Lesson #1: sunscreen makes a lousy white paint

Three houses, a bad photo of a decent painting by little ol' me.

It’s a little hard to get an hourly forecast for a specific spot on the Maine coast. It can be pouring in one place and clear in the next town over. However, not only was the National Weather Service calling for rain, my New York buddies were all talking about the whopping deluge they’d just gotten.

Lyn painting the Fort Point lighthouse.

No painting trip to Maine is complete without a lighthouse, and my intention had been for us to paint the Grindle Point Lighthouse on Islesboro. Without knowing exactly when it would start raining, relying on ferry transportation seemed unwise. Instead we drove north to the Fort Point light, where my charges promptly spread themselves across a quarter mile of terrain to paint. That is why I take my bicycle while teaching, although since the grounds include the ruins of a Revolutionary War fort, a mountain bike might have worked better.

Loren learned that the cover on his truck leaks.

The rain held off until  we could regroup at the hotel for a demo, which I did using Sandy’s kit.

Elizabeth and Sandy did some foraging for the painters.

It’s always hard to use someone else’s paint, and I was complaining that hers mixed poorly. That was partially because it’s not good paint, but it turns out that dab of white at the left of her palette was sunscreen, not paint. I’m not asking why it was there.

Dedicated students watching a demo in the rain. "I learned that you oil painters have it easy," said Virginia.

A demo is a great opportunity to reach painters of all levels. Earlier in the day, I’d talked to Cecilia and Nancy about a new way of setting up their paintings than straight-up drawing. Both are naturally good compositors, but this technique gives more consistent control over the outcome. I was able to demonstrate that.

Nancy's first attempt at the view.

After a while, Nancy left and went back to her own balcony to finish a painting she’d started earlier. When she was done with that, she painted the same scene again. I loved seeing how she integrated what I’d told her, and how it made the second painting stronger.

Nancy's post-demo painting of the same view.

Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Rain affects people differently. This is the artist formerly known as Brad.

Own Your Relationships and Fire Up Your Passion for Business

As I gradually re-emerge from motherhood and become a working mama, one thing has become very clear: my peeps are amazing. What I am talking about are my professional relationships. I am one of the lucky ones who gets to choose my colleagues and they are full of passion, ideas, inspiration and a real desire to add value to people, communities and the world - stuff that jazzes me up a lot.

Rewarding professional and personal connections are not something anyone can obtain automatically. We have to recognize their value and then nurture them. Successful people realize that the lone ranger approach doesn't create half the results. Here are some of the best and most immediate benefits of having colleagues that rock!:

• Inspiration - as a self-employed professional I have realized that the single most valuable feeling to have is inspiration. It gives us the fuel for the fire and without the fire business goes flat. Colleagues who are good at what they do provide plenty of that.


• Ideas - I receive the best ideas from conversations with others. A story from someone else often sparks a brilliant idea that I can apply right away to increase my impact.


• Opportunities - most of our significant breaks come when others open doors for us. These can be as subtle as invites to attend, meet and address or be as rich as referrals and job offers.


• Connection - humans thrive on connection, it's what drives us. We need to bring that into our day-to-day business functions in order to stay excited, fulfilled and growing something of value, extrinsically and intrinsically.

Quite obviously it's not what you know but who you know that dictates our level of impact and success. How can we cultivate more amazing connections. Very simply:

• Open up. Maybe not the floodgate on the first meeting but don't be afraid to be yourself. People like and trust people they know, and that they know are not perfect. In fact, they'll like you more when you aren't trying to impress by dropping names or listing off your accomplishments. You'll be more memorable by sharing something you care about on a deeper level such as significant experiences, tidbits about your family, business dreams and lifestyle choices. Colleagues are people first and foremost and remembering that will build your rapport.


