Travel

Watercolor Class Week 6: lessons learned

~ MaryG ~ 5 Comments

Each of the primary colors has a complementary color that you really want to avoid mixing with, at least for sunsets. If you put wet complementary colors near each other or layer them, you’re going to get brown. 💩

Red & Green = Brown

Blue & Orange = Brown

Yellow & Purple = Brown

That’s why my blue/violet to orange sunset sky ended up looking like a fried egg, especially from a distance,

The teacher said you can’t go directly from blue/purple to orange. You need some pink to transition.

She suggested using Alizarin crimson (not cadmium red) to make pink. It has blue undertones.

I tried again to get Key West sunset vibes, but without an ugly brown ring.

I’m not happy with the result. I really wanted a nice blended smooth gradient. The teacher said I painted “into it” too much. I need to try again, wetting the paper in both directions with my largest flat brush and then dragging the wet paint across in one direction only – end to end. In fact go off the paper with the brush.

Rather than masking, I could use a paper towel to lift out a circular moon or sun. (You can hold the paper towel in a round bunch and rotate the watercolor paper to create the circle.) And again, avoid complementary colors that will bleed into each other and make brown.

There are two classes left in this session and I need to decide what to do. I’ve been enjoying the class, but I’m not 100% sure that watercolors are my thing. But perhaps I should re-register and give it a bit longer.

One of the women who keeps re-registering is a very good watercolorist. She creates beautiful paintings of natural subjects like oyster shells and winter trees, and I can see that the teacher gives her good advice. Is that what I aspire to?

I am curious about both acrylic and oil painting, but those are more of an investment, and not as easy to whip out and work on at home.

Maybe I should take another drawing class and also re-up for one more 8-week session of watercolors. Maybe after that, I’ll feel confident enough in my drawing and color skills, to try working with real paint on an actual canvas.

Charcoal pencil sketch of a pug (like Horace from Poldark)

On the other hand, 8 more sessions of watercolors is a lot, if I decide I’m not that into it.

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Update: Third and final try on this silly Key West sunset! Water colors are hard.

Of Light and Air

~ MaryG ~ 8 Comments

I dragged brought my husband to the special Winslow Homer exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Given my recent interest in watercolor painting, I couldn’t miss Of Light and Air.

Here’s what I learned:

Watercolors fade. These paintings are delicate. That’s why they only display them once every forty years or so—and in very dark galleries. (If you really want to make art that lasts forever, watercolors might not be a great choice.)

One of the most famous (and vibrant) pieces in the show

Pencil lines are OK, as long as they don’t bleed into the paint. In fact, most of his works were described as “watercolor over graphite.” And being able to draw well really helps. Plenty of modern painters can’t draw, but most artists I admire draw well…really well. So, keep practicing or studying drawing.

Having started as a commercial lithographer and magazine illustrator, Homer could create a realistic image with just a few well-planned lines. In fact, one of his magazine employers sent him to the front lines of the Civil War to draw battlefield images. Talk about trial by fire!

A sponge diver in the Bahamas. I have no idea how he would’ve painted something like this without a photo to refer to.

Watercolor paintings are about choices. There is no real white in watercolors. Your white is your paper, so what you choose not to paint is a critical decision.

Things can be represented with just a few brush strokes. Layers matter. Choices. What will you choose to fully depict? What will you simply allude to with a brush stroke or two?

Driving Cows to Pasture, 1879
“This watercolor, painted in central Massachusetts, is noticeably looser and more abstract than earlier work. The boy, turned away from the viewer, is seemingly rooted to the ground; dappled hills and unruly vegetation surround him. A moody sky, composed of thin washes of blues and purples, casts a somber tone. The cows, rendered as brown dabs on the hillside, would be easily missed were it not for the title. Here, Homer embraced abstraction as well as some advanced watercolor techniques, removing pigment through scraping and lifting to create rough rocks and ghostly ferns.”

Everyone’s eyesight gets worse as they age. Apparently Homer told people to save rocks for your old age, because “painting rocks is easy.”

Thursday Doors—St. Ann’s Church, Kennebunkport, Maine

~ MaryG ~ 5 Comments

Good GOD I’ve taken a lot of photos of church doors over the years—especially for a Unitarian.

Here’s another one in the Protestant realm:

This is the entrance door of St. Ann’s Chapel in Kennebunkport, Maine, which has to be one of the most beautiful—perhaps THE most beautiful— seaside chapel in all of New England.

Built in the late 19th century (The Gilded Age), this church operates in summer only, when the well-heeled WASPy residents of Kennebunkport are in town (including the Bush Family).

What really got me was the OUTDOOR chapel with the sweeping views.

The rocky coast of Maine near the chapel
Nice view
Seriously, this chapel has the best New England location I’ve ever seen
As descendants of “peasants” from Italy, our ancestors were more likely to have hauled the rocks to build this church than to have ever visited it.

