 |
| Summertime Painting at Its Best |
For the past two weeks, I've been helping students wrestle the vast maritime landscape into small canvases—with success! I showed them how to crop a scene, parse out value relationships, make what I call the "best guess" at color, and then adjust it all to a beautiful finish. Plus, I got to do it all under sunny blue skies with a fair breeze. Well, actually, we did have a few days of fog that sat right at the water's edge, but that's all part of the Downeast experience. Life doesn't get better than this.
I now base my plein air painting workshops at a beautifully-restored US Coast Guard campus,
West Quoddy Station. We have a spacious classroom for lectures and critiques, but here's the best part: the campus is only a half-mile from Quoddy Head State Park. The park offers the painter rugged cliffs, crashing surf and a big tidal range (28 feet) that exposes a seabed filled with interesting rocks and colorful seaweed. I love painting here.
I'm offering these Maine workshops only twice a summer now. (Some have asked if I'm retiring. No, I'm just "refocusing.") And for my past students and experienced painters, I offer a weeklong painting retreat, also based at the Coast Guard campus. I'm already getting reservations for 2020, so if you are interested, please sign up soon, as I only take a handful of students for each workshop. You can find full details and also sign up at
www.PleinAirPaintingMaine.com I hope to see some of you next summer.
In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of my demonstrations and photos from the workshops.
 |
My "En Plein Air Pro" pastel setup. Camera lens makes
angle look a little wonky, but everything is level! |