• Give, give and give some more. Don't wait for someone to mention you or Twitter, give you praise or Like you on Facebook before you dish out a bunch of support, unsolicited. The game of abundance is not tit for tat so keep giving again and again. Inevitably, the more you give the more you will get back and benefit sooner from the free love coming your way. Give like you want to receive.


• Pay if forward. When you do receive invites, praise, referrals and so on, acknowledge it quickly. Keep the cycle going by letting others know that you appreciate it and you'll make them feel good for giving to you. Social media has played a huge role in increasing our ability to "shout out" to colleagues and deliver public thanks for support. Learn from these examples.


• Just ask. One of the most obvious and overlooked ways to stay connected to people who really matter is to simply let them know you value your relationship. Consider forming a loose bond where support is given informally or step this up by arranging formal alliances. Some ways to do that include doing a trade for services, forming a mastermind group that meets regularly or providing each other with testimonials, mentions and referrals on a regular basis.

Take charge and own your relationships to enhance your job, business and life. You'll feel that much more connection, inspiration and love in everything you do. Love? Yes, love! It's why we do what we do.

Let’s start at the very beginning

This is Janith's second-ever painting, of tugboat reflections.

Lynn managed to find a place to paint where her feet could be in the water. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill.

My favorite places to paint are harbors. I love boats of all kinds, I love the rise and fall of the tide, I love the work that goes on in them. Set into the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River, Belfast harbor is as lovely as any harbor on the coast. It is Newark to Camden’s Manhattan: it’s more industrial and less gentrified.

This is Stacey's second-ever painting, of the tugboats themselves. Whew, what a lot of drawing!

Marjean ran to the art store and bought herself a palette knife at lunchtime. Since it was new, she used it to cut the cheese before resuming painting. 

But boats are not easy to draw, let alone paint, and I have three absolute beginners in this workshop.

Brad floating on the dock.

I have two youngsters with us who are not properly part of the workshop but who are still painting. Here's Ilse amid the foliage. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill.

A man and his son stopped to see Marjean and were dumbfounded when she said it was her second day painting. “She’s a ringer,” said the father. We laughed. Marjean has painted walls and windowsills and furniture, but never a painting.

And here's Sophia with her grandmother, Virginia. Both girls are great young artists. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill.

This is Marjean's second-ever painting, of the boats in the outer harbor.

But as I told him, painting is a learned process, not some kind of magic trick. If you can break down the process into manageable steps, your students do a lot less fumbling. The process differs in different media, but is remarkably similar in different styles. The same rules apply whether the end result is abstraction or fine detail: if you want the paint to stick and the composition to work, you approach painting in a methodical way.

Cecilia dealt with the comings and goings of boats by working on two paintings. When one boat disappeared, she picked up the other canvas.. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill.

Bernard attempted to recreate his missing boat from memory. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill.

Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Where we meet the tide, and win (at least for yesterday).

Janith expresses my feelings exactly.

We started our painting week at the mouth of the Duck Trap River, which gave us several iconic Maine vistas—a rocky promontory, a shingle beach, small boats swinging on their lines, and a lovely old concrete bridge. The weather was superlative.

Nancy's painting of Howe Point.

Marjean's beautiful hat.

The first day of any workshop is dominated by questions of set-up, where new ideas meet old kits, or new painters learn to use their tools for the first time. This was exacerbated by having so many new painters in the group, but Sandy Quang is my monitor, and she helped get them all set up and working. I consider a first painting to be a success if the paint gets stuck to the canvas in a sensible order; everyone did that and much more.

Brad's painting of the bridge and the Duck Trap River.

It's very rare that I demo at the beginning of a workshop, but with so many new painters in the group, it made sense.

The tide presents questions of painting (as objects appear and disappear, and angles change) but the supermoon meant a supertide, and it was a thief. First it stole Hal’s belongings. Lyn went in after them, and rescued everything but his shoes. A team of friendly canoers kindly raced around the bar and saved his shoes. Then my umbrella went aloft and ended up in the drink. Hal returned the favor by diving in after it. My fault: I’ve already lost that umbrella once; in the Rio Grande, and I should have known to check that it was tethered. And the tide lifted two stuff sacks from Janith's kit, too.

