A new system of training new painters

I’m confident this approach will prepare confident, competent painting students ready to tackle higher-level observational painting, composition, color theory and mark-making.

Breaking storm, 48X30, oil on canvas, Carol L. Douglas, available through Folly Cove Gallery, Rockport, MA

After this session of painting classes, which ends on November 2, I will no longer take beginning painters. I’m simply stretched too thin. Instead, I’m going to send brand-new painters to two excellent teachers. That’s a simple, six-week process in which they will learn the rudiments of paint application, brush-work and color mixing. When they’ve completed this preparatory work, I’ll welcome them back into my classes.

That doesn’t mean every new student must start this way. If you already know the fundamentals of applying paint, I’m happy to work with you, whether you are self-taught or you started in another class. And en plein air, I’m happy to welcome painters of all levels.

Michelle Reading, oil on linen, Carol L. Douglas available through Rye Arts Center.

I’ll be sending oil and acrylic painters to my old friend, Bobbi Heath. I’ve taught students prepared by her and they’ve come to me knowing the order of operations in solid-media painting. Bobbi painted on the side during a long and successful business career. That shows in the workmanlike way she trains new painters. You won’t get a lot of rhetoric from her, just a good step-by-step introduction in how alla prima painting is supposed to be done.

I’ll be sending new watercolor painters to one of my own students, Cassie Sano. Cassie has experience teaching, but she developed a syllabus specifically to train new painters for me. She too is a very logical thinker, and a person of great compassion and kindness. She’s a crackerjack watercolorist, and, more importantly, she can explain how each step works. She’ll demystify watercolor for the beginner.

Main Street, Owls Head, 16X20, Carol L. Douglas, oil on gessoboard, $1,623 unframed.

Where does this leave me? Relieved. My students have been galloping forward for the past few years, working on higher-level observational painting, composition, color theory, and mark-making. It’s unfair to the new painter to be thrown into this melee without the basics under his or her belt.

Alla prima painting comes under many names, including wet-on-wet, direct painting or au premier coup. That French version means ‘at the first strike’, and it’s a perfect description of what has to happen to get the freshness that alla prima painting promises.

Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, Carol L. Douglas, 18X24, $2318 framed.

To hit it right on the first strike means a lot of things have to have become second nature—drawing, color mixing, and brushwork. The whole point is to keep do-overs to a minimum. That requires preparation and confidence. I’m confident that this new system of training will enhance both.

Three artists, one view

It’s not what you paint, it’s how you paint it.

Asters by Björn Runquist, 12X24. Courtesy of the artist.

Last week, I got a text from Björn Runquist that read “Asters!” and included a photo of the roadside along Maine 131 in Thomaston. I was out on American Eagle teaching, so I couldn’t rush over there. On Monday, Ken DeWaard and I went chasing after Björn’s view. Route 131 is narrow, heavily traveled, and has a wicked ditch, making parking and set-up difficult. That meant all three of us painted from the same place, at the same angle. Björn’s painting is beautifully finished; Ken’s and mine are still incomplete.

It’s common enough for us to paint in the same place, but rare that we would choose the same frame. Within that, different things attracted us. Björn concentrated on the broad sweep and the punctuation of greens. Ken was interested in the big sky. For me, the asters were right at eye-level, so I painted a forest of purple.

Ken DeWaard's asters, 18x24, courtesy of the artist.

Bearing in mind that they’re at different stages of completion, are any of these paintings ‘better’ than the others? Subjected to formal analysis, they all finish strong. They’re properly drafted, have good composition, clear focal points, and use color competently. None are boring.

Therein lies the juror’s conundrum. Their ‘quality’ rests on how you, the viewer, respond emotionally to them. In that, they’re radically different. Ken, Björn and I are roughly the same age, have the same social background, and use the same alla prima technique. I’m not going to psychoanalyze my peers, let alone myself, but we each bring different sensibilities to our paintings.

My asters, 12x16.

That’s why painting matters, of course. It’s also one of the many paradoxes of art. Most consumers respond to paintings based on subject matter—for instance, they look at boat paintings because boats mean something to them. The objectivity of time renders the subject less important, and the artist’s inner life becomes paramount. Vincent van Gogh is not an Immortal because the art-loving public has an abiding love for Arles. Heck, most of us have never been there.

