Plein Air Painting On The Beach: How To Paint Children

On a recent painting trip to Assateague, I looked forward to learning some new tricks of the trade. This challenged my sense of direction. What to do? Which way to go? How to get there? I made mistakes every step of the way. What I learned, however, was how to be a child. Playing with my paint, sitting with my easel in the sand instead of standing, snoozing in between paintings, experimenting with different ideas shared by other artists; engaging my Self in the JOY of being a kid on the beach shifted all my gears and sent me forward in my own painting vehicle.

I grew up going to the beach. My children grew up going to the beach. Since we have all grown up, we haven’t been to the beach ~ until yesterday.
My friends from MAPAPA (Mid Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association) were having a Paint Out at Assateague National Seashore and I signed up to go back in February. In the time since then all sorts of things got put on my calendar, including things which conflicted with my being able to attend this event. In the end, everything got canceled and I was left with the choice of going after all.

I hesitated at first. "I don’t really HAVE to go," I told my Self. It required a good bit of effort to get there since I live a quite a distance away. Making arrangements to travel alone, whether to stay at my son’s or camp out, how long to stay; it all seemed like too much to decide. Finally, I chose to ‘just do it.’

“My birthday,” I told my Self. “It’s your birthday gift to your Self.” I had not been to the ocean since my sons went to college. I remember taking them sailing for their birthdays one summer. What a blast we all had! “You can go by your Self,” I encouraged my Self.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. By the time I was ready to load the van with my gear, it was pouring rain. Jim helped me get it done. He cooked me dinner and kissed my good-bye.

I drove to my son’s house in Annapolis to spend the night. He and his family were gone for the weekend. No grandchildren to visit. No dog. A strangely quiet night in their home; I woke early, showered and headed for the coffee shop down the street. “A large cup of House Blend,” I said to the clerk at Cravings.

I called Jim from the van, still 1000 sipping the steaming hot coffee. “Where are you?” he asks. “In the van at the coffee shop,” I replied. “It’s almost 8:00. I should have plenty of time to get there for the demo.”

I put the van in gear and headed for Route 50. “You better watch the road,” Jim said saying good-bye. My mind wandered. Thoughts, imagining the artists on the beach, taking pictures, the warm sunshine. Sipping the last of the coffee, I looked at the road sign and realized I was going west instead of east! “Gads,” I thought out loud. “How could you do this when you were being so careful to do it right?”

I exited and turned my Self around and headed back the way I came. Looking at the clock, I recalculated my arrival time. “I may still be able to get there before they start the demo,” I said to my Self.

I don’t usually have trouble finding things. I have an innate sense of direction, usually. On this day, however, directing my Self toward a childhood dream felt oddly backwards.

I continued having minor issues with the turns. After several more wrong turns and corrections, I gave up trying to follow the ‘shortest route’ on the map and settled for the simplest one. “So what if it takes me a little longer, so what if I am late,” I rallied my Self. “You will arrive in fine form ready to paint, not frazzled to the point of extinction!”

I did arrive on time in the end. And I had relaxed and enJOYed the ride, after all. I parked and gathered my easel, an afghan, jacket and my painting gear and headed for the sand. It was overcast and breezy. A little chilly, in fact. I had imagined something quite different. Not to worry, just go. Over the dunes, the artists were gathered along the shore.

As I arrived, Lynn Locklear was demonstrating how to paint the ponies. The ponies, however, had not shown up. Fortunately, that didn’t phase Lynn. She drew a box and showed us how the rump on the horse fit neatly into it. She used a simple ochre and deftly brushed the lines of the horse onto her panel. Then she quickly wiped them out and made another illustration. She showed us the side view of the hind quarter, how to show the highlight along the hip. Then the shoulder.

Great lesson. Now all we need is the ponies. We remained hopeful they would arrive before the day was out. In the meantime, Kirk McBride was doing a lesson on painting figures. Kirk had arranged for a model. While he waited for the model to arrive, Kirk set up his palette showing us how he pre-mixes all his colors before he begins.

We watched intently as he made a row of warms for flesh tones; dark, medium and light. Then a row of cools for water; dark, medium and light. A row of turquoise phthalo for the surf board and a row of neutrals for the sand followed. When he ran out of space on his small palette, he grabbed an extra one and spread out onto it.

