Souper Supper in Parsonsfield

 Last week I received an invitation to supper in Parsonsfield, Maine.

Parsonsfield is a pretty town nestled up against the New
Hampshire border in the foot hills of the White Mountains.

The drive north from my house goes through the small towns of Alfred, Waterboro and Limerick...



This was a perfect opportunity to sketch some sequential landscape sketches in the car on the way... no, don't worry I wasn't "driving and sketching"...



I brought my Koi watercolor box and water brush....My sister Marcia drove and I sketched bits of the passing scenery.  What a challenge !



You could tell we had a rough winter.  The pot holes were huge!  We bounced and jolted as we drove along.  Somehow I managed to keep my hand fairly steady and my pencil on the paper.  When we spotted a nice place to pull over along the lake in Waterboro, Maine we stopped and I added some color to the sketches.



While the car was moving I made little color notes with my watercolor pencils. When we stopped it was easy to paint.  I love my watercolor brush!  It is so perfect for these quick sketches.



It is noticeably colder at these little inland lakes. They are still covered in ice and snow with a bit of open water where they are thawing around the edges...  



The ice fishing houses were lined up along the lake front.   I used to wander around every winter looking at houses like these on every lake and pond.  I like the funny, small villages they form magically in the deep of winter...



It is really spring despite the snow and ice.  The sun was warm and I felt like staying for a few hours. 

 All my gear was set up on the tailgate within easy reach.  

Time passed. Soon shadows stretched across the ice.  Suddenly I remembered we needed to get to Parsonsfield for dinner at 6:30pm.  

I packed up, we hopped in the car and headed up to Limerick.

As the road climbed higher into the hills, the snow got deeper. 

When we came to the top of the ridge we looked down on a snow covered lake with the snow capped Presidential Range of the White Mountains in the distance.

It was magnificent ! I sketched and painted as the sun dropped behind the mountains and the air turned chilly. 

It was almost dinner time.  We couldn't linger any longer. We were 2 miles away from Parsonsfield Seminary. 

 The parking lot was packed when we arrived.

The kitchen was a flurry of activity and the aroma of delicious food filled the air. 

Music poured into the hallway from the dining room. On one end of the room was a tiny stage with three musicians singing, strumming, fiddling and bowing away...  

We were guided to the last available seats at a long crowded table. We sat down to baskets of homemade hot biscuits, & cornbread, steaming bowls of clam chowder, corn chowder, chicken soup and chili, green salad, and glasses of punch.  When it was time for dessert trays of gingerbread and molasses and sugar cookies were served with hot coffee.      

 This was the perfect end to a fabulous day.  I love the Friends of "ParSem" !  Now I know why they are so popular. The last time someone served me food like this was when I was little and my mom made it!

  

Waterboro, Limerick and East Parsonsfield.

1 1/2" x 2" sketches, pencil & watercolor on Rives BFK 

Waterboro and Limerick.

1 1/2" x 2" sketches, pencil & watercolor on Rives BFK 

Waterboro and Waterboro Lake.

1 1/2" x 2" sketches, pencil & watercolor on Rives BFK 

Farm Country

 Southern Vermont has small country roads that wind back and forth through meadows and forests along the Vermont /New York border. 

The only way you can tell if you are in a different state is by the surface of the road.  One minute they are paved the next they are dirt.  

One farmhouse was in Vermont, the barn was in New York.

 Burgess Road, just over the border in New York is a great, quiet spot to paint .  Clouds created light and dark patterns all day.

   

The hedgerow silhouetted against the sky caught my eye.   Hedgerow, 8x10 oil sketch. 

The farm behind me was a gem.

It was high up on a hill with huge open fields, old trees and views of the mountains in every direction.

The owner and his son stopped by to visit me. He invited me to go up to the top of his field and paint the view. It was gorgeous up there.   Silos and Cows, 6x12, watercolor on Rives BFK.

The farm had an old red barn across the road from a new barn with a pair of navy blue silos.  Pastures on both sides of the road had cows wandering across them.

