Neck and Neck, 10x12

"Time flies when you're having fun"......

From that I can only conclude that this past year I have been having a blast of a good time.  I'm in for that and more.  Good to have that feedback.  (Here's a study on it!)

Going through my end of the year 'toss 'em out' party I've been running across paintings I never got around to posting.  This is from one of my favorite places, Rockland, Maine, home of the Wyeth Museum, great fish and chips, thousands of boats and pretty nice people.  To be fair, I need to also throw in Camden, Rockport and about a hundred other little coastal towns.  Beautiful places.

This is the last post of 2013....  It was painted on a September evening in the company of Dan Corey.  He has a nice video on his blog of painting a snowman.  Worth a watch.

Drydocked, 16x20

I posted this last night on FB.....

.....but forgot to do it here.  It was painted late afternoon and I hope I caught the raking light a bit.  So many paintings I like but would also like to do them over again because each one gives me new ideas   I'd like to do this one over.

I like the variations in color on the hull below the water line and, if you can't tell, I was caught up in that blue barrel.  This is actually a 'blue barrel' painting with the rest just setting the backdrop.......OK.  I'm lying.  But I really do like that barrel.  Gives this thing some depth.

So if I did it over what would be different?  I think this is a 24x30 painting done on a 16x20 canvas.  Bigger canvas is what I'd change so I could recompose it.  There was so much more there that was interesting that would have made this better with some more room.  Yes, if I had painted smaller I could have gotten it all in but I would have lost that brush swinging energy that's so much fun to do. 

I may have to go back to Maine.

Lobster Traps, 10x12

What says 'Maine' more than a pile of lobster traps waiting to be put to work.   Bouncing around on a floating dock made small marks difficult....but at least we were out of the wind sheltered by the stone bulkhead opposite the one you see.

The challenge was to find a way to say 'lobster trap' without actually painting in all the wire mesh they are made of.  Did you know that lobstermen pay $250 to $500 for each trap?  That makes losing one a pretty significant deal and, since there were lobster wars taking place, quite a number of them are now sitting on the bottom of the ocean with no buoy to show where they are or rope to retrieve them.

Happy Thanksgiving!  (Lobsters must breathe a sigh of relief)

Rockland Pier, 10x12

With the workshop over and all that beautiful Atlantic coast to paint it was hard to know where to begin....but this seemed a natural.  Of course, as happens when working plein air, things change.  The boat didn't have more than two strokes of color on it when the crew decided that, with fish unloaded, it was time to leave.  I could have abandoned the piece or continued using what my visual memory retained.....the latter was the better choice.

All those boats, all those docks, all the picturesque towns.......did I paint any of those, well no.  Instead I was mesmerized by these rocks.   Flat lit on a fairly sunny day they proved to be a challenge in finding how to translate a jumbled mass of close tonal values to a two dimensional surface, but I enjoyed every stroke.  Notice how color notes repeat throughout the painting.  I keep telling myself, 'It's not what you paint but how you paint it.', and I rather like this one.