Done! Lots of time went into this piece. I've learned a lot. I've gotten some good advice from other painters and plenty of advice from sailors. There are one or two things I would have done differently here but otherwise I'm satisfied with this piece.
I'll be giving a talk at the Olympic Peninsula Art Association this Thursday on the making of this piece. But it won't really premier until the beginning of December when I can put it in the window of Gallery 9 where I'll be featured artist for that month. Stop by if you have a chance.
Here's the second progress report on my first marine painting with a ship. I have, of course, lots of photos of this piece in progress but thought better of boring you with too many closeups and small change photos. The water is nearly finished although I have made changes to the mid-ground and foreground wave not shown here. Also the sky. The ship remains with lots to do.
Clouds and ocean go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or at least it seems so to me. I've been practicing skyscapes a lot over the past year and with them, I've painted a lot of water as well. So after all this practice, I decided to put it all together and drop a ship into that water. Now despite living on the water, or at least close to it, I don't know much about ships and less about sailing. But I figured I could do a decent job of painting one. So in my typical - "let's just dive right in" attitude, I pulled out the stops and started to paint one. The elements for this painting were drawn from stock photos. I pulled separate pictures for the sky, mid ground (er, water) and foreground. Then I searched for a masted ship photo that would serve for my subject. Then I put it all together and Photoshopped the color and values until I was satisfied. So here are the first two iterations. The painting is much further along than this now but I want to show how I have been building toward the final image so stay tuned over the next few days.I've skipped a couple of steps in order not to bore you.