This place was sublime, with a painting each time you turned around.

Burt's Farm, 8x12, watercolor on Rives BFK.

For more Paintings & sketches ~ Paint Eat Sleep  

Watercolor Workshop en plein air at Canterbury Shaker Village

I have a few workshops coming up in some gorgeous places....

The first one is The Sketchbook Journal - sketching and painting with watercolors in Canterbury Shaker Village, Canterbury, NH. 

The workshop is May 22nd & 23rd.  

This workshop is great for all levels.   

You will get a chance to try a number of techniques. Materials list available.

  The setting is spectacular with great open meadows, interesting architecture, and big sky action. 

Of course these pictures were taken a few weeks ago, when we are up there painting all the leaves will be out, the flowers will blooming and sheep will be dotting the hillsides...

Come paint some juicy paintings !  

To see more samples of some of plein air watercolor sketches check out  Field Sketches

You can get all the details for the workshop at  Canterbury Shaker Village

Sketchbook Class At Sanctuary Arts

Sanctuary Arts & Green Foundry is an art school and foundry in Eliot, Maine. The school offers great classes for adults and children. The foundry is a fine art sculpture and teaching facility that is famous for fabricating the Robert Indiana HOPE sculpture for Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

This is where I am teaching a sketchbook class for the winter semester. The main building was a church. Christopher Gowell a well known sculptor, owns and runs the school.

Here is the main entrance to the class rooms and studios . Steven Lee sculpted the head planter near the door.

Here is the large studio where I hold my class. The windows are 2 stories high. There are lots of sculptures in various stages of completion.

Here are my wonderful students hard at work. They are sketching with ink. This class prepares them for sketching and painting while traveling or out and about in the world. It's about how to do art while smack dab in the middle of your life and end up with something nice. The class helps one establish good habits for sketching and painting. Its about learning to see and developing a good critical visual sense.

This is a multi stage exercise using parts of landscapes images to depict form and compose a design. Here the students were using watercolor on ink sketches completed earlier.

We do a lot of 1 min and 3 min timed sketches to draw what captivates us and to prepare for real life sketching out in the world when our subjects are moving and we don't have much time.

Here we are doing an exercise that we would do after coming in from a day of traveling and sketching when we couldn't paint on location. We add color or water to ink or watercolor pencil sketches using our notes and fresh memories of what we sketched that day for reference.

These exercises are fun and require their full attention. And water soluble, move able ink is one of the best things an artist can use for quick, great value sketches. Here is one of those great watercolor pencil sets with 100 + colors. For color notes on location it can't be beat... unless you have the time and a spot where you can to set up and actually use your paints!

Thunder & Tobacco

I took a short road trip to Hatfield & Whatley, MA; small towns in the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. Thunder storms rushing in from the Berkshires shortened my painting and sketching time. A field and tobacco barn in Whatley before the rain hit.

It was really great to see these clouds roll out of the foot hills across the flat area of the Connecticut River Valley. You could see the lightening and hear the thunder from clouds way back in the Berkshires.

Here are the super quick sketches I did of the edge of the storm just arriving and after the rain at the diner ( with gray tone markers and a field sketch water color box.) I am trying out at least 5 brands of paint right now. This is Sakura. Nice handy box and great water barrel brush but the colors don't touch Daniel Smith's.

I had no time to even set up to paint when the rain hit and blasted through the valley. By the time we got to the Whatley Diner everything was drenched and the sky was beginning to clear.

The next morning on our way back to Maine cool air and puffy clouds were floating above the fields in North Hatfield. It was a perfect summer day.

A quick road and barns sketch with the Sakura Koi box. These are all on basic all purpose drawing paper.

The tobacco barns are such nice classic worn structures and add a strong visual geometry to the wide vistas.
On this short trip time & weather limited me to sketches and watercolors . The last two sketches are the same location slightly different design and with Daniel Smith colors. Love these paints. I can use any old brush, any old paper and the colors sing. If I ever meet Daniel Smith I will hug & kiss him !