"Goosefare Brook" - Ocean Park Plein Air

"Goosefare Brook"

6"x12" 

oil on Raymar panel

 Goosefare Sunset

6"x12" 

oil on Raymar panel

The Ocean Plein Air Festival is in full swing, and we are all having a great time. Everyone is so friendly, and interested in learning about what catches an artist's eye. And very kind. I've been offered cold drinks and the use of a bathroom, both were much appreciated! We are at the middle of the second day and I've done four paintings. Above, #1, was done yesterday morning at the platform on the Ted Wells trail, so a bit of a hike from the car. It was hot, but the scene was lovely, and so Ellen Pelletier and I persevered. The second painting shown was the third painted, we had a wonderful sunset to work with! I'll post the rest over the next few days.

Plein Air Festivals

 "Ebb Tide in the Marsh"

5"x7" oil on linen panel

It's Plein Air Festival time! This afternoon was the beginning of the Ocean Park Plein Air Festival, which I'll be participating in through Friday. There are 9 artists, and today we got a tour of the village and met some of the residents. Ocean Park is a quintessential seaside town to the south of Old Orchard Beach, with beautiful cottages, a sandy beach, a marsh, and a few shops downtown. I'm told there's an old fashioned soda fountain, which I will definitely check out. The exhibit and sale is from 5-7 on Friday, at the Temple, 50 Temple Ave, Ocean Park, ME. I'd love to see you there.

I did the painting above yesterday morning in Kennebunk, once again in the Rachel Carson preserve. It's a lot more crowded in July than it was in May! It's fishing and beach time as well as plein air time in Maine.

"Vase of Sunshine"

"Vase of Sunshine"

20"x16"

oil on linen panel

I'm so thrilled it's July. I've finished my latest technology consulting engagement and have four months to paint! There are lots of events coming up as well, the first is happening next week. You can learn all about those on my new website. And I've just sent out my first newsletter, and will be happy to forward it to you, if you'll email me or leave a comment on this post.

I worked on this painting over the last two days, and was fortunate to be able to have the vase outside in the sunshine, while I stood in the shade of the house. I'm really pleased with it, though it still needs highlights and maybe a little tweaking. I plan to include it the show opening August 2nd at Yarmouth Frame and Gallery.

Sketching the Blue Boat

Blue Boat sketch

oil on gessoed board

Initial drawing, 6"x12"

The blue boat as it went round and round.

I had some fun on Sunday painting from the town landing in Yarmouth. My favorite blue lobster boat was in the water and made a great subject. I'll show you the first painting I worked on in the next post. This was some fun sketching afterwards. I'd hardly gotten started when the wind picked up, the reflections of the trees were gone and the blue boat was turning around on her mooring. I lost the right hand sketch as I tried to finish it. All in a days work on the water.

10 Minute Apples in Pastel

The final apple

10 minute apples

8"x8"

Pastel on Sennelier black sanded paper

Pastels on the boat

As readers of this blog will know, I've been experimenting with pastel, and enjoying it a lot! There's so much to learn moving from one medium to another.  And I'd like to be able to include pastel painters in my upcoming daily painting class at River Arts, in Damariscotta.

It took about 11 minutes for each of the first 3 apples, and about 15 for the last one. And for even more fun, I did this on a boat, while taking a short cruise in Penobscot Bay.

Progress on "Blue Boat in the Yard"

 

Blue Boat in the yard 8"x10" oil (in progress)

Do you have a favorite car, house, or boat in your neighborhood? I do, and this beautiful blue lobster boat is the one. I've been wondering where she was, as more and more boats appeared in the harbor, then a helpful lobsterman pointed me to her winter home. Her owner was kind enough to allow me to stand in the yard and paint her. Still some work to do, but I like it.

New Website II - Comparison of Artspan and FASO

Home page

Paintings Page

Large view of an individual painting

About page

Events page

To reiterate, I've built my new website on both Fine Art Studio Online (FASO) and Artspan to do a comparison.


Both have all the features that are most important to me:
- A platform purpose built for displaying and selling artwork
- A large version of each artwork image, as well as thumbnails
- A built-in newsletter signup and sending platform, with images in the emailed newsletter that include links back to the website
- All of the tabs I could possibly need
- Ease of set up - with the content in hand, it was straightforward to build a draft for either in a couple of hours
- Ease of adding new artwork - YES!
- A free trial period

In this post I'm showing the FASO site, see my previous post for the Artspan version.

I like these things about my FASO site:
- Fabulous customer support - I work with software companies a lot, and this is support beyond what I've ever seen, even answering support questions on Sunday!
- Well laid out templates, and a willingness to change them for an individual site
- Most pages can include images
- Very professional looking email newsletter

Do take a look at my FASO site, where you can see all of each page and poke around. And here's FASO's pricing page, so you can see what their various plans cost. If you're looking to upgrade your website, I think you can build a fine one on either of these platforms.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on which one I should choose. And I'm happy to answer your questions about building the two sites, just comment or send me an email. Thanks for your help!

New Website I - Comparison of Artspan and FASO

Home page

Paintings page

About page

Events page

A couple of weeks ago I spent some time building a new website for my art business. I haven't been satisfied with my current website for a while, with the vertical menu wasting image space, five page limit, and having to manually re-arrange the artwork images on the page when I wanted to add new work. I'd heard about both Artspan and FASO (Fine Art Studio Online) and wanted to build my new site on both for a bake-off. I tried to make them as much the same as possible to do a fair visual comparison. Both have all the features that are most important to me:
- A platform purpose built for displaying and selling artwork
- A large version of each artwork image, as well as thumbnails
- A built-in newsletter signup and sending platform, with images in the emailed newsletter that include links back to the website
- All of the tabs I could possibly need
- Ease of set up - with the content in hand, it was straightforward to build a draft for either in a couple of hours
- Ease of adding new artwork - YES!
- A free trial period

I think you'll agree that both are a big improvement over my current site.

Above is the result for Artspan, I'll show FASO in my next post.

I like these things about my Artspan site:
- The simple clean look
- Fabulous tutorials and online documentation
- The choice on the Email Newsletter page of signing up for the newsletter, notification of new artwork, or both
- Ability to use my own favicon (I haven't done that yet though)

Do take a look at the real site, where you can see all of each page and poke around. And here's Artspan's pricing page, so you can see what their various plans cost.

Daily Painting Workshop in Maine

I'm pleased to let you know that I'll be teaching my Daily Painting Workshop at River Arts in Damariscotta, Maine again. This time it will be in a weekly class format on the four Monday mornings in August. Here's an excerpt from the flyer on the River Arts website:

Would you like to improve your painting? Do you want to paint regularly, but can’t find a way to fit it into your schedule? This workshop will show you how quick small paintings can be a rewarding way to improve your painting skills, and how to find time to paint them regularly. 

I'd love to see you in the class, and would be happy to answer any questions you have about it. Just comment or send me an email.

"The White Dinghy"

 

 The White Dinghy

6"x6"
oil on paper
$75

Finally after a late spring, boats are going into the water in Maine. This one belongs to one of my neighbors. It's a classic.