The View from Eagle Cove

The View from Eagle Cove, pastel, 9" x 12."

The Howard County Plein Air Group painted yesterday at another location entirely new to me: the Eagle Cove School in Pasadena. The school is just before the causeway leading to Gibson Island, an exclusive gated community on the Chesapeake Bay. I've heard of Gibson Island many times, but have never actually been there, nor this particular neighborhood across the channel. The leader of our group, Deborah Maklowski, happened to know Mary Ellen Geissenhainer, the art teacher at this small private school formerly known as the Gibson Island Country School, and our group was invited to paint on the school grounds.

The yard at Eagle Cove School.

I arrived a little before 9:30 AM and found Deborah and one other artist already there, walking around looking for a place to set up. The day was hazy and promised to be a scorcher, but the best view to my mind, was by the school yard fence overlooking the cove, where there was no shade. The others chose to set up under the shade by the driveway, but I decided to go with my first instinct and set up by the fence.

I rarely paint with pastels en plein air, mostly because I have yet to assemble a professional traveling kit for them, but this time I brought my set of Sennelier half-sticks and the old Grumbacher set of pastels I inherited from Mum (my mother-in-law Margaret). I set up my Guerilla Painter box & tripod and laid the Sennelier box across the palette, leaving the Grumbacher box on the ground. I had to bend down periodically to select the Grumbacher sticks I wanted to work with, laying them on the palette. A sheet of Wallis paper mounted with adhesive onto a piece of archival matboard was my surface.

I wasn't sure just how to tackle the painting--I haven't had as much experience with pastels as with oils or watercolor, so I have not developed any specific method of working. I constructed the main features: the lines of the trees on the right, the water and  horizon, the two boats as the focal point, the near shoreline. From there on I was all over the place, filling in the lights on the tree trunk and drooping branches, then a bit of the darks, a peach wash over the sky overlaid with light blue, coloring the far shore, a lilac wash over the water. It didn't look like much at first, but gradually the painting began to emerge.

I'm so used to mixing my colors in oils that trying to select just the right val-hues in colored chalk seemed impossible--the water was too purple, and needed to be toned down with gray-greens and blues. The touch of blue-green in the bushes in the foreground appeared garish at first, but after consideration, it's a gorgeous color and it works, so I added some touches of the same color to the tree foliage. Voila! It was so much fun, I must try it again real soon.

Looking at Gibson Island across the water, we artists wished one of us knew someone who lived there who would invite us over to paint, so we could cross the causeway to explore this intriguing place. How about it folks--any one reading this who lives on Gibson Island? Would you please invite a group of plein air artists to paint on your island? We'd love it!