Sunday, 15 May 2011

Places to Paint - Maine

Slack Tide (oil on panel 16" x 12")- by Kevin Mizner
Recently I came across the work of Kevin Mizner and his blog Maine-ly Painting  
This Blog draws on my over thirty years of experience painting the beauty of Maine. I'll have some pointers, comments and even criticisms on art.
I was impressed with his work - his landscapes and seascapes of Maine - and the way he wrote about art and the places he painted.  I've been to Maine and sketched in Maine and I'd have loved to have had somebody provide me with a guide to the places to paint.  So I decided to ask him to write a guest post for this blog about his favourite places to paint in Maine - and this is it!
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Maine has been a destination for artists for nearly one hundred-fifty years. Why? It's all about the light. 

Maine sits rather high in the Northern Hemisphere, at about the same latitude as Spain, and a little south of the UK, which gives it a raking, angular light. Any artist will tell you that an angled light gives a more vibrant glow to colors than a more direct, straight overhead light.

But in addition to the angle of the sun, Maine juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. Maine has salty, moist air, infusing the light with a radiant shimmering glow. Combine that quality of light with Maine's three thousand miles of rocky coastline, replete with quiet harbors, fishing villages and a few sandy beaches, and it's small wonder artists flock here to paint.

The artists who've painted here are a veritable Who's Who of the greatest ever: Frederick Church, Thomas Moran, Winslow Homer, Robert Henri, Andrew Wyeth, Rockwell Kent, and John Singer Sargent, to name but a few.

Monhegan

One of the more popular spots in Maine to paint is the small island of Monhegan.

Monhegan is a spit of rock about two miles long and half-mile wide, but it has breath-taking views at almost every turn. The only way to get there is by ferry. Once you're on the island, be prepared to walk, as no vehicles are allowed - other than the beat up trucks used by the year-round Lobstermen population.

Acadia National Park

Summer in Acadia (oil on panel 11" x 14") by Kevin Mizner
The next great spot is Acadia National Park.

Acadia may be one of America's smallest National Parks, but it is spectacular, none the less. Located on the ten-mile wide Mount Desert Island, it is the only spot on the east coast where the mountains meet the sea.

Kevin's favourite place to paint in Maine - Harpswell

What is my personal favorite Maine spot? Harpswell, Maine.

Located about thirty miles north-east of Portland, Harpswell is an accumulation of small villages and islands on Maine's mid-coast. Of all the spots along the coast, it is the most unspoiled.

Photograph of Mackerel Cove
Orr's and Bailey Island's offer gorgeous views of the coast that rival Monhegan's.  Mackeral Cove on Bailey Island is in my opinion, one of the most picturesque spots on the coast!

A part of Harpswell, and my home for four years, is Cundy's Harbor. "Cundy's", as we locals call her, is one of Maine's authentic working water fronts-- no condos in sight. It's harbor is chocked full of lobster boats and trawlers, the shore has quaint wooden-piling wharfs jutting out to service the boats.

Cundy's Harbor In Light Fog (oil on panel 11x14) by Kevin Mizner
Huddled on either side of the one road into (and out of) town are old New England Cape Cod style homes that have weathered the harsh seasons for one hundred or more years. I have travelled the state from stem to stern, and Cundy's Harbor is the quintessential Maine coastal fishing village.

Other places of note:

In the footsteps of the Artists

I've mentioned Monhegan, but Baxter State Park in northern Maine has Mount Katahdin, a favorite spot of the great Frederick Church.

Any fan of Andrew Wyeth knows he summered and painted in Maine. Travel along Route 1 to Thomaston, and head out to Cushing, Bristol and Friendship and you'll be trodding the same ground "Andy" walked as he made his masterpieces.

John Singer Sargent painted in Acadia (eg Sand Beach, Schooner Head)

Edward Hopper painted one of the lighthouses at Two Lights Park in Cape Elizabeth (now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

And Kevin Mizner painted in all those places...

The best time to visit

Finally, when is the best time to visit?

If you want to watch and paint the lobstermen and eat some good lobster, come in summer. If you want to see the spectacular foliage of the maples and birches, come in the fall. If snow scenes and some skiing are your cup of tea, come in winter.

