Judy Kohn is painting in the white spaces on her canvas, her brushes dipping into the wide palette that balances beside her on edge of the wharf.

Her art teacher told her to fill the canvas with mid-tones, and she is do just that. If you want to learn from the masters, you do what they advise. In this case, her teacher is Ronald Frontin,  an accomplished Maine realist, painting in the tradition of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins "with his fastidiously rendered figural images set on the coast and in the countryside," his website says.

It is a warm Sunday afternoon, Sept. 23, at Rockport Harbor. Out on the bay, sailboats are heeling down to the gunwales in a steady breeze, and men working the nearby commercial fishing dock are barechested, like it was still summer or something. A few teenagers are fooling around, pretending to push each other off the pilings into the now-cold water.

"This is such an interesting harbor," says Judy. She is a sailor, living aboard a boat in Tenants Harbor during the summer. Come winter, she will return to Hardwick, Mass., on the edge of Quabbin Reservoir, to wind through the cold months. "I started painting the Timberwind, and got talking with Bob Tassi [the schooner's captain]. He said, 'you want to come for a sail?' So, I went for a few days."

She first started sketching the harbor earlier this summer.

"I thought I'd have the courage to attempt a Rockport Harbor drawing," she says. "I did one in graphite and chalk. Then I said, 'I'll just try the Timberwind and oils. I never dreamed I'd be taking oil but then Ron Frontin came along. He is a gift, a gift to this whole area. He makes us cover canvas with a mid-tone. That's why I'm back here... sort of covering the white."

Judy and her husband just hauled their boat, Jenny. She has some stories of Jenny that she writes about. And she has her oils. 

"I'm all set for the winter, painting."

Reach Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@PenBayPilot.com; 706-6657.