We watched with fascination as he arranged everything he would need. He discussed the fact that the day was overcast and how he would prefer to paint a sunny painting. He set up a reference painting which he had made on a prior day. Finally as he blocked in the under-painting, dark for the figure and blue for the water; his model arrived. Surf board in hand, he took his place in the painting. We were in awe of how Kirk constructed his painting; back and forth between creating the image before him and the image on his canvas.

“Which is which?” I wondered to my Self. “Reality? Painting? This is a bit like the chicken and the egg!”

As Kirk finished up, Lynn let us know that she would be painting some children. Several friends had arrived to play with their children in the sand. Models? Yes, and children playing in constant motion. Several artists quickly settled in to paint them.

I laid out my afghan in the sand and made my nest. It was the afghan which Sneekers, my new dog, had got her hair all over in the van, so I figured sand would be OK too. I set up my easel with the legs shortened to their lowest 1000 position so I could sit on the afghan and paint. I had never done it this way before. But I didn’t feel like standing and thought it would be worth experimenting with a new position.

I wasn’t so sure about trying to paint the children. I had been watching the clouds up over the dunes and the bit of pale cerulean blue sky which was inching it’s way from the far end of the beach. I took out a small canvas 5” x 10”. I had affixed two pieces of handmade paper to it with matte medium and painted it with a light lavender tone. The lap line of the two papers left a feathered edge right along the place where I thought to put the edge of the sand ~ a line.

So I began with the shape of the sky, the deep lavenders in the undersides of the clouds. Then I ran the triangle of the water’s shape in from the right side of the canvas. A woman sitting in the sand down the beach gave me the focal point and completed the square.

I can’t tell you that designing my canvas in the geometric way was completely a conscious act. When I first started doing it that way, just a few months ago, I always made a charcoal sketch first. This helped me to work out the geometry, to see it first ~ before I started painting and wasted the whole day fighting with a composition which could have been resolved quickly and easily.

Now, here I was doing it automatically. I focused on getting comfortable on the beach. This process; getting my Self grounded in the sand, then going through the geometry ~ point, line, angle, triangle, square, circle ~ When the circle is intact, the Circuit complete, I became absorbed in painting the gentle colors. I lost my Self in the paint and comforting color vibrations.

I’m not sure I am the kind of painter who could mix all these colors up ahead of time. My palette doesn’t look clean and tidy. Actually, it is rather a mess! Heaps of paint from many days’ painting are still wet. Others have dried.
I do keep my colors clean, however. And I do know where everything is. I usually put the colors in the same place, not always. I do have a connection to knowing where to find what I am looking for. And I don’t mind stopping to mix a color along the way.

I am rather much of an intuitive painter. The colors I am sensing in the scene before me seem to change each time I squint at them. Often it seems more like asking my Self “What does that color FEEL like?” This is often easier to answer than what it looks like. What it looks like seems to change. How it feels, gives me more direction to finding a color on my palette which I can use ~ and be happy with.

After all, being happy with the painting is what it’s all about to me. If I am not happy with it, what’s the point? I saw a lot of artists rubbing paintings out. I tired to see what they thought that was so terrible it should be rubbed out. But I couldn’t.

I carried my little canvas back to the car and went to get a snack. When I returned to the beach, Lynn was working on a small painting of the children playing in the sand. I watched for a bit. It began looking possible. I decided to give it a try. It had been nearly 30 years since I had painted my own children. And those I had done from photographs. Photographs were different than painting en plein air.

“If I could paint the children en plein air, the color and gestures would be so much more alive,” I thought to myself. “The true energy of each child would come through. But, small ones could never hold still!” I dragged my afghan and easel forward to where the children and their mother were playing at the edge of the water. Lined up with the other artists, I pinned up an 8” x 10” piece of multimedia board which I had painted acrylic of deep Quinacridone violet and white, then Naples yellow and white mixed with fiber paste to give the panel some tooth.

Trained as a pastellist, I am very attuned to having some tooth. I like to scrub the paint into the subsurface. This gives me room to lay other colors gently 1000 over the surface without mixing it in so much it doesn’t get muddy. It lays on the surface and lets the other colors peek through, so the viewer’s eye can mix the colors optically.

