Green Gables at Lakeside

This is my favorite painting from the weekend at Lakeside, a view of the porch at the Lakeside Women's Club or Green Gables. I rented a room there Friday night. In the morning I painted and drank coffee while the lake breeze kept the humidity in check.

9" x 12" oil on linen

Lakeside, Ohio Plein Air Event

Friday through Sunday I was in Marblehead, where I attended the Lakeside Plein Air Festival and Wooden Boat Show. This is a beautiful area of Northwest  Ohio, perhaps one of the better kept secrets in Ohio. I painted three new pieces and showed them, along with many from previous years, at the Plein Air Show on Sunday. Sales were brisk at the show and the organizers ran out of sales slips.
Below is Reagan, who stopped to admire my work and helped me paint some waves on the lake.

Light and Shadow

This is an example of a plein air painting that I began in the field and finished at home in my studio. I'm not always able to finish my outdoor studies. Sometimes the weather changes. Other times I spend too long on the details and the light changes so much I find myself doing what's known as "chasing the light."

For whatever reason, there are always going to be paintings that look great and need no modifications when you view them later, and there will be painting that need touch ups. Some plein air artists are purists. They won't modify a painting. Instead they will call it a field study and perhaps create a new painting using the study as a basis for color and value.

I'm not a purist. I don't want ugly paintings hanging out near me, so I will try to bring the painting to a place where it satisfies me. I've learned that I have to do this within a few days of painting the subject outdoors or my visual memory of the scene is likely to be gone. I also need a photograph if there was architecture or a building in the scene, to double check the perspective.

In this painting of a light post at Lakeside, Ohio, I knew I wanted to define the curves on the decorative roof accents and lighten the areas in the sun.

I'm displaying a photo of the finished painting, along with the photo I took as a reference to show the finished piece is not a photographic rendering. I maintained the structure, design and hues of the original and only used the photo as a guide to render the building more accurately and to place my shadows consistently. That's one problem with painting outdoors: your shadows will always move when you're painting on a sunny day.

Sunny Day Lakeside

9" x 12"

A Cozy Corner

Sometimes I have a painting that hangs around for a year or two and I pull it out and think this just needs a little more work. Depending on how the work goes it either ends up in the trash or in a frame. I like how this one turned out. I brightened the flowers and added a cat. It's a very 'cool' painting in tone and hue but sometimes that's OK. I often tend to go a bit too warm on my pieces.

I found this frame at Wayfair.com, believe it or not. I didn't actually buy it, I just copied it and photoshopped my painting into it, but wouldn't it look awesome if I did put it in something like this? Frames can make or break a painting, and I have to admit I like the museum look. It seems to add class to ordinary paintings.

9" x 12"

Cozy Corner

More Paintings!

I had a streak of energy and created seven paintings last week. The first three were from photos I had taken over the years near lake Erie, and I also completed four plein air paintings. I'll share them all over the course of the next few days and make up for the slow period on my blog when I was in France. I still have paintings to share from that trip too, so I am a bit behind.

Life should slow down a bit now. No trips are planned and the only thing on my agenda is finishing a novel I started earlier this year.

This is a 10" x 20" painting of a sunset at Lakeside. I took the picture last year from the shore line. In my photos the sun always shows up as white, but I've seen enough sunsets to know that in reality the sun is pink or gold or some other very warm color, so I adjusted the painting to reflect that.

What's strange is that my camera doesn't even want to read the color of the sun in the painting correctly. It's showing us cooler than it actually is.

LAKESIDE SUNSET

10" X 20"

Sunny Days

Today felt like July here in Northwest Ohio, unlike most of the days we've had this month. It wasn't too bad by the lake, because there was a cool breeze. I've spent the third week in July at Lakeside for the past few years. The Lakeside Association organizes a three day plein air paintout and a wet paint sale on Sunday.

There are usually a lot of viewers but not too many buyers. The heat today may have discouraged some folks from attending.

I had some helpers this year, proving once again that you're never too young to have a Bob Ross moment. Not every tree is happy, but if you're painting the trees you're probably happy. Or at least you're living in the moment.

Plein Air Paintings

The annual Lakeside Paintout is this weekend and it promises to be a hot one. Today was humid. Tomorrow will be worse, so I am hoping there will be a breeze down by the lake. Maybe I should paint in my bathing suit so I can jump in the lake when the beads of sweat start sliding off the end of my nose.

Peach Cottage and Cozy Corner

9" x 12"

Lakeside Lifeguards 6x6

This is a small 6" x 6" plein air painting I did during my recent visit to Lakeside. It took much longer than it should have due to the constantly changing weather conditions and light. It wold rain, then it would clear up, then it would cloud up again. Those are challenging circumstances to paint under. 

