Bat house, Birdhouse and icons

Recently, I designed a lesson for my young Art Studio class.  We talked about symbol vs reality.  Road signs are a great example.  When you see a sign for "Deer Crossing", do you see every eyelash on the deer?  Every nuance of fur and hoof?  


All of the students gave examples of symbols that they come across in their lives: birthdays, Red Sox, holidays, poison, danger, electricity, product recognition, superheros, etc.  We had a blast.  Then we created symbols for Halloween and constructed lanterns using the silhouettes in heavy black paper atop yellow tissue paper.  Drop a votive inside (in a jelly glass, with parental supervision) and you have a very cool Halloween decoration.  Yup, a lesson where we got to cut paper, right up my alley!


I resurrected the motif for a birdhouse I painted for my local art association's recent fundraiser.  Fall IS just around the corner.

Thanks for looking.

Boston Public Library, city driving, and Joan of Arc

It's summer, which provides time for exploring, meandering.  However, it's August, time is getting short before the school year begins, so my daughter and I added a little multitasking to this week's meandering.  She is a relatively new driver so we headed into Boston to practice some city driving before spending a little time at the Boston Public Library studying in its glorious reading room.  

We love the Boston BPL.  What's not to like? Grand scale, Sargent murals, nooks and crannies jammed with visual sumptuousness, a glorious reading room filled with people who are working quietly, and a hushed, awed demeanor by the myriad tourists.   The building is filled with energy.   
We discovered the BPL's enormous Joan of Arc collection on a recent visit.  The bulk of the collection was donated by Cardinal John Joseph Wright of Pittsburgh in 1976.   Here's an interesting post about it from a children's literature point of view: 10,000 Ways of Looking at Joan of Arc.  And, I was thrilled when my internet research this morning turned up a beautiful book by a friend.  Look at "HERetic: Joan of Arc" by Dorothy Simpson Krause.  It is a fascinating, stunning, beautiful, virtual flip book.   

Great morning spent in Boston.  Good driving practice, she was very calm as the driver, I less so as the passenger.  The Library was fantastic, and we're heading back on a regular basis.

 

"Manana 4 PM" sketchbook

 Every day, weather permitting, the Balmy Days II ferry from Boothbay Harbor offers a 30 minute tour around the Island here.  It remains one of the best ways to spend $4 that I know,  I cruise the Island's circumference this way several times each week we are here.  It's a nice demarcation in the day, and a way to connect with my family and friends.  We now have a short hand, "2 o'clock?", which translates to "Would you like to organize your day, as I'll organize mine, and meet at the dock at 1:45 to ride around the Island with me?" 
This post isn't about the tour, it's about after the tour earlier this week.  We dispersed after the ride, and I headed to Swim Beach with my sketchbook.  Artist friend, Kevin Beers, was hanging out in the rocks, painting Manana, and I settled in for a few minutes, which turned in to two hours of painting side by side, and chatting about Monhegan, life on the island, life off the island...  it was a splendid afternoon. Not sure how long he'd been there when I arrived, nor how long he stayed after I departed, but at about 4 PM he swapped paintings and began working on his "4 PM painting". The shadows descend down Manana as the afternoon progresses so working a couple of paintings during an afternoon as the light to shadow ratio changes is a great plan.  

 When my mother painted for a few weeks each summer in New Harbor, Maine, she routinely had several paintings in progress and chose her day's destinations according to the weather, and the angle of the sun: 2 PM on the Sheepscot River if sunny, else Kresge Rocks, 8 AM in Christmas Cove if sunny... and so on.

My watercolor sketch is Manana sporting its 4 PM pattern.  I rummaged in my sketch bag for a fine point permanent marker which eluded me, so used a water soluble fine point instead.  When I added the watercolor, I couldn't use any washes as the marker would run, so it was an interesting exercise in staying "in the lines" so to speak.  What a great afternoon!


Oh, and here are a couple of photos of a flock of cedar waxwings congregating in the tree off our deck last year.... just because.

Thanks for looking.  As always, your comments are welcome.

"Exodus" oil 8 x 11

Each summer, as we leave Monhegan Island, I take a photo or two of our party taking the last walk down to the dock.  There's something appealing about the consolidation of belongings, and the unified energy of departure.  It has been a decade now, and I know I'll be taking a few more photos when we leave again in a couple of days.  

