Back to Basics

College Creek in Black and White, oils 9" x 12"

The first day of the new landscape class turned out to be one of those rare days which we are lucky to get maybe one or two times a year: just gorgeous! I was itching to start with color right away--that fabulous spectrum of greens in the spring foliage doesn't last very long... but discipline is why I take this class, so I painted my value study in black and white like the rest.

This time Lee instructed us to leave a small border all around our painting to put our value swatches on the border. I must say, the process is getting easier for me this time around. I was able to settle on the composition right away, but nailing down the values is always tricky. Today the sun was so bright, that the water reflection was almost, but not quite, the same value as the sky. The piece of tidal flat in the foreground was close in value to the water. Once I got those in the correct relationship with my teacher's help, painting the three variations within the three main values was a breeze. I bought a visual aid from Lee--a small piece of plastic tinted red, similar to the kind of red filter photographers used for black and white work on film (how old-fashioned that seems!). Looking through the red filter really helps to see the values accurately by reducing the colors to a very limited range.

We got started on site a bit later than usual; I was the only student who developed my painting this far (it could have been taken further, but we were out of time). The other students are new to this method, and being unfamiliar with the process, most got only as far as the three main values. Even so, it was one-thirty before we finished. My heart soars like an eagle!

Paint Annapolis

Conduit Street, oils on canvasboard, 12" x 16" N.F.S.

Paint Annapolis last weekend was a fascinating event. I spent the better part of three days there, commuting back and forth from Columbia and sold two paintings: one off the easel at the city dock sale after the Dueling Brushes competition and another at MAPAPA's All Members show at Maryland Hall.

The juried artists' work was fabulous , specially the prize winners; I am very glad to have fallen in with this group of truly serious artists. It seems to me that this is what real painting is all about: none of the gimmicks of conceptual art, installations or other celebrity-seeking artists' traps we hear about ad nauseam, just plain skill and lots of work.

This is my third painting, a quiet dead-end street just a few blocks off Main Street where I spent two delightful afternoons reveling in the perfect weather. Comparing my work to the work of more advanced artists made me want to become part of this Annapolis School of painting. The lineage goes back to the Cape Cod School of Art, the premier school of American Impressionism, but with its own local flavor.

I found that Lee Boynton, an artist who is credited as one of the artists who started the Paint Annapolis event, was teaching a class at Maryland Hall starting this week, so I signed up for his class. I'm really looking forward to working with him: his passion and committment to painting is contagious!