me.  I've written before about how what I observe can outpace what I'm able to achieve at the moment.  This is especially true in unfamiliar locations.

What I've learned over time, is that there are two main things that I just need to let happen.  Time - Time to interpret what I've seen, time to continue to develop my painting skills.

On location, there is a time pressure.  Conditions change.  The light changes dramatically in as little as half an hour.  A change in light equals a change in colors.    I choose to view these potential constraints as a benefit.  It forces me to simplify the scenes.  To emphasize what is essential, to subordinate what is not.  If I were to compare this to writing, I'd say that painting on location is to studio paitning, what writing poetry or a short story is to writing a novel.

I've written before about a spot off Bear Notch Road.  We've had a number of family visits and picnics on this spot.  Our dog even went for her first swim here (impressive for a Shih-Tzu).  Not sure a cold mountain stream was the best choice for that.

On Julie and my first trip to this spot I produced the following three sketches.  The first is the view looking up stream.

The next sketch was a view just under the bridge looking upriver.  The light was fading and almost choked out by the thick forest.  The dark greenish/blue was the color of the reflections in the water.  A few treetops were hit by the fading the light, most of the trees were in dark shade.

I was walking to take a last look at the mountains when I happened to look down at the water and I noticed the beautiful reflections in the water.  Beautiful but fleeting.  The slightest breeze made the reflections flutter and disappear.  The result of that was a very quick unpacking on my paints and this very quick sketch.  The bottom left is a quick indication of the shore and then the reflection of the mountain.  The rest are the very briefest indications of beach in the river and the locations of visible shorelines.

To most, this simple sketch means little to nothing.  A semi-abstract doodle.  Speaking of abstract art.  I was quite surprised to learn that one of my inspirations, the late Robert George Harris, experimented and explored with abstract art for years after he retired from a very successful carreer in illustration.  He spoke of how this time absolutely informed his second career in portraiture.    I don't pretend to understand abstract art.   My earliest paintings tended to approach the abstract, which is not something I desired to explore; however, over time I have developed a tendancy to approach studio work with an initially abstract or semi-abstract design.

Julie and I had a neighbor years ago in Westbrook.  She saw me painting outdoors and we both discovered our mutual interest in and our very different approaches to painting.  I enjoyed our conversations about what inspired us to paint what we painted.  Our approaches and choice of subject matter could not have been more different, but that didn't matter.  They were a young couple and moved away a short time later. They made sure to stop by before they left and they gave me a gift of two art books that I still have in my collection, Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta.

This sketch takes me directly back to the time and place more than two decades ago.  This will be the basis of a more finished painting eventually.  

Here are a couple of sketches done years later in studio using these on location sketches and memories as reference.  More on these in later posts.