Winter Light Cundy's Harbor by Kevin Mizner
Spring for us is called "mud season" and for a good reason! All that melting snow, and bare grey branches are not worthy of painting in the slightest. Unless you're Willard Metcalf. Oh, he painted in the western mountains of Maine near Bethel.

So there you have it. My ideas on what's good to paint and see in Maine! I hope this works for you, and if you would like anything more in way of information, paintings or photos, please don't hesitate to let me know.

This is the latest in a series of posts about Places to Paint.  If you're interested in contributing a guest post click this link to find out what you need to do.

Links:

Posted by Making A Mark at 17:20 3 comments
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Monday, 9 May 2011

How to mix natural greens for landscape painting #1


How to mix greens for landscape painting is a perennial topic and right now it's very topical in the northern hemisphere given the fact the trees are now all in leaf and it's warm enough for plein air painting to start!

I'm going to be exploring the topic of mixing greens over the course of a few posts.

I'm starting with a great video by Jan Blencowe (The Poetic Landscape) on YouTube which very graphically illustrates how you can mix greens for landscapes by mixing black and yellow.

Jan recommends using Mars Black as it's non-toxic.  She also uses transparent yellow, yellow ochre and ultramarine to demonstrate the range of greens which can be produced.

Tony Johansen identifies Mars Black characteristics as being:
  • only black available in acrylic ranges
  • only major black pigment that is 
    • non-toxic, 
    • a good drier, 
    • safe to over paint 
    • can be used in all media without reservation. 
  • It is dense and opaque with a warmish brown undertone


One thing - the video was uploaded over two years ago and the reference to website http://www.thepaintingadayproject.com/ is redundant as that site no longer exists. You can find Jan on the two links in the first sentence of this post.
Posted by Making A Mark at 14:16 2 comments
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Wednesday, 6 April 2011

The Cityscape: modern perspectives on London

I normally stick pretty much to drawing and painting on this blog - however now and again I'm happy to include photography.  This post is about cityscapes and a recent competition run by the National Gallery in conjunction with Flickr to try and capture London in a photograph. 

The cityscape

A cityscape is a view - typically represented by a drawing, painting or photograph - of a city.  The cityscape is the urban equivalent of the landscape.  It's also known as the townscape although this tends to denote differences in the size and significance of the urban environment rather than the size and significance of the artwork.

There have been a number of artists particularly renowned for cityscape scenes.  They include Wenceslas Holler - who was renowned for his views of London - and Canaletto and the Italian verdute painters.  Canaletto of course visited London and lived her for a period of years and painted scenes up and down the Thames.

The Thames and the City of London from Richmond House (1747) - by Canaletto
We are probably most used to thinking of cityscapes as skylines and outlines - with the shape of the buildings characterising the nature of the city. 

Modern Perspectives on London
To coincide with the exhibitions Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals and Modern Perspectives, the National Gallery invited you to contribute your own modern perspective of a cityscape to the Modern Perspectives Flickr competition group – inspired by Ben Johnson, Clive Head and Canaletto.
You can see the Modern Perspectives competition winners here.

I contacted Bob Lambourne, one of the winners, who had produced a photo which both appealed to me and at the same time intrigued me.

Thames Sunrise by Bob Lambourne
(courtesy of Bob Lambourne)
This is a view I'm really familiar with.  I worked for three years in an office over looking the Thames just the other side of this bridge.  Every time I walk past - on the Thames Path on the South Bank of the Thames, I look at it and think about how to do it - and Bob has answered the question!  Now I know where I was going wrong - I keep walking past at and looking at the wrong time of day!

I contacted Bob for permission to use his photo on his blog and found a bit more about how he produced it.  Here's what he had to say
I had got up really early one Saturday morning to capture the light of dawn on the river, it must have been about 6.30 am when I took the picture using a Canon 5D with a 28mm lens. I haven't done much more other than a few tweaks to the curves and levels in photoshop. The picture was hand-held (I hate lugging tripods around with me, they make me feel so conspicuous.

In case you are interested the picture has also been selected to appear in "The Spirit of London" a commemorative book presented to every Olympic and Para-Olympic athlete at the London 2012 games by Mayor Boris Johnson.

