The Metisse - WIP, almost there...

The progress photo of the Metisse as promised. Not long now- just the water and reflections and maybe a little tweaking here and there...

I was a nervous about the composition at first because the boat is pretty close to dead center. I like it right now, we'll see if I still like it when the painting is complete.

The Metisse - WIP

I was getting a painting ready to ship and got a little carried away. I couldn't help myself- the box was so perfectly clean and blank... It was just begging for a sketch. The boat is called the Metisse. I fell in love with it at the dock. It was smooth, slender and red red red!

This was another reference photo I had been avoiding for a while, but I had so much fun sketching it that I started a small painting of it.

I am enjoying working small. This one is an 8"x10". Soon I will have a mass of 6"x8" canvas boards to work on as well.

Let me tell you how much I love Gamvar (Gamblin's super awesome archival varnish). It dries to the touch relatively fast and doesn't make your head spin from the fumes... in fact, I hardly noticed a smell. Hurray for Gamvar!

Port Townsend Boats II

Port Townsend Boats II
16" x 20"
Oil on canvas
Click here to purchase.

Voila! Painting number 5 in my Boats of the Pacific Northwest series.

I like this one. I really like the composition- the busy stuff at the top with a majority of the space taken by reflections.

I think I am going to do a couple of cloud paintings while I wait for my reference photos from Seattle to come in.

WIP - More Port Townsend Boats, and a bit of a ramble

I took this tonight because I didn't want to wait until morning when I have the proper lighting... The colors are a little off.

We went to Seattle this weekend and loaded me up with SOOOOOOOO many wonderful boat pictures! Oh! I am so excited! Wait until you see some of the beauties I got! Saturday evening we ran over to Fisherman's Terminal. Brad got himself a fish taco to go from Chinooks- which he said was awesome. I don't care for the taste of fish. I took his word for it. The day had been overcast, but seconds after Brad got back in the car with his dinner the sun broke through the clouds. I booked it for the boat docks. There were so many wonderful things to see. I took around 200 pictures there. Then we went down the road to a Marina just below the Fremont Troll and got a few golden hour pictures. I am so excited! I can hardly wait!

We had an interesting stay at the Mediterranean Inn. Someone pulled the fire alarm around 3 am. It was chilly, but a nice night. I think there was a dominant feeling of goodwill coming from the relief of knowing that we were all out and safe. The hotel was pretty small, so it didn't take long to clear the building. No fire. The suspect was a lonely drunk guy in a beret, apparently looking for some company in the wee hours of the morning. There was only one person there who seemed angry about the whole deal, but he seemed like a nice fellow. He was running about taking pictures of everyone standing around outside in their pajamas with their bed hair sticking out in all directions. I spent the rest of the night going over in my head how I could get out of a building faster if we were ever in another fire alarm situation.

I love Seattle. The city itself has so much personality. I remember someone telling me they hated the place because all the buildings were a dirty gray... I saw so much color there. Even with the overcast and rainy skies. The buildings are tastefully colored, muted, not obscene. Not the glaringly hideous colors you see on the houses in mountain towns.

There is art everywhere in Seattle. And artists too. On our way into town yesterday we saw a man riding a bicycle with a french easel strapped to his back. It was a very pretty easel too. Looked a warm red, like cherry wood. I wonder where he found such a pretty thing. Maybe he stained it himself.

I remember seeing an artist painting at a busy intersection a couple of years ago. His subject was a cute little bar/cafe, and he was painting on a rather large canvas, in my opinion, for painting outside. It was definitely larger than a 16x20. I was impressed. And then there was little ol' me running around like a maniac trying to get as many boat pictures as I could before the light vanished. But as far as anyone else knew, I was just an enormous dork caught up in a shutter frenzy.

I had so much fun running up and down the docks.

Seattle = Good Food.
Woah! let me tell you. We have never eaten at a bad restaurant in Seattle. This morning I was dying for a hometown-hangin'-with-the-cronies kind of breakfast. I was looking doubtfully at a Greek breakfast menu when Brad opened the door of the next cafe, took one look inside and said "We need to eat here." I was skeptical at first because it was called Mecca Cafe. I was thinking "middle eastern food for breakfast... not today." The place was a tiny bar/cafe done down in red, black, and silver. It was like Mephistopheles bought himself a little 50s diner. The waitresses had pasty skin and black hair and fingernails and dark dark lipstick- not quite Goth though. They took the look and gave it a real down home feel- if you can imagine that. It was all very well done! And the food was wonderful. I had a massive plate of scrambled eggs, rye toast with strawberry jam and the biggest pile of hash browns I have ever seen in a cafe- all for a whopping $4.99.

I was musing over the fact that we have yet to eat crummy food in Seattle, and Brad said it is because they have loads of competition and access to all kinds of fresh ingredients. A mediocre eating establishment can't survive in that kind of an atmosphere.

I love Seattle.

WIP- more Port Townsend boats

I was looking at my wall of reference photos last night trying to figure out what to paint next, the pickings are getting slim, when I came across this photo. The composition was boring, so I cropped a section with tape and cut out what I wanted.

So now I'm working from a teeny tiny 3" x 4" photo. Which, as it turns out, is a good thing! I am having to break the smaller bits into chunks of color rather than trying to paint a particular something. I am in trouble when I find myself trying to paint what I think an object is supposed to look like, instead of how it is.

My mantra for the day:
Paint what you see, not what you know.


Oh! I found my learning journal while cleaning up the book shelf. One of my "learning observations" from the other day was that a concise drawing is key to a good painting. My husband calls it "P.A." - Plan Ahead. I think it makes the painting process more enjoyable, because everything is set and ready to go.

I didn't plan very well on my last painting and struggled with it the entire time.

Gotta have P.A.

Oh! I love painting boats!!!

Port Townsend Boats
7.5"x11.5" oil on canvas

This summer, before school started for Brad, we took a trip to the Olympic Peninsula for a bit of camping and sightseeing. We stayed right outside of Port Townsend the first night, and I got a load of great boat reference photos. I love painting boats on the water. Reflections are fun!

I started this painting last night and finished it this afternoon. I just couldn't stay away from it. The reflection of the blueish boat on the far right is my favorite bit.

All in all, I had loads of fun with this one.