Maine Marsh & Meadow

I spent some time hanging out at this spot in Acadia National Park both last summer and this one. Last summer, I brought paints with me a few mornings and sketched for the hour or so while my daughter went running on a nearby carriage road.  This year, I took some photos, so coming into the studio now I had both the old sketches and photos to work from.  

The sketches had little detail and I had purposely tried to focus on large areas of color, but they seemed, looking at them one year later, like they lacked a sense of deep space.  Some of that can come from details you see up close and the lack of detail as things get further away.  The photos had too much detail in the further away spaces (cameras seeing things so much better and crisper than eyes can), so I had to merge the two in my mind to end up with a painting that had the right sense of space.

Larger Rose Painting

The roses I got yesterday were a bit more open today.  I got out a larger canvas (18 x 24) to paint them again.  This is where I left off when I was done at the studio today.  I included the shaft of the brass floor lamp in the background, but left the otherwise busy studio backdrop out of the picture.  With an imagined background, I opted for the cool blue-gray to fill the space as a starting point.  I think tomorrow I'll go back into the background to decide whether to add more shapes or colors.

Small Arrangment of Roses

Tea Set in Maine

In my slow unpacking from August, yesterday I came across these paintings I'd stored in a pizza box.

The silver-plated tea set was a find at the Bass Harbor Library book & white elephant sale.  Whatever its original price, it was left behind after the sale was over, on a table with a "pay what you want" can for donations.  It seemed like a great subject for a still life on the porch, so I bought it and a plastic tote bag to carry it and left my $ in the can.

The intense sunlight on the porch made for some strong contrasts on the reflective metal.  I added some flowers and painted it while standing and sitting.

I left it at the house for another go at painting it next summer, I hope it will still be there.

Also in the pizza box -- painting of the ocean from a gray morning.

Eastern Market Metro

I started this painting in late July, finally got back to it yesterday and I think today it's done.

Maine Summer Paintings

Painting this summer in Maine I didn't have a set-aside week to focus on getting work done.  I was too "busy" reading, cooking, playing with rocks on the beach... so this is most of what I got done.  I need to spend some studio time looking at the paintings and seeing if there's something to be done to finish the paintings or if they will be the sketch I use for a future work... or if they will be stacked up against the wall for the next few years.