I am not a professional photographer and work as a graphic designer in the marketing sector. I discovered my passion for the art back in the 80's when I took a 4 year photography course at night school in the days when the ILEA and GLC were still around. 

I guess the best quote on photography and the one that sums me up is:

"I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I take them for myself first and foremost - that is important." Jaques Henri Lartigue
You can see the other photographs which were entered in the competition in the Flickr Group Pool.  For some, the notion that it was about London got a little bit lost in the translation!

You can also buy prints of this photo from Bob.  Try contacting him via his Flickr Account boberator or his website or

Links:
Posted by Making A Mark at 12:00 0 comments
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Monday, 4 April 2011

Places to paint: Paul Nash and the Wittenham Clumps

I'd like to draw your attention to a brilliant website.  It's one of a kind.  However I think its scope and design might work very well for other websites about landscape painters and the places they paint.

Paul Nash and the Wittenham Clumps

Paul Nash and the Wittenham Clumps is totally devoted to one painter and one place.
  • The artist is Paul Nash (1889-1946)- one of the UK'sleading landscape painters.
  • The place is the Wittenham Clumps.  These are two chalk hills which are crowned by the oldest planted hilltop beeches in England.  They rise above the the flat landscape of South Oxfordshire and are apparently visible for miles around.
100 years ago this year UK landscape painter, Paul Nash , discovering the Wittenham Clumps and what he saw as a magical landscape.

From 1911 he proceeded to paint them on a periodic basis throughout his career as an artist

Take a look at the website and the amazing level of effort which has gone into recording a unique relationship between painter and landscape. It's extremely well done and provides a unique perspective on the development of an artist's work in relation to one landscape motif.

You can see:
The website is a project by Anna Dillon and Christopher Baines.   I've been corresponding with Anna and found out that they met due to a shared passion for the work of Paul Nash, plus they both live near the Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire.

To celebrate the centenary of Paul Nash's connection with this landscape, they made this new website in order to explore the many paintings he made in the area and also to encourage people to visit the area. The project has been supported by North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

I've certainly been encouraged to visit next time I'm in the area!
Posted by Making A Mark at 18:15 1 comments
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Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Portraying the Bristol Channel Floods 1607


Art can create a record of catastropic events so that long after they have been forgotten there is still a record of what it was like.

In recent days we've been reminded of the forces of natural events and how these can change the landscape.  I became interested in the extent to which art has been used in the past to
  • either record the event itself
  • or record how it has changed the landscape
  • or possibly, through memory painting, to record what was there before a catastrophic natural event
Which is how I came to discover the Bristol Floods of 1607, which many now believe may have been a tsunami.  What follows is a summary of what I've discovered.

The Deluge of 1607 - in England

Woodcut image from
"A true report of certaine wonderfull ouerflowings of Waters, now lately in Summerset-shire, Norfolke and other places of England...",
printed in London 1607

On 20 January 1606 there was extensive flooding in southwest England and South Wales.  This is now referred to as the 1607 floods because of the changes to the calendar made later in 1606 to correct problems with how days had been counted up until that point.

There are a variety of views which seek to explain what caused it - from a storm surge to a tsunami.

The wave height was some 4 metres in the outer Bristol Channel to more than 6 metres in the inner Severn Estuary.  (That's very nearly 20 feet high).  A number of churches in the area bear plaques which record how high thee water reached.  It's also estimated to have reached a speed of some 25mph.

More than an estimated 200 square miles (518 km2) of land were flooded on either side of the Bristol Channel along some 570 km of coastline and associated land in North Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and along the South Wales coast from Monmouthshire to Carmarthenshire.  It's clear that flood defences were inadequate for holding the sea back in a number of places.  There was scope for the water to flow a considerable distance inland where the land was flat - such as on the Gwent and Somerset Levels with the water reaching as far inland as Glastonbury Tor.

It caused 2,000 deaths and considerable economic loss. 