Last week, I told you about an exercise where my students have to paint a scene chosen by committee. (Joe Anna Arnett called me an ‘evil genius’ for this lesson, and it’s the greatest compliment I’ve ever received.) The subject matters, yes, but what you bring to it ultimately overrides content. Never worry about a peer painting the same thing as you—he simply can’t.

A footnote: please check out Peter Yesis’ wonderful flower paintings. He’s willing to take on those flowers petal-by-petal, something the rest of us never dare do.

Monday Morning Art School: painting from photographs

There’s a world of difference between copying a photo and creating a painting using photos for reference.

Skylarking 2, 18x24, $1855 unframed. It's difficult to paint boats under sail en plein air, so mostly we use photographs for that.

It is not true that I never paint from photos; I just prefer painting from life. However, there are times (winter) and subjects (boats under sail, babies) that lend themselves to painting from photographs. Size is also a limiting factor; nobody can finish a painting much larger than 40x40 in the field without two stout oafs to stabilize the canvas.

What I don’t do is slavishly follow a single photo. Instead, most of my studio paintings are compilations of images.

All flesh is as grass, oil on linen, 36x48, $6231 framed.

Start with an idea. Let us say, for example, that you want to paint the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness/Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,” as John Keats put it. Symbols of that idea might include apple orchards, golden light, morning fog over the blueberry barrens.

Gather photos, from your own stash. I have tens of thousands of reference photos on my server; you probably have a few thousand on your phone alone.

Think of this step as similar to the interior decorator’s design board or a Pinterest board. Your goal is not to find a photo you’ll ‘paint from,’ but to find ideas you want to incorporate into your painting. I do this on my laptop (as most of you probably will) but there’s no reason it can’t be done the old-fashioned way, on a bulletin board.

After allowing these images time to percolate, identify the major motif of your painting. That’s its focal point. Then, do a sketch balanced around that motif. It’s helpful to set your reference material aside at this point, and let the sketch bubble up from your subconscious. If that doesn’t work for you, think about compositional armatures. Place your focal point accordingly, and work out from there.

Then it’s simply a matter of borrowing a bit from here, a bit from there, until you have a coherent, cohesive sketch.

Do not simply trace or grid a photo and expect to get a good painting from it. The whole point of painting is to allow room for your subconscious mind to enter the dialogue. You should be drawing from your photo until you have a powerful picture, then building on that drawing in your painting. If you can’t draw well enough to do this, then you need to improve your drawing skills, stat!

Vineyard, 30X40, oil on canvas, $5072 framed. This started life as the field painting below, and was painted again in the studio using the process outlined in this post.

If your goal is wild-animal portraiture, you should work with a good camera with a telephoto lens, but for most reference photos, a modern cell phone is sufficient. The images are large enough and the controls good enough that they outshoot most pocket cameras. There are situations, such as in Argentina, where I will bring a ‘real’ camera, but most of my photos are taken with my cell phone.

Other than for animals or glaciers, extreme telephoto lenses are not great for reference photos. They create pincushion distortion that can seriously muck up a drawing. Cell phones have wide-angle lenses. These create different problems, but they’re easier to correct in the drawing phase.

When I take photos for reference, I always leave in more background than I would have if I were shooting for the photo’s sake. I can always crop later, but there’s no way to add back in the missing information if I decide I need it.

Never try to replicate the out-of-focus background of a photo with a shallow depth-of-field. That’s not how human perception works, and it’s a dead giveaway that you simply copied a photo, rather than created a picture using reference photos.

Vineyard, 9x12, courtesy private collection

Try to keep the lighting the same in all your reference photos. In general, it’s wise to avoid high-contrast pictures for painting. When whites are bleached out and darks are black, we lose all the information that might have been in those passages, and they inexorably lead us to paint in excessive contrast.

While I use my own photos almost all the time, there are times when I use photos from the internet. It makes no sense for me to hunt down a Friendship sloop to check its rigging when the information is right there in someone else’s photo. It goes without saying that you shouldn’t be copying substantive portions of other people’s work without permission. However, you can use the internet for research into how a shoe might reflect light, or the color of cornflowers, or what the mist looks like in an orchard in April.

Just another day in paradise

I’m not much of a photographer, but this trip inspired me to try.

Sunset, approaching our home-away-from-home, the schooner American Eagle.

The northeast’s best season is autumn, and we rolled into it while I was teaching aboard schooner American Eagle. Warm sun, blue skies, and light breezes meant that I kept telling myself, “I wish I could bottle this and save it for winter.” That, of course, is impossible. Instead, I soaked it up as well as I could.

