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.

"Sunshine on the Marsh"

 "Sunshine on the Marsh"

9"x12"

pastel on paper

Have you ever tried a scene in more than one medium? It's such fun. Here's the marsh in the Rachel Carson preserve again, but this time in pastel. What do you think?

"Rachel Carson Marsh"

"Rachel Carson Marsh"

8"x16" oil on Canson treated paper

Marsh drawing

Yesterday I discovered a wonderful place to paint the marsh in the Rachel Carson preserve in Kennebunc. It's hard to find a place where you can get some interesting structure and have a place to park. Often when I find a decent view, I'm lucky to get a photo by standing on the pavement in a spot where it would be dangerous to paint. So this was a real treat. And shortly after I set up, another painter showed up. Kudos to you, Gerard Blouin!

Hampton Falls Marsh II

"Hampton Falls Marsh II"

8"x16"

oil on Canson treated paper

This is my second painting yesterday afternoon. I'm pleased with it!

Here are a couple of photos of the process.