"Monhegan Nest" 5x7 Oil on Copper panel.  100$ unframed and shipped!  

                              If you like this painting, call me at (207) 479-9553. Thank you!

     Today was a rainy gloomy day.  I decided to work in my new studio!  I turned on some 1970's music.  I decided to work on more eggs.  The smooth surface of a brown eggs looks great on copper.  I left some copper shimmering through the oil paint.  I took my brush and pulled out some paint in the dark areas.  I then started to layer the straw from darker values to higher ones.  I used my brush to soften some straw.  I liked how this painting came out.  Seagull eggs have an interesting pattern.  There are gray spots and dark brown spots overlapping each other.  There is a pearl like iridescence to these seagull eggs.  I had a good opportunity to paint one of these eggs on Monhegan at Whitehead in June.  I was working on the second egg when the mother seagull sat down on this nest.  I didn't want to abandon the painting and so I painted the seagull on her egg.  At least I could paint one of these eggs!  I might like to go back to Monhegan next June to study more nests with eggs.  

  Here is a Frederick Waugh seascape painting.  Frederick Waugh was one of the best seascape artists.  I was reading more of "Frederick Waugh, American Marine Painter" by George Havens today.  This book is usually very expensive and out of print.  I was fortunate enough to find a paper back copy of this book on Ebay.

     I opened up the book to see what the page might read.  It was Frederick Waugh speaking to someone about how to paint the sparkles of the sea.  "Sparkle in painting, Waugh said, is obtained by keying pictures way down in tone (darken the values).  "There is more sparkle in a strong contrast of highlight against a dark background than if the whole were high in tone.  You can make sunlight perfectly dead and chalky by a overdose of white.  Pure color is more sparkling than white."

     Waugh spoke of painting sunlight breaking through clouds by mixing his white with a yellowish or reddish tint according to the color scheme of the painting.  He uses Cadium Yellow Light with Raw Sienna or white with Venetian or Mars Red.  If the colors are cooler as in later in the day, he uses a little Madder Lake or Alizarin.

     Waugh says it is best to paint the seascape as result of direct painting.  "I say, if you can do so, grab the whole thing in one continuous period of time, unaffected by breakfast, lunch, dinner, or the evening's amusements or other preoccupations. Take hold of the motif, of the technique, of the enthusiasm of the whole unbroken day if possible.  Your work wil have the vitality and snap it needs in order to convey its full significance.  Do everything in one whack.  Even if it remains incomplete in places, no matter.  The frame will often take care of this.  Put a roughly executed picture into a highly finished frame for best results. The very fact that there is an edge binder all around your canvas will, if the roughness is not too pronounced, finish up what you have done."

    I have discovered from The Art Mentor waves become larger during the Fall and Winter.  The rest of the year unless during a storm I suppose, there just aren't very big waves here in Maine.  Something to look forwards to!

     I hope the weather clears so that we all can get outside and paint!