Schooner Heritage soaking up the last of the sun at Pulpit Harbor.

This was my last workshop of calendar year 2021. I’m pretty chuffed at how well all my students have painted all year, and this week has been no exception.

Tidal flats on an unoccupied island. The beach is washed clean twice a day.

A photo is a poor approximation of an experience, but that and our memories are all we generally come home with. (Of course, my students also bring home paintings.)

The sky created crazy beautiful effects.

I’m not much of a photographer to start with. I tend to snap and let the pieces fall where they may. I don’t generally even pick up my cell phone when I’m painting. That’s not a philosophy, it’s sheer cussedness. I’ve had to ask Ken DeWaard if he has pictures after we’ve painted somewhere together.

Lobsterboat coming home at dusk to Isleford harbor.

This sailing trip was different. I came home with dozens of snaps on my cellphone. The sky constantly shifted its optical effects. Our fellow windjammers flew against a backdrop of blue-against-blue. Harbor porpoises wheeled alongside our boat. We stopped at Little Cranberry Island and walked its peaceful streets.

Bell buoy and the Bass Harbor Light.

Next week, we start a new session of Zoom and plein air classes. If you meant to enroll but haven’t, I have limited openings:

• Monday nights, 6-9 PM EST, there is one seat left.
• Tuesday mornings, 10 AM-1 PM EST, there are three seats left.
• Local plein air, Thursday mornings, 10 AM-1 PM EST, there are many seats left.

If you want more information or to register, email me.

There are times when the ocean appears to be made of aluminum foil.

It’s not the subject that makes the picture

It’s what you bring to it. That’s true in life as much as in painting.

A wee little demo I did of water tumbling over rocks. I'm using the same watercolor kit as my students will use next week aboard American Eagle.

This week I’m on a ranch high above Pecos, NM. The owners and the cloud of dogs who usually trail after them are elsewhere. It’s just me, three horses and a donkey. “Aren’t you worried about being alone out there?” one of my workshop students asked me. No.

I had horses when I was young but it’s been a long time since I’ve handled them closely. They set a rhythm to my day. I block out time in the morning and evening to attend to them. Among the pinon and dust of a New Mexico September, I have long stretches of absolute silence. That’s a rarity in the modern world.

Donna finds serenity in the Pecos River.

We don’t form as tight a bond with horses as we do with our dogs, but the potential is there. In 1910 there were about 20 million domestic horses in North America, or around one for every six people. They lived and worked side-by-side with their humans with an intimacy we can’t imagine today.

The owner of Scout, Lucy, Duke and Jimmy (the donkey) is a tiny woman, but she bosses them with impunity. She’s their alpha human. I’m a stranger. Inevitably, like children, they had to test me.

The monkey business started on Tuesday evening, when I came out of the tackroom with an armful of hay to be mugged by the two geldings and a donkey. I’m half a foot taller and sixty pounds heavier than Jane, and I could not push those knuckleheads out of my way. They leaned on me, inevitably getting me to drop their supper. After I’d retrieved and separated it, they started fussing at each other.

Yves painting in the historic barrio of Santa Fe.

Duke bit Jimmy, and Jimmy kicked out at anyone who was nearby. I yelled. Jimmy laid back his ears, stuck out his lip, and brayed. He looked so much like an angry toddler that I started laughing. “I don’t know which one of you started it,” I yelled, “but you’re all grounded!” At that moment they reminded me powerfully of my own children back in the day.

The horses outweigh me, but I have an advantage: my opposable thumbs. On Wednesday, I scarpered out the back and around to the other side of their corral, where I distributed their hay before they realized where I was. Peace has reigned ever since in the Horse Kingdom.

I'll horse-sit these darlings any time!

I love this place, but that doesn’t lessen my appreciation for my own home in Maine, or my workshop aboard American Eagle, which starts Sunday. Would I be this happy in a flat in a rust-belt city? It’s been almost forty years since I’ve lived that life, but I hope so.

I do an exercise with my workshop students where I ask them to paint a scene chosen by committee. It’s not the subject that makes the painting, it’s what they bring to it. That’s true of life as well. Obviously, crisis and grief are exceptions; we all go through seasons of loss, and we’re not expected to be happy in them. But in the general run of events, we are designed for happiness. If it eludes us, it behooves us to figure out why—and to fix it.

No blog next week, because there’s no internet on Penobscot Bay. Please, techies, never fix that!