It has been almost two weeks ago that we left Massachusetts, traveled through Maine, and crossed the bridge at Lubec to enter Campobello Island at the tip of New Brunswick on the Bay of Fundy. We had reservations at the Herring Cove Provincial Park which is within walking distance of the Herring Cove Beach (see above). Although the site had 30 amp electricity, we were sans water or sewer, so we had to embark upon a careful conservation program of dishwashing and toilet flushing. Thankfully the park had warm, clean restrooms with hot and cold running water and showers as well so we made use of their facilities as often as possible. We spent our first couple of days exploring the island, checking out all of the little harbors and taking photos of old buildings and boats. We were both so happy to finally be able to pull over in the truck and get out and take some photos without encountering a "Private Property - Keep Out" sign as we had on the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The weather was clear and cool, unlike the 99 degree, high humidity weather we left when we spent a night in Fr
eeport, Maine. Freeport, by the way, is a disneyesque mall disguised as a mild mannered coastal town. They were having a heat wave, as was the rest of the country and there were so many air conditioners on in our KOA that the electricity went off for about 5 hours in the late afternoon. So the air felt lovely on Campobello with maritime temperatures in the 70's. . . . . . On Sunday evening we went to Friar's Bay Gallery to get a welcome and introduction for the week's plein air workshop from Michael Chesley Johnson (see left, photo taken during the week while we were at Liberty Point) and his wife Trina where we also met the two other students; Mike from New Jersey and Pat from New Hampshire. We were not too surprised to see Pat because one day at the IAPS conference in June we had lunch at a table with many other artists and in the co
nversation found out that Pat was also scheduled to have a workshop with Michael in July. What a coincidence, only 4 people in the workshop and we meet one of them by accident before we get there. It's a small world. . . . . . . . . . .On Monday at 9:00 Atlantic Time we met at Michael's gallery where he talked about concentrating our efforts on a four value color system. This was exactly what Allan was hoping he would talk about and after we drove to Con Robinson Point in the Roosevelt International Park, Michael demonstrated how to begin a painting using four colors that were in the four values of the sce
ne. Michael had reminded all of us of Charles Hawthorne's 4 value system with the verticals (trees) being the darkest, sloped verticals (mountains) being the mid-darks, flat areas (land) being the mid-lights, and the sky being the lightest of all. Allan's painting to the left was his day one attempt at achieving this goal of a painting in 4 values. I am working on my painting of the same scene (above right) and felt that my achievement for the day was a) actually doing a plein air and getting something recognizeable on the paper, and b) capturing some of the
color and value that I saw in front of me. My biggest achievement was getting over the jitters of working quickly, as I am a very sloowww painter. But Michael had a very strong teacherly instinct and was able to present material at the level we needed and adjusted his approach to be of the most help to all of us, each of us with different needs. On day two we went to Cranberry Point, where again Michael demonstrated what we needed to focus on for the session. M
ichael is working on a painting above while we were all doing our paintings and later he showed us the small painting he had done of me painting under my umbrella. By the way, we learned that the umbrella is not for us, it is for the pastels and the painting on the easel. . . . . . . . . On Wednesday we painted at Herring Cove Beach, which is the beach at the very top of this blog, and Thursday we went to Liberty Point, which is the most gorgeous spot on the island. Michael did a demonstration of a painting of a rock formation off shore which resembles a frog and cautioned us about making it too froglike. Allan jumped right in and started painting and the nex
t day during the critique, we all had to laugh, as he had painted Jeremiah, in all his froglike glory (left). I escaped that problem by painting in the opposite direction (below). In addition to the four values which was on day one, we also worked on our composition, color, and atmospheric perspective. On our last day, we asked Michael if he would help us with trees and shrubs, so we all went to Little Duck Pond with the fog rolling in amongst the trees, and Michael showed us how to create trees, still maintaining the four values, as he added suggestions of
bluish green trees in the distance with a sky made of light pink and mint green which believe it or not, looked just like fog. The week was the absolute highlight of our trip and will be something we remember forever. On our last day we went back over the bridge to Lubec to visit the Easternmost point in the United States. But it was surely an anticlimax to the previous week painting plein air with Michael on Campobello Island.
ar park (which is Yosemite... in case you didn't know), namely numbers of people. There are certainly some places on the island that are not as popular, such as most of the western side, but for the most part, there were bumper to bumper traffic jams (even with the bus shuttle system running every half hour), people standing in long, long lines for ice cream in Bar Harbor, or bicyclists from every bicycle club in America. They were especially numerous on the park loop road and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of bicycles at Jordan Pond where all of the carriage roads seem to converge and the hot popovers are served for Tea. This was the high season for the island and every pathway was an endless stream of people from just about any country you could name and probably a few that you couldn't name. Aunties from India teetering along the rocky cliffs after the younger members of the family, French youths all with the physiques of bagettes, elderly women with makeshift walking sticks made of branches, children fast asleep in their strollers, dogs walking doggedly along behind 
their masters; all were there. We were there too and spent the first day exploring Bar Harbor, which is mostly restaurants and gift stores, but charming.... very charming with pots of flowers everywhere and of course the harbor full of boats. We had lunch at the Bar Harbor Inn and although the food was good, I think that they thought we should be on a diet because there was not much of it. On one of the days we had to drive back into Ellsworth to take care of some errands and there we had a proper lunch at Finn's Irish Pub (left). I had shepherds pie and Allan had corned beef and cabbage. Both were delicious and the helpings were so l
arge that we had leftovers to take home. As it turned out, right across the street from Finn's was a cafe where we had breakfast a couple of times as Allan really like the Corned Beef Hash and I was sold on the platesized Blueberry Pancakes which had little crispy edges and were filled with blueberries in the middle, with plenty of butter and Maine maple syrup. On our last day on the island, we took a cruise on the Sea Princess with a National Park Ranger who gave a nature talk while we were crossing over to Isleford on Little Cranberry Island and the
n up Somes Sound and back. We were able to see seals, bald eagles, osprey, and several kinds of ducks. But the best part of the boat ride for us, was getting photos of the harbors, the boats, and the scenery along the shore. Altogether between the two of us, we took over 600 photos while we were here for the week. Not all of those came from the boat ride, we got many photos from SW Harbor and also NE Harbor. Unfortunately we had to take many of the photos in the fog or drizzly rain since we were only here for one week and we only had one day of sunshine during our visit. But now that we have had a lesson from Michael on creating fog, we should
be OK. One of the final places we had to visit before we left the island was the Atlantic Brewery. I had promised our friends Mike and Rose that I would bring them some Maine brews, so we stopped by and had some Mainely Maine Barbeque and picked up a sample of Maine beers to bring back to Arizona. Hopefully it won't get too hot on our trip home, it would be a shame if we needed a cold one before we got them to their intended recipients.