Dinghy, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, by me.

Critique session.

It’s a beautiful foggy morning today; my favorite for painting in harbors. And today we’ll be at Belfast’s public landing, so it is all working out perfectly.

Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

I must be out of my mind

Painting by the light of the moon in beautiful Belfast.

Next time I schedule a full moon, it’s going to be during midweek in my workshop. We tried, we really tried, but we were too befuddled by travel and packing and unpacking to paint last night. Still, it was a lot of fun wandering down to the beach and watching the moonlight sliver the waves.

Bernard Zellar's watercolor.

Our biggest problem was battery failure. Stacey was using the flashlight app on her cellphone (an app which always cracks me up) and it killed her battery. Nancy’s flashlight battery died. My two halogen flashlights—which never run down their batteries—both went for an amble.

Ain't it lovely?

Still, I know the position of my paints on my palette, so how hard could painting in the pitch dark be? I blocked in a lovely soft blue-black for the night sky. Someone danced by with a light, and I realized it was actually bright violet.

On top of traveling all day, we'd had a few glasses of wine on the deck. What a fantastic group!

“Sandy, why don’t you finish this for me?” So she did—also without a light. By 9:30 PM we were all ready to call it a night. Tomorrow is the official first day of painting, and we want to be fresh for it.

Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Things they don’t teach you in art school

This is as far as the Eco-Warrior can go. From here, it's on foot with a flashlight.

I learned a new word this week: dépaysement, which is that sense of disorientation one has on arriving in a strange place. It’s the perfect description of my initial shock at living in this cabin. As I’ve developed routines and some sense of familiarity, it’s gotten easier.

My bathtub, which I shared with a chorus of indignant bullfrogs.

I just finished my last night alone here. (I’m returning for one night at the end of my workshop, but I will have Sandy with me.) In the end, the things that I expected to bother me didn’t, and some things I never thought of at all proved very irritating. For example, I hate washing dishes without copious hot running water, but yesterday I succeeded at taking a sponge bath with a quart of cold water. 

This is a stovetop oven; it's a neat little device that replaces the toaster oven or microwave in the on-the-grid kitchen. Working in the dark is a fact of off-the grid living. 

Being alone doesn’t bother me but walking alone up a dark path at night makes me very jumpy. I read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood at an impressionable age and can never quite shake my fear of two-legged predators in the silent countryside. Last week, my sleep was interrupted by a serenading coyote who was close enough that I could hear the thrum of his vocal cords. I decided to discourage him by sprinkling human urine in a large circle around my cabin. He hasn’t been back.

There are, of course, many consolations, including the incredible beauty of the landscape.

I would not describe myself as a girly-girl, but three weeks without the luxuries of 21^st century grooming have left me feeling pretty disreputable. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to neatly shave one’s legs without running water. And walking in sandals on dirt paths grinds one’s pedicure away in no time.

Beans and eggs to the right, boiling drinking water to the left. It's a propane stove hooked up to a standard gas grill tank. Without it, life would have been unbearable.

The fifteen bucks I spent on my portable toilet seat turned out to be my best investment. It is neater than using an outhouse, as long as one is diligent at burying waste, and the mosquitoes aren’t too bad if you go out to do that at first light.

My biggest difficulty has been in drinking enough water. I either need to boil it or carry it in, and I never seem to have enough time for the former or enough memory for the latter.

The off-the-grid coffee grinder. Really.

The darkness here is a force that presses against one’s consciousness, particularly in the deep woods. I love the beauty of the night sky, and the darkness feels friendly to me, but for many people, that much darkness is a problem. In winter in Maine, the sun sets in mid-afternoon. Then darkness will be an ever-present friend. In fact, for all the reasons that camping is more difficult in winter, living off the grid will be more difficult then, too.