Today, however, I wanted to try out Kirk’s method of brushing on oil paint thinned with mineral spirits to block in the colors. It did dry quickly. Though I am not quite sold on the method for personal use. Funny how each artist has to find the combination of methods which work best for them. We are all so different, so unique. Discovering our own unique expressions seems a life long quest.

I took a stab at painting the children playing. Quick. Quick. Quick. They darted around the sand. I brushed them in and added a few details. I felt as though I was making it up as I went along. Much like a child playing make-believe ... here I was in the sand making believe I could paint. I stopped for a bit and took a nap on the afghan.

Paint another one? Maybe just a quick sketch. I quickly roughed in a dad and his daughter. She had on a pink suit and a sun hat. He picked her up and held her. As soon as I brushed in their shapes, he put her back down and she started running.

I didn’t see the significance of this painting until just now as I write it’s description. Two days have passed and the dream I dreamed this morning showed me the little girl I have become.

In my dream: Betsy Elder is one of the people on stage. I am wanting to let her know I am in the audience. I go to speak to her, but she is blank. She doesn’t recognize me. I tell her my name, Dorothy. Dorothy Fagan ~ and she breaks down. Someone, her child? has not spoken to her. SHE is distraught. I try to comfort her. I tell her the story of mine ~ how he came around after a whole year or more. She goes off looking for her daughter. ‘Bet-see-held-’er’ I am saying over and over.

Two days after my day at Assateague, I painted in New Castle, DE. I parked at the river and walked the historic town looking for my painting and found my kindergarten. I didn’t realize what I was painting had so much inner meaning. I was simply attracted to the multiple rows of fences and gates. I had walked the whole town to get the lay of the land. Every scene which attracted my eye seemed to have fences with enclosed gardens. When I finished my walk, I was hot and tired. If I were going to paint, I needed to cool off and eat first. I stopped in an antique shop and asked for a recommendation.

The delightful gentleman I met, Lauren Lynch, has two homes; half the year in New Castle and the other half in Italy. “New Castle,” he said, “is so European. It is old, gentle and friendly.” We stood on the street corner and talked like old friends. I have never been to Italy, but it does remind me of being in Spain I told him.

This morning I discovered much more to the idea of being in Spain than just the buildings. When I looked again at the painting I made that afternoon in New Castle, I saw it’s similarities to a painting I made eighteen years ago from a photograph I had taken in Spain 22 years prior! Jardines del Ninos, was the title of my painting. Garden of the Children, literally translated. Kindergarten in English.

As a 16 year old, I had stayed in the Jardines del Ninos in Santander. My view from the second floor bedroom of the kindergarten was a view of the enclosed garden ~ much like the garden I had just painted. The difference, the BIG difference ~ is that now I am IN the garden, not just looking at it from above talking about it! I truly an in my new castle ~ if this were a dream, I would see the new castle as my new state of consciousness, a child’s castle of dreams.

In my dream last night: I go looking for a missing child. Outside I find her lost and upset. She has scraped her chin and is crying. I hug her firmly against me. “It’s OK.” I tell her. “You’re OK now. I am sorry I let you get lost.” I wake with my arms wrapped tightly around my Self.

A thunder storm is outside 1000 my window. I lay there listening for awhile. Slowly letting go. Waking, I get up, slip on a dress and head downstairs to pour a cup of hot coffee.

Coming into the room where I left my painting lying on the floor the day before, I notice something familiar. My painting from yesterday looks strangely like the Jardines del Ninos! I wonder why I did not see it before. Stepping back, I realize I have painted my Self into my own childhood garden of dreams, never be get lost again.

By: Dorothy Fagan

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Artist|Speaker|Author Dorothy Fagan shares her passion, dreams, paintings and the quirky way they intersect with humor and compassion. She is a lively, engaging speaker whose audiences share her joy and discovery of the creative muse. Dorothy has a B. F. A. from East Carolina University and completed a ten-year Painting Mentorship with Robert B. Mayo, Valentine Museum and Gallery Mayo. She has developed her own Color Sensing Technique and written three books. www.dorothyfagan.com

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