A few weeks ago, my class went to the Bates College Olin Arts Center to view Maine landscapes by Joel Babb. During our 1-hour visit I got to see many radiant paintings and one that especially caught my eye was “Goose Eye Brook”. “Goose eye Brook” was a painting of a beautiful autumn day at a place called Goose eye Brook. In Babb’s landscapes he used a large variety of colors even on the paintings that mostly featured stones and boulders.

Something I noticed about his work was that it reminded me of the setting in The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring). The reason this seemed odd to me was because the movie was shot in New Zealand and the landscapes were based on places in Maine. An activity we did to test how we saw the paintings was to imagine that we were in the painting and to write down all the things we could taste, see, feel, smell, hear, and touch in the painting. The person who was leading my class through these activities was Anthony Shostak who had worked with Team 7 in the past.

The following week Mr. Shostak visited our team to assist us with our painting skills as a follow up to viewing the landscapes at the museum. He demonstrated many different styles of watercolor, wet on wet, dry on wet and dry on dry. Mr. Shostak also helped us with our brush stroke’s, he showed us how to make thin graceful lines, big and wide lines, and how to get some where in the middle. After seeing how to create landscapes, we were put to the test to create our own. Since we are not all real artists we were allowed to bring in reference photos to give us an idea of what to paint. Most of us were quite nervous by having to paint our own landscape, but by surprise they turned out quite well.

I think that after having the chance to view and create landscapes we will have more assurance when we have to paint in other classes. So thank you for walking on in to the paintings we have seen and created.