We had painting class yesterday despite the disruptions of Hurricane Sandy.  Our set up was a very nice copper vase with fall colors contributed by dried money plant and reddish/orange fall berries.  I worked to emphasize the prevailing orange/blue complement theme with the bold almost explosive high lights.  Used cad oranges/lemon yellow for the vase and some naples yellow for highlights.  The blues were helped by cerl. bl plus some ult. bl.  Tried to get the rough background in ala Richard Schmid.  The rest of the effort was to focus intensely on relative value decisions.  I was reasonably happy with the outcome.

The North Shore Art Association, I believe for the first time, sponsored a show in late October combining its full artist members and associates like myself in one show.  It was a short four day show but a great opportunity to meet some of the legends of Art at the NSAA.  Last Friday night I attended the social get together and pot luck dinner and saw some impressive art, a variety of styles and met some wonderful fellow artists.  The show featured small pieces, I think 12x16 or less, and prices had to be under $1000.   My entry was "Tide's Out" which I had finished recently and had written about.  I was flattered to recieve some very nice comments about the work from several artists and from people working at the NSAA.  Late in the evening I learned that the painting had been purchased by a well know artist, Judythe Evans Meagher.  This was very humbling as she is well known and has her own gallery on Rocky Neck  (37 Rocky Neck Ave.) and I am familiar with her work.  Judythe was kind enough to take one last photo of the artist standing by his work - included here- for which I was very grateful.  I also found  we both admire some of the same artists like Colin Page and Connie Hayes in  Coastal Maine.

First class of the Rockport Art Association for the Fall of 2012 was on Tuesday.  We had a substitute teacher, Line' Tutwiler, filling in for our regular teacher Ron Straka.  Line' is very accomplished and I like her work alot. She and her husband recently won a contract to supply artwork to the Disney franchise.  She is also very definitive about how to achieve excellent art. I have learned from Line' several helpful things.  She recommends for the lightest light to make it out of white plus a small amount of yellow ochre...I used it for my highlights on the lobster boat project this week and I really liked the outcome.  Also she showed us how she mixes her main color with a palette knife and then how she adds lighter color to it for the highlight areas and darker  to it for the shadows.  I find mixing up alot of color before painting to be really helpful.  She like using linen as the best surface for painting,  but she also likes gesso board which she recommends covering first with an underlay to recieve the new paint better.  She emphasized for my work that I get the shadows in early and the highlights and record the geometric shapes acurately.  Most important for this week's exercise was her emphasis on getting the relative values within the painting right.....she stopped me several times and made me think more about the lightness or darkness of an area to its surroundings.  Getting this right made a big difference in the final result.  I was pretty happy with the finished product from this week's class. (This lobster boat on the beach was painted from a photograph taken by myself this summer on a painting trip to Owl's Head,  Maine with my art group). 

Visited Down East Maine last weekend and was struck by the beauty of the changing colors in the trees and shrubs.  Took several photos of the Fall colors reflecting on the water during a ferry ride.  Tried to capture this with acrylics and am pretty satisfied with the end result.  Colors may be a bit heavy.  Not sure.  Took in some great galleries in Camden Maine, the Bay View and the Camden Falls, both convenient to downtown.  Very nice works seen, especially Dan Corey at the Camden Falls....very painterly boats and Charles Movalli at the Camden Falls where he has 6-or-7 very nice acrylic works. Charlie makes Acrylics very exciting.