Monhegan Sketchbook - Over the Meadow

Half way up Horn Hill on Monhegan is a  plateau which overlooks the village and Manana.  I like the juxtaposition of this house adjacent to to the plateau/knoll and the houses beyond.  In the window is a lovely spindle chair, with its shadow on the wall, quietly sitting above the bustle in the village below.  

I used photoshop to look at the sketch as a monochrome to see how the values read.. I think the entire village and trees should be dropped down 1/2 a value shift, allowing the highest contrast to be solely in the window.  The diagonal of the roof cuts the sketch in half, and it's reading a bit like two paintings.  I'll do another sketch with a few changes as another study for an oil painting... and will post for comparison.
Below is a detail from the window in the foreground.

Thanks for looking.  I'll keep you "posted" on my progress.

Monhegan Sketchbook - Harbor 4:30 PM watercolor and ink

 Later in the afternoon, shadows begin stretch down the east side of Manana, growing and overtaking the light until only a few spots of light remain, and are then extinguished.  Now that I think of it, sort of  a preview to the sunset's rhythm a couple of hours later.  I like being reminded how quickly we are rotating on this Earth.

Here is a recent page from my sketchbook.  I began applying watercolor in those remaining patches of light.  Interesting how dark they look in the top image, when seen against the white page, compared to how light they read below when surrounded by dark. 

We visited the island this summer over the 4th of July week, and again, the last week of July.  There is a huge difference in the light and shadow pattern along Manana in just those three weeks. 

This year, I brought home a clear thought about taking the time in my "regular life" to observe the magnificence of our world as I do when on Monhegan.

As always, thanks for looking.  Your comments make my day.


 

On Top of the World 9 x 12 oil

We rent a house for a part of each summer on Monhegan Island.  It is on the top of Horn Hill... the top.  Before we arrive, while we are packing at home, The Hill becomes notorious, and a bit exaggerated, in terms of its height, its steepness, the stamina needed to climb it.  When we are bringing new friends with us, the Horn Hill lore can be intimidating.  Truth is... it is steep.  It is up there.  But, it is certainly doable, and absolutely glorious.  We watch the sunset over the 12-mile distant mainland every evening that it reveals itself.  We watch weather approach and  take on  fascinating size and shape when it nears this lump of rock in the ocean.  Every morning, I look North from the deck to see this wonderful view, divided by this luscious group of three trees.  The view without the tree would be amazing in itself, but the tree adds a beautiful vertical counterpoint to the horizon and village below.  

"On Top of the World" is my take on the Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge for July, theme "Tree".  

Thanks for looking, and as always, I love your comments.

Monhegan Sketchbook July 31 - Long and Short views and Fred Astaire

Here are a few more sketches from my book this week.  We've had some interesting weather, crystal clear days, some big fog pressing against the screens trying to find its way in, more fog that hangs in the harbor only while the sky above and beyond is blue.  As always, it's a joy to be here.  The tall sketch is the long view from the house we call ours for the week.  We can see out beyond Manana to the mainland 12 miles away (many days, but not this one).  Then I have the view over our friends Arline and Moe's house.  We had dinner with them last night.  What a hoot! They are fascinating, and have that way of making their guests feel fascinating, too.  And, they are huge Fred Astaire fans, a passion we share.

Then I have a short view of Bill Cameron's memorial spot over looking the harbor from Horn Hill, and a couple of hikers awaiting the ferry back to Booth Bay Harbor.  I love people watching on the island, and with a sketchbook in hand, you can ostensibly don your invisibility cloak (thank you, Harry Potter, and Happy Birthday today), and just watch and record.  What a blast!

In honor of Arline and Moe, here's a link to Fred Astaire's "Drum Crazy" from the movie Easter Parade.  If you have never seen it, it's 4 minutes of sheer joy.  If you have seen it, it's 4 minutes of sheer joy relived.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTiEJqZMW7E

Thanks for looking, and as always, I love your comments.

Monhegan Sketchbook July 28

 We're back on Monhegan!  A friend is here with her partner and their two moms, both in their 80's.  Our friend rented a golf cart to aid with the moms' mobility on the island, and I had the pleasure of painting with them up on Lighthouse Hill yesterday. I need to do a little tweaking, then will post that painting later this week.  Today it has gone from gray to drizzle, to SIDEWAYS DOWNPOUR, and now maybe to some clearing.  I have been working in my sketchbook, using watercolor and/or watercolor pencils.  Here are some recent images. 

As always, thanks for looking.  I love your comments, too.

Monhegan Pitkin Cottage Window - Two Views

 Across from Monhegan's Library sits tiny Pitkin Cottage.  The Library and cottage are part of one of Monhegan's two street intersections, if you could call them that.  Theirs is the more northern of the two intersections. The church sits in the other.  As visitors stroll into the Pitkin intersection, they pass the Library, gaze shifts to the left and the Monhegan Schoolhouse, then to their maps, then to the decision ahead at the fork in the road: up to the right leads to the Lighthouse and Museum, and up to the left leads to the Ice Pond and/or Cathedral Woods.  Because of this rhythm, I believe most people don't see the Pitkin cottage, though it is certainly in plain view. My theory is actually based on empirical evidence.  I have painted and sketched in a number of spots on this path, amid the pedestrian traffic.

What's the point?  So.  The Pitkin cottage used to have these beautiful (and worn) windows filled with a collection of blue bottles on both sides of its tiny kitchen.   I loved looking through the kitchen at the bottles in front of bottles with the sun-filled interior sandwiched between them. The windows have since been replaced with more practical new ones. Here are a couple of takes on the lovely windows, or as I call it, "an interior painted from the exterior". In both cases, after asking permission, I painted standing in the yard, right on the edge of the intersection I described above.  No one saw me either time.  Invisible in plain sight.  It's a skill... maybe a superpower if you could invoke it with intention.   

Thanks for looking.  As always, I love your comments.

Monhegan Chickens and a nod to "The Music Man"

Monhegan has chickens, in a lovely yard and garden along the road through the village.  They are usually picking and pecking their way around the yard and occasionally onto the road.  I like watching them, their movement simultaneously graceful and jerky.  

Of course, they remind me of my favorite musical "The Music Man", which we watched on TV, (I guess; pre-VCR), and listened to on my parents' soundtrack album.  Robert Preston was a force of nature, his movements so graceful and powerful, and his creation of Harold Hill simultaneously charming, romantic, unctuous, clever, deceitful, sensitive.. a fixture in our childhood home.

In honor of the chickens, here is "Pick a Little, Talk a Little/Goodnight Ladies" with Robert Preston and Hermione Gingold. Doesn't get much better... "brazen overtures!"

Thanks for looking.