At the time of the great flood there were no newspapers.  However it was custom and practice to poduce and print pamphlets to mak news about some great event.  In this instance it would appear from the research done that these pamplets had been tailored to each of the counties affected.
“Many there were which fled into the tops of high trees, and there were inforced to abide some three daies, some more, and some lesse, without any victuals at all, there suffring much colde besides many other calamities, and some of them in such sort, that through overmuch hunger and cold, some of them fell down againe out of the Trees, and so were like to perish for want of succour. Othersome, safe in the tops of high Trees as aforesaid, beholding their wives, children and servants, swimming (remediles of all succour) in the Waters.

Woodcut images were used to convey how much of the land was covered and what it was like for the people affected.  I've looked for indications of other forms of artwork but can find none online which survive apart from various references to the pamphlet which was printed by printers who operated in the courtyard of St Paul's Cathedral and also printed William Shakespeare's plays.

I'm somewhat surprised as I'd have expected to have found at least some paintings which attempted to recreate what happened on canvas.

The water changed the coastline in places.  For those interested in the history of the changing landscape and/or geology and/or geomorphology (like me!) can.....
Posted by Making A Mark at 15:38 1 comments
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Sunday, 13 March 2011

The story of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849) is assumed by many to be a portrayal of a Tsunami off the coast of Japan.  In reality it's not - it's another type of wave.  However this does not stop this image having a fascinating story which is reviewed in this post and the documentary programme below.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai
Polychrome woodblock print; ink and color on paper 25.7 cm × 37.8 cm (10.1 in × 14.9 in)

It was the first print in Hokusai's portfolio series of prints Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji - which was very much designed, produced and published as something tourists and religious buyers might want to buy.  The series shows everyday activities with human interest and a focus on the world of work while some are abstracted.

The 36 Views were also based on a vibrant new colour - Prussian Blue!

The construction of the design is based on geometry and arrangements of circles and triangles.  There is also a sense of space collapsing which is no doubt enhanced by his study of perspective.

On YouTube there are five videos of a documentary programme about The Great Wave. It explains
  • how it came about (Hokusai's grandson had gambled away all his money and he was destitute), 
  • what sort of wave it is (it's not a tsunami but rather a very large cascading pyramidal wave - which is a real wave)
  • explains the context for this particular woodcut print in terms of the fashion for the art of theoating world
  • identifies that Hokusai studied Dutch prints and that the design is influenced by European art and his knowledge of perspective
  • how he studied waves over 30 years prior to creating this particular image
  • explains how the print was produced
  • discusses the translation of the title
  • unpicks who the boatmen are and speculates that they may have been trying to get the first bunito tuna of the season to market - but for the fact they are facing the wrong way!  But then comments that since th Japanese eye reads from right to left the wave would be splashing into the viewer's face.
  • It also identifies that the secondary wave in the foreground is exactly the same outline as Mount Fuji - a tremendously important iconic image in Japanese art.
  • how it a print that we know was owned by Monet and Van Gogh - but how it went in and out of fashion.
There's a notion that the boatmen are not fighting the wave but rather going with the flow of life.  Hokusai also apparently had an obsession with long life and death - and Hokusai was nearing the end of his life when he produced it.  Possibly it represented the notion that disaster is always just around the corner - no matter what guise it comes in.


For all those. like me, who have read books about Hokusai by Matthi Forrer, you get to see and hear from him in this documentary

Note:  Kanagawa is part of a the southern Kantō region of Honshū, Japan and surrounds Tokyo Bay.

Links to more information about Japanese Art:
Posted by Making A Mark at 14:22 3 comments
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Wednesday, 9 March 2011

The Virtual Paintout is in Cape Town

The award-winning art blog The Virtual Paintout is in CapeTown, South Africa in March.

Cape Town on Google Maps
I'd never looked before at the configuration of Cape Town on a Map.  It reminds me a bit of the Bay of Naples scenario and I wonder if they too have had a big caldera out to sea in the past - inbetween Table Mountain and the Kogelberg Nature Reserve.

There's a terrific range of art being generated from urban to rural.

Instructions on how to participate can be found on Bill's blog - see Cape Town - March 2011

This is the South African National Gallery- but nothing apparently to see.  I'd have liked to see what South African landscape art looks like.
Posted by Making A Mark at 16:10 0 comments
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