The off-the-grid shoe-drying rack.

I have long been fascinated with the Tiny House movement, perhaps because I feel I’m saddled with too much house and too much stuff for this phase in our life. I find myself constantly bumping up against the lack of workspace in this 12X16 cabin. Put two people in here and it would be impossibly claustrophobic. Perhaps the people who thrive in Tiny Houses have no avocations except living in Tiny Houses, for my studio and my husband’s guitars alone would fill one up.

I think I could live like this if I had to, but having no sense of moral imperative to do so, I’ll be very happy to return to the interconnectedness of on-the-grid living.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME starts today! Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Why You Should Shop Online For Your Next Outdoor Furniture Purchase!

You are going to start shopping for a new piece of furniture. You have already devoted an entire day out of the upcoming weekend to furniture shopping. And all week, you are using every spare minute to prepare yourself for the hustle and bustle of weekend traffic, looking for the area of town with the most furniture stores to make your furniture shopping day as productive as possible. You may even be cutting out pictures and descriptions, doing research on brands, materials, color availability, and storing all of your magazine clippings and printouts in an organized shopping folder to take with you as you shop. So much work and you haven't even begun to shop yet. Hope you find what you are looking for on the first day at the 3 or 4 stores that you have time to visit before the day is over; otherwise you may find yourself fighting the same battle next weekend. There has to be a better way.... There is. Here are the top three reasons why you'll be better off shopping online for your next furniture purchase!

Selection:

There's little more frustrating than knowing exactly what you want, spending all day looking for it, and not finding anything even close. Just about the only thing more aggravating is NOT knowing what you want and driving, store to store trying to find it!

When you shop online, you literally have thousands of merchants and hundreds of thousands of brands, models, colors, styles, and prices, all nicely arranged on a search results page in the order of relevance to what you are looking for, and all at the touch of a button. Don't like what you see in the first store, click the "back" button once, and try the next store. Sure beats fighting the heat, traffic, and rude sales people in store after store after store, and still not finding what you're looking for. And nowadays you can even browse the net on your phone, from the office, or anywhere!

Time Savings:

Of course you have better things to do all weekend than shop for furniture, like actually enjoying your new furniture! The trouble with shopping traditionally is the countless hours of research, reviews, paper articles, magazine clippings, picture printouts, and coupons you have to find and bring with you. Then once you've actually narrowed your search to a specific store, you have to find a parking space, walk in, wait to be greeted by 4 different lurking sales people who are watching your every move waiting to pounce on you to collect your money or sell you up the river on a piece of furniture you don't really even like!

Shopping on the World Wide Web eliminates all of the boundaries to convenience offered by traditional shopping and adds comfort, efficiency, precision, and a wider selection to your search and buying experience. Never before have you been able to more quickly and conveniently compare features, prices, colors, and inventory availability of all of the stores competing for your business. Shopping online adds a new dimension to your shopping experience...Time Savings!

Price Savings:

Last but certainly not least, is the amount of money you'll be saving when shopping online. Furniture stores, like all other stores, have to pay rent, utilities like electricity and water, sales taxes, payroll for their sales force and money to store their inventory. All of these costs are paid for with the proceeds from their furniture sales which reduces their net profit. These businesses compensate by raising their prices resulting in more of your money in their pocket!
When you shop online you pay a lower price simply because it costs less for online stores to operate than it does for brick and mortar stores. For instance, online stores often don't have sales people, rent, utilities, or inventory storage costs to pay, and therefore can offer the same products at drastically lower prices to you! In addition, if you're really lucky you can even find some that offer Free Shipping saving you even more!

In Summary, you stand to save substantially more time, effort, and money by shopping online. Whether you're using comparison shopping sites, or even just your favorite search engine, the deal of a lifetime may just be a click away! So save your gas and do your research and shopping at home next time to save money on your next Outdoor Furniture purchase!