6" x 6: oil on Gessobord™

1957 Lyman Wooden Boat

I attended the annual Lakeside Wooden Boat Show and Plein Air Art Festival this past weekend. This is an oil sketch of a wooden boat that I completed while I stood on the dock before the art show. It was a wonderful summer day in the seventies with low humidity and no wind. The perfect day to be outside painting.

This boat is a 1957 Lyman and the owner cam along and purchased it after some of his friends told him I had painted it.

SOLD

9" x 12" oil on linen

Loving the Evening Light

This painting began as a plein air piece and I finished it in the studio. There are many lovely cottages at Lakeside. Members of this historical gated community take pride in their neighborhood and most of the cottages proudly fly the stars and stripes. With so many beautiful cottages it's sometimes hard to decide which one to paint. It was the late afternoon light that drew me to this screened in porch, in particular the glowing light on the hanging basket.

12" x 16" Cottage Path

A Summertime Memory

I spent a week at Lakeside last year teaching art to vacationers as a sort of 'artist in residence.' Initially I thought I would have time to paint in the evening when I was finished teaching. It didn't really work out that way because there were a few too many distractions where I was staying. I did take some good photographs though and that's what I used as a reference for this painting.

12" x 16" Afternoon Light

Plein Air Weekend

This past weekend I spent an exhausting three days at the annual Lakeside Plein Air Festival in Lakeside, Ohio. Friday was unbelievably warm and humid, Saturday was a bit better except that it rained intermittently all day. Sunday was a great day to paint but we had to wrap u early to put our paintings up for sale in the park. I sold three pieces at the festival, one before the festival and will paint two more commissioned pieces.

There seemed to be a few more artists participating this year and the crowds were bigger. One piece I sold was a painting of a cottage named the Rainbow Cottage. I was standing under a tree and I was quite thirsty when a lady who was cleaning the cottage offered me a bottled water. She turned out to be the owner of the cottage so when she asked me to give her a good deal on it I didn't hesitate. The piece will mean a lot more to her than it will to anyone else.

The Rainbow House

9x12 oil on linen

Early Exposure to Art Develops Creativity

Kish Cottage

11x14

oil on canvas

It bothers me to think about the cuts in arts and music that our public schools are being forced to make in order to meet their budgets. I think of all the little artists who won't get the opportunity to learn about creativity and freedom of expression. I can't help but think it will affect the next generation in a negative way. Study after study has proven that early exposure to the fine arts boosts a child's creativity and imagination.

According to John Ninnemann, principal of the Keys School, "young children are naturally expressive.
They have a strong sense of composition and come to school with the innate urge and ability to create and perform. It’s little wonder then that fine arts education delights our students. But an education in the arts does far more than that. Most researchers now consider arts “The Fourth R,” an intellectual discipline as essential as reading, writing and arithmetic, integrally linked to basic learning and key to children’s social and emotional development.

An obvious source of joy and wonder for children, the arts are vital in their own right. Music, drama, visual arts, dance – each offers children another way to communicate and comprehend the world around them. Arts inspire imagination and creativity, promote individuality and self-expression, and teach tolerance
and open-mindedness. Research backs up what teachers know intuitively and witness every day in their classrooms – involvement in the arts clearly boosts students’ self-confidence and self-esteem."

While my daughter and I spent a rainy weekend at Lakeside, Ohio in early July, I sat on the porch and painted some local scenery. A few people were curious and stopped over to take a peek at what I was painting. One couple asked me to paint their son's cottage so they could give the piece to him for Christmas. I have discovered that most people who buy paintings for personal reasons learned the value of art at an early age. These are different than investors, who buy art because they think it will be worth more down the road.

Sue Kish told me about her father, who was a plein air painter in the fifties and sixties. He took all of his children outside and tried to teach them to paint the landscape from life. Sue said she never really became good at it but she did develop an appreciation for art. She wanted me to paint the house en plain air after the her son's family left for the weekend. When I told her this would depend on the weather she understood. There was a small window of sun that weekend so I ended up riding my bike over to the cottage, making a small sketch of the house and taking a few photographs. Then it rained again. The painting was completed at home and mailed to the client.

Another Small Town Street Scene

This is a slightly larger oil painting I did while sitting on the porch where we were staying. It was a rainy weekend but there were a few periods of sunshine that allowed me to take a picture and go back into the painting and add some shadows and sunlight when we got home. I think it captures the spirit of the morning when I painted. The only other thing I might consider adding is a couple bikers or a dog walker. Never underestimate the power of "people" to add depth to a painting.

I Need a Vacation

I told myself this. "You need a vacation". I have been without a kitchen for the past four weeks and spend every weekend and every evening after work repairing drywall, painting walls, sweeping up sawdust and doing all the other inconvenient jobs that go along with living inside a home undergoing a major remodel. This past weekend, I still could not stop thinking about all the work that needed to be done at home while I stayed at this quaint little bed and breakfast at Lakeside, Ohio.

