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"Monhegan Fallen Spruce"

a watercolor 24 x 18 inches

on Arches watercolor paper by Michael E. Vermette.

Today's Holiday Studio Sale featured watercolor painting is "Fallen Spruce" on Monhegan Island, Maine. This fallen weathered spruce turned silver over the years, is a testament of just how rugged an island-out-to-sea is in the winter months. It is located between Burns Head and Gull Rock on the southern side of the island, just below the coastal trail 1A. My goal was to paint a bright sunny light of a field on a bluff gradually overtaking the tree with various different grasses and field flowers.

#monheganisland#boldwatercolors #modernwatercolors#pleinairpaintersofmaine#expressiveimpressionism

#katahdinlakewildernesscamps #katahdinlake#gleasonfineart#yarmouthframeandgallery #lupinegallerymonhegan

#michaelevermette #michaelevermettefineart

Today's featured watercolor painting, November 16th, 2024, is "Virginia Creeper, Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps", in Baxter State Park, Maine. The Virginia creeper grows along the ground in woodlands, often growing up trees or even telephone poles on woodland borders, or as in this case also in open areas and climbing up an old growth maple tree. They are also known to grow along rocky bluffs, streams, and lakes as with mine at Katahdin Lake. The Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps are located at the end of a 3 1/2 mile hiking trail called Katahdin Lake trail from Avalanche Field in Baxter State Park. At this time of year the leaves are courser than the leaves of other vines such as the Boston Ivy. It can grow up to 20 feet. The branch tendrils have strong adhesive disks on the tips to fasten onto bark or rock giving them a floating illusion off the tree trunk. In the fall, when I painted this watercolor en plein air at the camps, the leaves had turned bright red and some purple, making it beautifully more conspicuous than in the summer months.This sturdy vine is found throughout North America, from southern Canada to eastern Mexico and Guatemala. My painting is one of my favorite foliage paintings and at the time was a delightful surprise to me to find it in right at the camps outside my cabin in the north Maine woods.

#baxterstatepark #boldwatercolors#modernwatercolors#pleinairpaintersofmaine#expressiveimpressionism#katahdinlakewildernesscamps#katahdinlake #gleasonfineart#yarmouthframeandgallery#lupinegallerymonhegan#michaelevermette#michaelevermettefineart

I painted this scenic waterfall with my oil painting workshop students en plein at Smalls Falls in late Summer. The Sandy River was swollen with powerful water as it forcefully plunged down this most colorful gorge. It was lightly raining off and on all day, but it didn't deter us from painting the marvelous grays of the Located in Franklin County, Maine, this colorful gorge hosts a 3-foot waterfall that cascades into a 20-foot wide circular pool. It is followed by a 14-foot fanning horsetail with a deep, oblong pool. Further up you will find a 25-foot segmented waterfall, with a plunge on the left, all equally crystal clear water. The bottom pool with a 20 foot plunge is what I depicted in this painting. All four of these falls are located just south of the town of Rangeley and offer the most colorful and beautiful gorge rock in the region. There are plenty of spectacular places to paint from direct observation. These colorful gorges with forceful waterfalls display exciting beiges, orange, greens, blacks, rich browns, golds, and ivory colors. Definitely one of my favorite and most challenging waterfalls to paint in all New England.

I paint in an impasto style using a loaded brush and palette knife mixing Venetian Black Oil Wax medium to my oil paint to increase its viscosity and improve the color to a brighter velvety glow. This painting medium also increases the transparency of the oil paint, giving it a semi-transparent sheen. The paint, is smooth and thick as peanut butter, and is painted on a gypsum gessoed wood cradled panel. This painting is high quality all the way down to the hand made Williamsburg and Old Holland oil paint I used to paint it.

I am intrigued with the timelessness in change in my paintings. I want them to show a love of color and light with emphasis on the expressive painterly marks and forms, which evokes for me a recognizable feeling, a nostalgic memory, or even emotional qualities such as the smell of balsam in the morning forest air. In this composition I demonstrated how to establish the moving falls as the center of interest in an oil painting as it cascades through the colorful rock canyon.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!