This month's challenge topic for Girls Just Wanna Paint was "travel".  These three girls are traveling,  about to embark on another leg of their trip ... over the last rise, down the hill, onto the ferry and back to the mainland, paved roads, pace quickening and heading home.  Is that technically, "untravel"? Unravel, unwind, rewind... back again.

  Thanks for looking.

Monhegan Harbor - unintentional geometry

This morning, my daughter and I were sitting with scone and coffee at the local dock.  She and I chatted and looked at the water, with ferry comings and goings, seagulls, even a couple of lovely young French children with toy swords battling their way up and down the dock a la Erroll Flynn, calling to one another, "Viens ici!" and other phrases I couldn't discern with my decades-old French training.

Then, we both looked closely at this sailboat in the harbor.  I'm hoping you can see it in these photos.
The lines extending from the top of the mast to the bow are aligned exactly with the shift in rocks behind the boat.  From our distance of across the harbor, it read like an illusion, or, for the fantasy reader, like a portal, or horcrux.  The diagonal of the rope is also the demarcation of darker rock and lighter rock.  This is a perfect example of unintended geometry that you must observe and manage in your own paintings. Don't allow an arbitrary arrangement of geometry in your subject create a disconcerting note or passage in your painting.

Step away from your painting frequently, looking from a fresh perspective.  You'll catch false notes, and fix them.  I would have designed with a shortened section of the paler rocks, allowing the line, or implied line to travel up through the darker rocks.  Or, you may decide the angle of the rocks which replicates the geometry of the boat's lines, may make a terrific painting.  My friend Nancy Sargent Howell, uses a technique she calls "prisming" in her paintings.  She sees them, and extrapolates.  See how she uses the subject's geometry in "Laundry and Lines" below.

So, what's the takeaway here?   Go for it. Make your decisions actively, not passively, with your eyes open, with intentionality!  You are the master of your two-dimensional replication of the 3-dimensional world.  Winnie the Pooh says, "Be ware, be very, very ware."  I suggest a slight modification to Pooh's advice, "Be Aware. Be very Aware."
Thanks for looking; feel free to share.

"Over View" 9 x 12 oil Monhegan

One of the reasons I love the New England coast is its topographical variety.  Up, down, around, in, out, over, under... the foreground and background constantly shifting in their relation to one another, providing a myriad of exciting views. 

Remember all those Hanna- Barbera cartoons where the Flintstones, for example, were driving in their car, and the background was zooming by?  The foreground was moving at a different pace than the background and conveying speed.  I was fascinated by that relationship of the front and back when I was a child.  Still fascinating.

"Over view" is a painting from up behind the Monhegan schoolhouse, looking out at Manana and the mainland 10 miles distant.  Walking along Monhegan's coast provides that same fascination.  Every couple of steps provides an entirely new arrangement of foreground to background.  So exciting.

Thanks for looking.  Feel free to comment and to share.

Oh, and here's the Flintstones opening segment.  It'll all come flooding back to you.

"Flintstones, meet the Flintstones..."

"Wednesday Evening" 16 x 16 oil - leading the eye

I have written about this painting in its early stages.  You can read about its progress here in these two earlier posts:
 "Newbury at Night" start
"Newbury at Night" in process

Years ago I asked my painting teacher how I can know when a painting is finished.  His response was that you need to know what your painting is about, know the idea behind your painting.  When you can do nothing more to support the idea, then you are finished.  At the time, I'm not sure I had enough context to understand what that meant, but over the years it has stuck with me, and is the drive behind my painting process.  

Wednesday Evening - detail

So... "Wednesday Evening" has always been about the transition occurring at dusk in this Boston intersection - the juxtaposition of commuters' speedy exodus and pedestrians meandering into evening.  I designed the painting to use the people in the foreground as your path into the painting, while leading the eye along the road and into the acceleration out the ramp to the Mass Pike. I used many, many shapes in the painting to lead your eye into the distance, into the dusk.  As an example, the detail shown here shows two   street signs and the upper tail light of a car in the middle ground.  These three shapes are intentionally angled to point to the blur of light as the cars exit the city.  I also supported that idea by softening all the edges in the high contrast areas of the painting, the lamp posts, the large dark structure, etc.. but I left the edges crisp in the taillights' glow along the Pike.  The tall building on the right side acts as a stopper so your eye doesn't leave, and I added the idea of architectural detail which  points down to the same area of light.  

My intention was to lead the eye, and to keep the viewer engaged in the painting, observing the contrast in tempos between the Pike and the street.  As always, interested in your thoughts.  Thanks for looking.