Oct 28 2013
Plein-Air painting in Maine
I enjoyed the Islesford Painting Workshop so much last year that I decided to go again. It was a rather different experience this time, partly due to completely different weather, but still excellent.
The first day we had heavy rain and fog — all day 🙁 We painted from inside the Dock Restaurant / Gallery, and attempted to capture the solidity of the fog. Day two was still foggy but at least we could change locations a bit. Day 3 was glorious, for which Henry apologized several times (the man has a New England sense of humor and a deadpan delivery).
Here’s a gallery of all the pieces I did in two and a half days. Many of these I am thinking of as sketches for later paintings (which I’ll probably never get around to), or as somewhat unfinished works. The thing about goauche, though, is you can’t really work back into it very easily; so more than likely they will just stay as they are, sacrificing “doneness” in favor of (hopefully) a bit of that nice plein-air freshness.
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- transforming gray to color
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- trying to still inject color but keep a foggier feeling
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- Here I got the fog right, but the composition is wackadoodle
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- grasping for ways to capture the vibration within a solid bank of grey.
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- Starved for structure, I try extending the structure from the bottom into the top.
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- Looking for real structure, I go for the railing.
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- And the window frame
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- The fog lifts just a bit.
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- This should probably have been a pencil drawing.
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- I really like this one, though it’s much paler than what I was going for.
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- Gulls are always good for a break from the landscape.
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- As are the beautiful flower arrangements in the Dock restaurant.
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- A brief break from gouache on paper, to paint the garden sunflowers with acrylic on canvas
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- The adjacent dock. One of my favorites this time around.
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- The exuberance of flowering bushes on the beach in (finally) the sunshine.
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- Trying to capture too many things here.
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- Looking for a little primitivism, clean shapes and vivid color.
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- I think I managed to capture the water effect that fascinated me here.
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- I don’t know what happened here, but maybe it’s a decent sketch for later.
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- Trying to end on a high note.
One Response to “Plein-Air painting in Maine”
Gareth! Wonderful! I love seeing these sketches and what you think/feel about them. I am starting to experiment with watercolor so I’m finding it very helpful to look at yours! Also, hope things are well. We need to coordinate something soon!