Showers Over Seawall, 8x10, oilTrina and I left New Hampshire on Sunday for Bernard, Maine, and the Acadia Workshop Center. This marks my sixth time teaching for AWC. I alternate between workshops in June and September (or October.) In June, we get to paint the pretty spring greens, and in fall, the breath-taking reds of maples and oaks.
Even though it's not quite October, we're seeing patches of vivid color. I plan to take the class to some of my favorite foliage spots, but for now, we're letting the colors "ripen" a bit more and are exploring the shore instead. So far, we've painted near Lopaus Point and at Seawall. A bit of spotty rain added some drama to the day - a sudden shower sent us scurrying during my morning demo, but the rest of the day gave us good weather.
One of the errors I see students make when painting a cove is not flattening the "ellipse" enough. Imagine looking at a perfectly round cove from an airplane. The cove would appear as a semicircle. Now let's have the plane land. As it drops lower and lower, the cove starts to flatten into an ellipse. By the time you exit the plane, the far side of the ellipse - the most distant shore - will appear nearly flat. In fact, it should be painted flat. Any curvature at all in that distant shore will make it look poorly drawn
Above is one of two demos I did yesterday at Seawall. Below is a picture of one of my students, Bill, hard at work.
