So... I decided to let you peek in as I work on my next painting of Little Long Pond at Acadia National Park. I've painted this view/area many times from life and a combination of photos and sketches; my goal in this next version is to retain the original aspects of the place and enhance, just enough to interpret how I feel about this lovely place.

Here, I'll share some of my past sketches and paintings of Little Long Pond. First, the photo of the trees that are roughly in the middle of the view. I've struggled with the shape of these particular trees because they're too round and shapeless for my taste. 

Here is a painting by a 19th century painter, Alfred Thompson Bricher (one of my favorite artists). I'm always amazed at how graceful and lovely the trees are in Hudson River School paintings. I doubt that trees were just more beautiful in those days; I imagine that the artists embellished their trees by re-designing them.

Next, is a plein air watercolor (meaning painted on site). I'm rather impatient when working outdoors - I'd rather be walking. So, my intent while sketching and painting outdoors is to record accurate shapes, but even more important, the actual color I see.

Here are a few sketches I did in order to "practice" and enhance tress shapes. I even experimented with the idea of adding a fisherman, but ultimately decided not to include him.

   

Next, I'll show an example of how I experiment with thumbnail sketches to figure out my composition. Although I did about 6 of these for the final painting, I'm showing you only one here. The painting is on the right: oil 9x12 (private collection) I decided to leave the cows out in the final painting. There are usually hikers on that field, but not cows. However, as the artist in charge - I could have put them in.

  

Here are a couple of other paintings I did of the same scene: The oil on the left (11x14) I made the mountain larger. However, I was not totally satisfied with the shape of the middle tree - it's just a little too rounded for my liking. The watercolor on the right (10x15) was painted for an article in Watercolor Magazine, so it's not completed. I put both trees in the middle on this one, but they are again, a little like two lollypops. I did try to make them less rounded, but it didn't quite work. For some reason, making shapes irregular is difficult for most artists.

  

So now I am preparing to paint the scene again, and I hope you will follow along with me. (next newsletter) I'll explain each step and also let you know when I get into trouble and how I resolve problems. Please tune in for the next iteration of this journey. I hope to post one email newsletter every two weeks.

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