Gloucester Plein Air (part 2)
More about the week long paint-a-thon
Still catching up with last week. Here is my 5 competition paintings I submitted for Gloucester Arts Festival. If you didn't see my previous post, "Mobjack Watermen" took Second Place. I feel my technical level of painting got better this year despite buring the candle at both ends with a large daytime painting 24x36 and a reasonably large nocturne 18x26. Per the course last so far. I've only sold one painting, "Old Red", my smallest painting. Slightly better that no sales at all (which has happened at this event and others in recent years.) Mostly I think this amounts to I'm gonna paint what I want to paint and not what I think sells. I'm sure it's because I'm drawn to paintings of riff raff, grungy derelict subjects. Gas stations, people of questionable character, run down places. All of which does not go with couches and room themes. I was actually told this at the event by collectors, so I know it's a valid point. A couple told me my prices were too high, to which I replied, "Don't worry, even I can't afford my own paintings!" I liked that reply, LOL.
The great Charlie Newman drew me at the Matthews portion of Gloucester Plein Air event. He was nice enough to give it to me, so naturally, I had to draw him in kind.
Here’s my rendition of Charlie while he was drawing other artists.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my wonderful hosts for the event, Kim and Jim Williams. They were fantastic and helped me with areas to paint that I was not aware of. I definitely plan to return to their farm to make more paintings and of the surrounding area! Here’s the host family painting I made for them of their corn crib in their front yard. It was salvaged from an old farm, which you don’t see many of these left anymore. I did a nocturne of it and punched up the colors as there were tons of fireflies floating around in the evening.
While pushing myself to extremes, I did feel like I did succeed in making better paintings. However, I have more to push and evolve. So, I’m looking forward to getting back out there to paint more this summer!
In other news, I wanted to give everyone a heads up that I’ll be doing the Princess Bride posters for the NARO Theater at the end of this month (JUNE 27th & 28th) and will begin working on it today! It’s one of my wife’s favorite movies, so I couldn’t pass that up. Also, I’m back to posting Youtube videos and doing LIVE sessions, which you can subscribe to get notice of when I go live. And lastly, I will be offering new 2026 Calendars in time for the Holidays and should have it available by end of July, so stay tuned!
Best,
Doug
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