What's It All About, Alfie?

There was so much to paint at historic Fort Edgecomb where the Plein Air Painters of Maine gathered to paint today.   Signs, water, trees, the fort, the fences and flowers.  My problem was elimination and placement.  Everything seemed to conspire to place my chosen subject, the fort, in the center of the composition and to eliminate anything that detracted from that subject. 

To avoid that problem, I moved the fort slightly to the right and balanced it with the sign structures on the left.  I threw in a couple of figures to break the straight treeline, and concentrated on making the fort one shape rather that including every shingle and window opening.  The sky was overcast, causing the fort to be in a flat light, so I consciously decided to invent the sun's position in the sky so as to create the planes of the fort to be in shadow, and the cast shadows to help emphasize the lights on the building.  I eliminated many elements, such as the fences, other signs, and the foreground subjects so that the fort was the main subject. 

 I was surprised that many of my fellow painters had chosen to come to Fort Edgecomb but not paint the subject that was most obvious.  If you come to a site which has an obvious emphasis and paint only the natural elements --trees and water--then why did you come to this location?  Avoiding an architectural subject that is so prominent doesn't seem to make much sense. 

I found many other possible subjects at this site and will probably return there sometime this summer..  More to come!