I painted this piece on a pleasant Sunday evening when the sun was low in the sky. Hordes of quivering mayflies hugged the buildings near the beach and occasionally one of the more desperate insects invaded my paint palette and floundered helplessly until I launched him into the sky with my palette knife.

Maxwell's Hospitality House 9" x 12" oil on linen

Lifeguard Chat

Another small (6" x 6") painting in my series of beach scenes. Th lifeguard station at Lakeside sits on a  concrete dock overlooking Lake Erie. The water can be choppy and the day might be windy and cold or humid and sticky. You never know in Northwest Ohio. Lifeguards are notoriously underpaid, in my opinion. I've never done the job, but it has to be incredibly hard to sit for hours in a sweaty, slippery chair high above the fray and keep your eyes open. The sheer responsibility of it would be more than I could take. What if someone was drowning and I missed it? I was never interested in doing the job, so I have lots of respect for those who do it.

SOLD

Summertime is Play Time

Another painting I'll take to Tipp City in July, this one was done from a photo I took at Lakeside last year. Lakeside, Ohio is a small gated Community near Marblehead, Ohio in the northernmost part of Ohio. Lake Erie is making a comeback, thanks to conservation efforts, and is becoming a cleaner and healthier place to swim and boat.

I used a combination of cadmium orange and thalo red rose as a HOT underpainting just to see what kind of effect I would get.

8" x 8" oil on canvas

Lakeside Summer Day

Little Plein Air Painters

Last summer I was sitting at a coffee shop preparing to head out for a day of plein air painting at the Lakeside Plein Air Festival when I received a message on my phone from my fellow artist friend  Jim White. Jim was at the event too and he had apparently already been at it for a number of hours. The pictures accompanying his message were priceless. Jim lets kids help him paint his paintings. He is one of the few painters I have seen who do this. Most of us have been approached by children who would like to try painting of course-- but few of use are brave enough to allow a child to touch our pieces. Jim is the exception.

I knew I wanted to paint one of these pictures so I asked him if I could and he is a really kind hearted guy so he said yes. I didn't change much in the painting. I simplified the background, which originally was a complicated looking fence, and deleted some awkward-fitting clothing form the younger girl. The child painter and her sister (or friend--I'm not sure) are absolutely delighted to be participating in the Lakeside Plein Air paintout and this is what I was trying to convey. Although I enjoyed painting the girls, it was also a lot of fun to paint Jim's worn and colorful French easel with all the years of accumulated paint drippings.

Cottages Paintings

When I stayed at Lakeside this year I did two cottage paintings en plein air. I have painted quite a few cottages over the past few years, several as commissions. I kept them small this year as the days were warm and I didn't want to stand in the sun any longer than necessary.

Shown here is the Peach Cottage, on Fourth Street and a blue cottage at the end of Kenton Row, with a nice view of the lake from its northern windows.

The trick to making a successful composition with a building is to be keenly aware of how the eye enters the painting and where you want the center of interest to be. In the first painting the flowers are the draw and all the planes of the garage 'point' toward  the flowers. The stairs and window are incidental but the color of the house itself will not be ignored so I made sure I modified the peach with a lot of green. I painted this on a gray day so there isn't a lot of contrast between light and shadow. The values are a lower key and the scene is actually quite muted,

The Peach House

10"x8"

 In direct contrast to the painting above this one was painted in strong afternoon sunlight. The shadows are dark and the light is warm. A path (really -- it was right there!) leads us into the painting and the shrubs drive us up to the building where the strong contrasts hold the eye. The flag and doorway become the focus and from there we are (I hope anyway) encouraged to explore the rest of the landscaping.

The challenge with painting landscapes this small is always a question of what to omit. I think the more I leave out the better I like it. Up close the objects are just abstract forms but when they are placed together in an orderly manner they read as a house and a nicely landscaped lot. Red blobs are pots only because we believe them to be, not because they were painted with a great deal of accuracy.

That's a lake freighter in the background, along with a few boats. But we only know this because the horizon reads as water.

The End of Kenton Row

6"x6"

Living the Good Life or Where to Dine at Lakeside

When I'm invited to stay with people and the community is as welcoming as the one at Lakeside is, I develop an appreciation for what it means to be an artist, and more particularly, a plein air artist. When the weather cooperates and the skies are sunny and blue, and the passersby are warm and cheerful the paintings come easily. Sloopy's is a little sports cafe at the corner of Maple and Second Street and they serve awesome pizza. I parked myself on a bench in front of the restaurant Saturday morning and painted a small slice of life painting.

Sloopy's Sports Cafe

8" x 10"

This small piece was painted in just under an hour as I gazed through the foliage at the picturesque umbrellas behind the beachfront cafe. As I was finishing up a group of people sat in the chairs and I couldn't resist adding a little bit of 'life' to the painting.

Lakeside Lunch

6" x 6"

SOLD