Lake Erie Boat

Here is a cute little boat I painted.   This one came to me from the site pmp-art.com.  It's a little boat on the shore of Lake Erie (Sorry, I don't know if its the American or Canadian side).
I took a quick painting class on my lunch hour today.  30 minutes for a lesson, 30 minutes to paint.  I could have painted the picture supplied, or brought my own.  I chose to bring my own.  And knowing that I wouldn't have much time, I had to find a painting that I could do in a reasonable amount of time.

The lesson was about perspective and distance.  Notice the trees in the back are much bluer than the ones in the front.  That pushes them back.  Also notice that the sand on the beach in the front is much more red than the sand in the back.  That red helps to bring it forward.  All of a sudden, I've got depth in my painting.  Yay.

At any rate, for a 30 minute painting, I don't think its half bad.   I might even decide to do a video of this one.

Weekend Sketching

I love reading books.  I've probably read 30 or so already this year, and the latest was a watercolor book.  In it, like in all books of this sort, the artist tells you how to paint a myriad of different things and different techniques in which to accomplish this.

So, I decided to take this particular artist and author up on his challenge and started painting a few of the paintings from the book.  To the left is the second version of this painting.  It's not quite like his, but its not bad for a quick weekend sketch.

The second painting is my first attempt at the same scene.  Not bad, but not nearly in the league as the top one.

This last one is just one more that I took from him.  Again, not bad for a quick sketch.

I should say that these are all on my sketch paper, which is very similar to mixed media paper in texture.  That is, its smooth and almost a little waxy.  I got it so that I could easily take it with me and paint on location.  The air here is super dry and when I venture outside to paint, I find that I often have trouble keeping moisture on the paper.  Thus this paper.

Anyway, enjoy.

Morro Bay from Abalone Shell Beach

Abalone Shell Beach is my name for the beach and not the official name of the beach.  I believe its actually Bluff Park Beach.  I call it Abalone Shell Beach because the beach is made of abalone shells that are probably 10 ft deep or more.  There used to be an abalone cannery that sat at the top of the hill.  What became this beach was the area where they discarded their shells.  As a result they just stacked up and stacked up and stacked up.   Standing on the beach, you can look back at the bluff above you and see several feet of shells above the height of the beach, and looking into the water, the shells stretch as far as you can see into the water.  Its a fantastic place sit.  There are lots of boats tied up there, and I have tried to paint them before.  This is my best effort.  Hope you enjoy.

A boat for the weekned

Here is the same boat as yesterday, but this one has a little different perspective.  Enjoy it.

Boat at Dock

Well, a few things.  This one was really fun to paint, but I made like a million mistakes in doing it.  The clouds are almost non existant, the reeds in the front are there because I painted the underside of the dock poorly.  The antenna on the boat is really supposed to be the mast of a ship behind the boat.

But its all good, I had a great time painting this picture and for all its faults, think it turned out great.