Multiple Bush family weddings have taken place here. They are longtime, generous supporters of the church and their compound—Walker’s Point—is close by. Not to get political, but I can’t believe I’ve lived to an age where I think of the Bush family with some fondness. Thirty-year old me would not have believed it! I’ll take Walker’s Point over Mar-a-Lago (and all it represents) any day of the week.

Dan’s Thursday Doors

Masking with tape

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

I wanted to try another one of the “resistance” methods from Monday’s class, so I blocked out the sun and the other large sphere with blue painters tape. I’m not sure why I got that dark ring around the sun. Maybe the paint collected and mixed under the tape? I painted the sky very wet. I’m going to bring this in next week for feedback/help from the class.

Here was the inspiration:

Key West sunset with the Naval Air Station on the horizon (supposedly that is truly the Southernmost Point in the US, rather than the tourist buoy).

Fond memories of Key West. Hopefully we can go back sometime 🌅

Thursday Doors—Dublin Unitarian Church

~ MaryG ~ 16 Comments

I’ve already posted many Irish doors from my trip in June, but not this one:

This is the Dublin Unitarian Church, which I walked by many times before realizing what it was. The church was right near our hotel, but so “tucked in,” I didn’t notice it until the very end of my time there.

It’s clearly in the gothic style, similar to last week’s doors. I guess I like “recessed arches.” (Thanks to Suzette for naming them for me.) And look at those cool hinges.

Seriously, this church has NO breathing room on either side. By the time I noticed it was a Unitarian Church, it was time to go home. I never got to see the inside. The doors were locked both times I tried. ☹️
Similar to Unitarian Universalist churches in the USA, it uses the flaming chalice symbol.

What’s the difference between Unitarian Universalist and just Unitarian?

PerChatGPT:

American Unitarian Universalism (UU) emerged in 1961 from the merger of Unitarian and Universalist traditions, forming a non-creedal, pluralistic movement embracing humanists, theists, atheists, pagans, and others. It emphasizes individual freedom, social justice, and spiritual diversity without doctrinal boundaries.

European Unitarian churches, including Dublin’s, remain rooted in liberal Christian heritage, emphasizing reason, conscience, and the moral teachings of Jesus while rejecting the Trinity. They are typically more theistic and biblically grounded, though open and inclusive. In short: American UUism is multi-faith and post-Christian, while European Unitarianism is liberal Christian with freedom of belief.

For more Thursday Doors, see Dan’s blog No Facilities.

Thursday Doors—Squeeze Burger, Sacramento

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

I went looking for a door photo for Dan’s Thursday Doors and found this:

If someone asked me yesterday if I’d ever been to Sacramento, the capital of California, I would’ve said no.

But I was wrong. My high school friend Susan and I took our 11-year old sons on an epic Northern California road trip in the summer of 2012 and stopped at the famous Squeeze Burger (formerly Squeeze Inn) in Sacramento. We were on our way to her house in Lake Tahoe from Oakland.

Upon further research, I found pictures of the famous cheese-skirted burgers online, which look familiar.

We were in the second Sacramento location (now closed), which featured the original tiny Sacramento storefront as a booth in the restaurant. Perfect for two boys traveling with their moms.

This is why pictures matter people. By the time you hit 60, you will not remember half the stuff you did in your life.

First landscape

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

Given the tremendous amount of interest among my fellow retired ladies in painting landscapes, I could not wait until the next class to try one—a misty one, of course.

Here’s my inspiration photo from my misty trip to Ireland in June:

The round tower at Glendalough—a medieval monastery in County Wicklow, Ireland
This is 9×12” watercolor block paper. I spent about 1.5 hours on it. I used a hairdryer to dry the paper between layers.

I’m going to ask the teacher for feedback/tips next class. I’m actually sad we don’t have class this Monday due to the holiday.

Happy weekend!

Thursday Doors—Trinity College Chapel, Connecticut

~ MaryG ~ 9 Comments

My college in Hartford, Connecticut had a spectacular gothic chapel on the quad. So Hogwarts! We were not an Ivy League school, but with that chapel on the quad—and scores of rich classmates from the snootiest boarding schools on the Eastern Seaboard—we could pretend we were. A couple of my more diligent classmates were able to transfer to Ivy League schools after freshmen year, but most of us just stayed and partied in Hartford.

My daughter had absolutely no interest in attending a small, private liberal arts college, but we did stop by one day when we were passing through the area. And the chapel still looked gorgeous.

My daughter in front of my college’s chapel doors in 2013.
The same doors as seen through an arch on the day of my graduation in 1987.

Posted for Dan’s Thursday Doors

Thursday Doors — The ICA/Boston

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments

This door is a work of art by Kazumi Tanaka, a living artist born in 1962.

First conceived in 1996 during an unusual artist residency at Sabbathday Lake in Maine (the last active Shaker community in the world), Tanaka’s door was not shown until 2025. As part of The ICA/Boston’s Believers exhibition, the anamorphic door sat permanently ajar and is said to have alluded to Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee’s sentiment that the Shakers should open windows and doors to receive “whoever will arrive” in a spirit of openness and generosity.

Thursday Doors challenge