One day when we were in Maine we went to the Jordan Pond House for popovers. We had been hearing about the fresh baked warm popovers for quite some time, so we had to go try them. They were delicious, though because they weren’t part of my favorite food group: chocolate, they don’t get the highest marks. After popovers my family left me to paint and they went to the top of Cadillac Mountain.
I set up with my back to the House, which is really a restaurant, and faced Jordan Pond. The restaurant is very large and can probably seat 300 people, so there were lots of people milling about. There is a trail that goes down to Jordan Pond and you can even hike all the way around the pond. I would call it a lake. Anyway, since I was right next to the path, I had a lot of people stop to see what I was doing and talk to me. I can see how it would be distracting, but on this day it was lots of fun to talk to people. I even had someone interested in another painting I had done and had with me, but the price was too high for them. Too bad, it would have been fun to make a sale. I even had a number of people ask me if they could take my picture. 🙂
I’m not crazy about this painting. But it’s all good practice. Painting plein air isn’t easy and not everything I paint works out. I painted 10 paintings during our Maine vacation and I’ll probably only post 4 or 5 of them. I only brought back a couple, the rest I put in my brand new wet panel carrier and shipped back, they should arrive next week.
Oh, I almost forgot. Towards the end of this painting the fog rolled in, as evidenced in the top photo. So that’s my excuse (in my mind) for not painting something I loved here. I had better get to work on my excuses for all those other paintings I did in Maine that didn’t work out . . .
looking forward to seeing the finished work what I can see looks good.
What a beautiful spot! I would love to go to Maine one day with paints and brushes. What a treat! Looking forward to seeing your other paintings, too. This one is nice with those lovely colors. Well done!
Hi Ralph and Linda, thank you for stopping by and commenting. I made sure this painting was tiny on the screen for a reason! Not one of my best but I’ll just learn from the good things about this painting and move on. 🙂
Joan
One of my favorite teachers was always telling us that if we wanted to increase our success rate we needed to increase our failure rate!!
Although I wouldn’t say you’re failing at all.
Hi Joan, How wonderful to see all the plein air you’ve been doing!! I love plein air so much because it is so hard…and so so gratifying! And I think we all have a bunch that don’t work! so what… 🙂
Yours are looking wonderful…I especially love the sunset one.
And, I can not believe you made that box!! I am so impressed!
HA HA Joan! I understand the painting taken from a distance thing! But, what is really cool (because you did that) is how evident it is that you held true to the colors and the shapes of what is there. It is very successful painting because of that. Quiet and serene.
I think you are very brave to paint plein air. You’ve done good work (I like what you’ve shown), even if you’re not enthusiastic about some of them. It IS incredibly distracting to have people watch and ask questions while you work, but it’s another part of the experience. Don’t you feel as though it’s a lot like performing when people are around? That’s such a challenge.
I hope you will pat yourself on the back and give yourself a gold star for painting so well and so often while traveling!
Looking forward to seeing more.
Marian, that is such a good thing to remember, thank you!
Karen, I agree with you, plein air is hard! But it is also fun and gratifying when it works out. YOU are great at it.
Celeste, thank you for your compliments on my little painting. 🙂
Melinda, thank you for your encouraging comments. Mostly I like to tune out the people around me when I paint but it was hard with so many of them. It’s hard enough for me to remember to do all the things I’m supposed to do when I paint: check this, check that, compare values, compare temperatures, the list goes on and on! Almost impossible when I have people talking to me.
Joan
Joan, I LOVE your work ~
Thanks for visiting my blog and leading me here, because your brushstrokes are just yummy!
I admire your fearlessness in getting out into the open air and tackling the view on canvas.
Gotta put you on my blogroll, kid…
Very very nice! I love that place – I’ve been there several times, but it’s been years – it brings memories. Nice art piece you have there too.